Aesthetics Star Child and Moon Baby--The Journey of Two Xaga Dolls

I don't know either of the sculpts' names* (bought from someone on Instagram when I was still doing social media; but I do know they are legit Xaga Dolls), I don't plan creative endeavors, and I have never done a good faceup...it'll be fiiiiiiine

I will be updating this journal as I go along. Hopefully my fumbling will be entertaining.

I started tonight by wiping their previous faceups (which I did not feel at all bad about because they were chipping and generally rubbing away):


I could not quite get the little bit inside the mouth of the sculpt on the left and the sculpt on the right has some black eyeliner on the inside still. I will either ignore all of it or try tomorrow with my pointy tweezers, watered down isopropyl, and some gauze to remove these two belmishes like I did for the right sculpts sides of the mouth. Then we begin the arduous journey of sealing and painting and sealing and painting and sealing and painting.

I am thinking I'll make miss lefty open mouth have a soft sun theme, and miss right pointy nose have a pastel moon theme. Unfortunately, I am nowhere near talented enough to actually pull this off, but practicing won't kill me...it might enrage my inner critic/perfectionist, but eh, that happens no matter what I do.

I will be referring to them as Sun and Moon from now on. Not sure if those "names" will stick. I'm thinking I'll probably call them something less reminiscent of Pokémon and more poetic. Like Sunburst and Moonshine, only better because I just came up with those and they remind me of a candy and an adult beverage in that order

Anyways. Wish me luck, folks

*if anyone has a guess as to who these sweet dolls are, I'd appreciate any leads you could give ^-^

UPDATE September 27, 2023
Mood:
Reason: 75%ish humidity today, so no spraying MSC and I think MSC is the only sealant I've got...so we wait. I'm assuming that this humidity will last a while, so I will probably take this time to make more detailed faceup plans or sew more doll clothing--which will be its own project journal as I have bought 23lbs of scrap fabric for cheap and it has all shipped today!

From now on I'm updating in the comments!

 

Thanks for the leads and the excitement! I'll have to cross reference whatever I can find on those sculpts. They are 1/6ish. I put them on Xaga Doll 26cm heart joint bodies and they seem to fit pretty well.

I feel silly that I forgot to put their size...and now that I think about it I could run upstairs and check their COAs to at least see which two I'm working with if Xaga puts that's on their COAs...but it's like sleepy time for me almost so I'll have to look tomororw (unless it bugs me so much I check before going to bed )

 

Aaand we have pastels! The humidity plummeted so I took the opportunity to do some art.




My Moon Baby is going to have a thicker makeup style to bring out the colors of the pastels. The Sun Child is quite pigmented and I sorta like that it looks like she's got a sunburn. I think I will go for a more natural makeup look on Little Miss Sunshine. I'm actually quite happy with how these have turned out don't look too close. These are my first layered faceups (before I'd been trying to do them all in one go because I was an impatient maniac with a disregard for listing to advice lol)

 

Well my image host is mad because I had a nude doll picture in my hidden photos. So, until I decide to pay for a website (because that seems much more permanent of a solution to keeping my images anyhow...using a private discord server is tempting, but i want to be in as much control of the hosting as possible), we won't have any picture updates...

Here's a quick text update though! I had to wipe Miss Luna's head because I royally failed at doing her eyebrows; on the other hand, Miss Soleil needs one last spray of sealant and she'll be ready to return to her body. I should probably start making clothing for these two gals too...

Anyways apologies for the weird intermission. Hopefully when the weather gets less humid and the image host thing is sorted, I'll have more updates on these celestial sisters

 

Hello again!

(If you don't care about doll character lore, the later part of this post is not for you. I will update the following plans with sketches eventually as my thoughts congeal into something useful.)

I have an update to this little journey, but it's kind of a bummer. I decided the stress of painting faceups myself is worse than the stress (and money and time) it takes to send the heads off to a professional artist. I liked most of the faceup I did for the Sun themed gal, but the eyebrows are so bad that it drags the whole look down.

