20–39cm Dolls Sybil - A DollZone inspired-ish YoSD head

I'm back in another round of "I couldn't get what I wanted/it didn't exist so I resolved to make it myself"!

You can read my last thread, in which I made a Doll In Mind inspired-ish MSD head here. Like last time, here's a bit of background info in the spoiler before I get to imagery!

Spoiler

I used to want my crew to be all different companies and sculpts, because I thought the idea of having a limited selection of sculptors would be very boring. However, it really turned out in the end that by doing that, I just led myself to be frustrated! I'd buy a head sculpt that I liked, but then find it uniquely annoying that it didn't look like it "fit in". For one particular doll, my DollZone Candice who is my oldest BJD (mine is called Ethel, and I might end up calling her Ethel here and there in the thread), I wanted her to have a younger sibling for ages.

I thought about using my DollZone Mann as a sibling for her, but Mann and Candice definitely don't really look alike. They've got enough similarities that I'm happy with the stylistic match (they're both DollZone after all!), but they don't look like siblings. I really struggled to find any heads from other companies that did it for me. I tried a Withdoll Parker head I purchased from the marketplace here, but I think it was with me for maybe 1 or 2 months before I parted with it again. It just didn't match! His head was smaller, his facial structure just wasn't the same, etc.

Recently I started thinking about embracing only having DZ and DiM dolls, so I started looking at DZ's 1/6 offerings, but with Candice being so old, they've discontinued all of the older sculpts at this point. I don't know anything about DZ's sculptors, but there's definitely a couple of different styles going on at DZ, and they're just not really making anything like Candice. Not on the regular anyway, and even those that they've made recently that share traits with her, they're the wrong size or just not really sibling material.

Thus we get to now! I've hit that critical point again where I'm spurred into action not because I'm creative and artistic, but because I am indignant and insolent. If nobody else has sculpted a head that looks like it could be a sibling to my Candice, I'll just have to do it myself!

So to start with, here's some of DollZone's company photos of Candice, the doll I want to make a sister for:



It's also worth showing mine specifically though, as she has been modded:

Aside from the obvious dye job, she's also had her eyes carved open more. Her face-up also implies new, much higher eyelids than the original sculpt. So I'll be sculpting to match my specific Candice, rather than Candices in general!

Here's the first stage and where I'm at currently; 3D modelling:

Upper left being right when I started, and lower right being where I am now. Just like with Jadu (my previous head project), I started off way too exaggerated and cartoony, as I kind of condensed and compressed the features I wanted to imitate in my mind! Candice has a very small nose and a very small mouth, and a huge forehead. It took a few times looking back and forth between my Candice and my sculpt to get things to start stylistically and proportionately lining up.

I decided to go a bit more extreme, and go for a strong expression too! Initially I was going to go for neutral, but before I sculpted the bottom lip, I realised I quite liked where that was going, so I decided to go all out, making this character chew her bottom lip and look on the verge of tears. Since all my company heads are more neutral, I like balancing that out by having my sculpts be more extreme.

So here she is right now!

At this point I think she looks pretty close! She seems to me like she'll sit well as related to the Candice sculpt whilst still being pretty distinct from her.

The next stage is printing her filament test print(s)!

(Edit: I realised I should probably state this just so it's absolutely clear: like Jadu, Sybil is a personal project. I'm not interested in making BJDs for anyone else or casting them or anything like that, so under no circumstances will I ever be monetising sculpts that are deliberately based around emulating other sculptors. "BJD fanart" of a sort. I know these days it seems like everyone and their dog is looking to sculpt dolls and sell them, but that's not for me and that's not what I'm doing with these! They're for me and me alone.)

 

Update with the first round of prototyping!

My filament printer usually throws a tantrum no matter what I feed through it, so honestly I was so surprised it printed the entire head in one go with no complaints.


I use a filament colour I don't care about for prototyping, meaning... it's very hard to see her! What I could conclude though was that her size is about right.

A quick coat of primer later:

With the primer and some basic features highlighted, I started to see where I need to change things. It's funny, when I was finalising the model, I was convinced she was so close to the original Candice that somebody could accuse me of direct imitation! In reality, it turns out there's actually a bigger difference between the two than I thought.

The nose and the mouth size are pretty ideal, but the face ratio/distance from eyes to nose and that kind of thing is completely off. I didn't realise Sybil's face had gotten so much longer! If I was happy to make her an older sibling, this would be fine. I think this sculpt does look a little bit like Candice grew up a tiny bit more. However, I'm pretty set on Sybil being a younger sibling, so I want to go back and adjust her face and try a second prototype.

Other things I need to do are; move her skullcap line further back and make her neck hole more shallow (I made it way way too deep and I don't even know why).


Here's the most crisp look at her I could get! I definitely like this face a lot, but I need to change it to have it blend with Candice in the way I want!