"Slinger" project

Oh dear. So, what did I get myself into?

Nope, I have never done doll before and it's some time I have done anything with clay. But I got this idea of a doll, which I decided try out. This head is meant to look like a character which has been with me about 14-16 years. So yeah, he is pretty special to me. :3 He has been (anti-)hero of several little stories and also took part of few roleplays. He goes by many names. In fantasy world he is from it is custom among his people that kids get name at birth, but as they grow they got nickname which usually is used from them more often than their real name. Well, this guy got name Shrak when he was born, but after his first hunt, also traditional thing of his folk, people started to call him "Sling". Thus the project name, Slinger. He got trouble later and has had to change name after that in stories, but I think it's still good name for a project.

You can actually blame my friend for starting this, she was talking about that our most roleplay characters are coming as dolls so she wondered it would nice to have Sling around, but that's a bit tricky. If Sling would be average elf or something, yeah but... Well, in Sling's fantasy world, his people are equalent to dwarfs. If I would ever get Sling I would want him to be about the size he is supposed when put next to her 70 cm dolls. And that's not easy as getting 60 cm doll, because Sling isn't average short. He is more like, well, Peter Dinklage way of short. And we all know that Peter Dinklage is awesome, talented, and actually pretty handsome guy, buuuut if you just go and google pictures of Peter Dinklage next to someone it comes kinda obvious no doll in the market right now would cut a part like that. Not to mention, potato nose has always been Sling's thing. But those aren't popular on the market either.

So, that's where the idea came from.

To amuse you I digged some old pictures of Sling from my deviantart (which I haven't used in ages again.... <.< Here is an older picture, and here is other one which is a bit more fresh. So now we have some kind of basic idea where we start from. For now, I'm focusing just the HEAD. If I get a nice head, then I'll go for body too. So I started with some counting and sketching, my supiadoll-dude was helping me out when I tried to figure out how wide/tall I want things to be. I'm currently using air-drying darwi clay, I'm not sure would you be even able to use this to make silicone molds (someone can probably tell me that) but since it's pretty cheap and easy to get here and I could only get La Doll by ordering it outside my country, I decided to start with this and see can I even make a prototype, and if it really starts to look like something worth casting I'll buy some other material and make a new, cleaner version with less mistakes. Sounds good?

I shall apologize wall of bad, bad photos. xD I've been working couple of weeks, just half an hour / few hours at the time, and usually when it's dark so...



I started sketching the doll in size I'd like it to be. As said, big guy there is helping me to check did my countings go right. Sketch is now filled with my very odd notes in both english and finnish, and probably only I can tell what it says (if even me) so... well, anyway:



Since getting idea of propotions is a bit hard in the image, here's the drawing next to Fairyland minifee, so atleast some of you might get better idea about the size.



So that's pretty rough sketch. His legs are about the the same size as his torso, and his shoulders are wide, hands are looking a bit silly. Body is subject to change.

So I made a foil ball, attached it to cardboard tube which is as big as I want his neck size to me and taped to whole thing. Yes, When I take the head of it neck winn break a bit but I though I could use extra reach and fix the neck at that point. Then, clay time.





At this point i made my first mistake, I didn't watch my papers and didn't realise my head wasn't tall enough. Which resulted this silly phase when I counted everything like... BUFF.



Thing from Marvel comics, anyone?

So, I've been fixing that and tried slowly making it a bit more even from the front, so this is a picture today, I'm possibly working it more later but we'll see.







He needs a forehead, badly, and I got sand some jaw off I think. I got to open the head at some point, before that it's hard to do the eyes. I'm terrifyied about just thinking the lips. xD But when he gets the forehead I can start building up the nose a bit. :3

So, he looks a bit terrible right now but... I guess you need to start somewhere? xD

 

Since all my pictures so far are so crappy, I decided to take couple better pictures in our infamous balcony from the fixes I did last night. Currently I'm startin the symmetry battle again, wish me luck!















I got to work on positioning of eyes, other cheek is flat and somehow I don't get jawline on right side as nice as it's on the left. Small cracks, got to refine nose... But it starts to look like a person, slowly. xD