I also am having terrible luck with the weather. It's so very humid all the time, despite being winter.

But do not despair, for not all is lost! I will be changing the title of this Project Journal to "Star Child and Moon Baby--The Journey of Two Xaga Dolls." Instead of just my attempts at faceups (like this journal was originally), I will be sharing my journey of brainstorming and creating clothing for these two. While I save up some funds for faceups and body blushes and wait for my chosen faceup artist (haven't chosen anyone as of right now) to open their commisions, I'll share the outfits I'm thinking about making for these two gals. There will be at least one ceremonial outfit and several casual ones.

So now, let's get into what my plans actually are so this post isn't only about me being a failure I'm thinking this will be my first real forray into shelling characters. Before now, I've just gotten dolls I liked the sculpts and bodies of. I'm thinking it is high time I stretched my creativity a bit. After using these two as a learning experience, I'll start sinking my money into creating the characters of my epic --meaning the original sense of the word-- poem

I really liked the Sun Child and Moon Baby as nicknames, however they need actual names. Unfortunately, I can't immediately draw inspiration from my epic poem since 1) it isn't full written yet...I've barely scraped the surface of the lore and 2) there's a Sun "God" who shares his duties with a younger brother who is the god of stars and "alchemy" for lack of a better term, and then there's the twin moons, so I can't really pull directly from this story. That means we get to make a new story and I'm very excited by that prospect But to move forward, I'm thinking I'll have their official names be Solaria and Lunaria, although their common names are Star Child and Moon Baby. The change from Sun to Star will be explained later. The nicknames would imply that Solaria and Lunaria are in the same family, but S is older than L, but they are both young in the reckoning of the lore. I also think I'll keep the lore reduced to only worship of the Stars and the Moon, with S and L's parents being Demiurge/Jupiter like and having created the world, but essentially got sidelined by something I haven't made up yet and maybe never will since this is a test run.

Personality-wise, Solaria/Star Child subverts the general assumptions of celestial lore. She is quiet, and has a bad case of elder sister vibes. She is stern and commanding, but generally even handed. See, she isn't a "Sun" diety because her domain is all the different kinds of stars. To keep from boring you, I won't go into the whole thing, but due to the sheer number of stars she must control, she has a strong sense of justice and desires order, yet is a rather reluctant leader even with such strong leading tendencies.

Her garments and faceup need to be reminiscent of the above qualities. I loved the idea I had in mind for her faceup: deep red lips and (conservative) eye liner, almost sunburned looking blush, orange dots on the cheeks below her eyes, and big bushy light brown eyebrows. Her clothing should be the colors of the stars based on a nearby observer: white, yellow/orange, red (subdued), or even grey/black. The ceremonial vestments for her are loose and seem almost like solar flares with a grey/black shift as a base, but her casual clothing is reminiscent of a 90s era kindergarten teacher. She doesn't "let loose" very often or easily.

Moon Baby on the other hand is clad in violets and blues, grey/black, and maybe even some light pinks. She has wild black eyeliner that look like tattoos and a violet lip color. Her attitude is more open and curious by nature than her sister, although she takes her job of tending the space debris caused by colliding planets and celestial objects equally as serious. She knows that someday she will witness her sister turn into a black hole and destroy everything they've known, but she is gracious in the face of fear. Her ceremonial vestments are tight to her body. I have yet to come up with a mental image of what I like for her ceremonial stuff, but I like the idea of her outfits being a punk-y and goth style casually.

Okay so that about covers what all I've been thinking about. Hopefully that wasn't too boring! Thanks for reading if you made it this far. I think I'm going to go take a nap because excavating all that out of my noodle has made me exhausted

Until next time, toodles!

 

I've decides to sell these two. I just can't find the oomph to finish them. While I love these two dolls, they don't have the aesthetics I'm moving towards for either my character shelling or my (dwindling) pre-character shelling collections. I apologize if people were invested, but I think selling them will be better in the long run.