Discussion The Joint: BJD-making discussion

@LornaLoo Aww~ Thanks. I'm visiting family at the moment so I will have to wait until I return home Sunday to take the pictures. I didn't bring any doll things with me. Which is weird because I always bring a doll when I travel and 50% of the time, my sculpting if it's not too bulky. I have regrets.

 

Yup, just sandwiched in. It could use something grippy in there to better hold its position (like silicone, maybe), because it tends to drop open on its own, but it stays assembled pretty well.

 

Glad this thread is still lively, I’m missing the joint.

Anyway, I’ll hopefully have some progress pictures this week, since I made both shoulder balls and one upper arm. I’m off on holiday but going by car so I can take my tools and doll with me. I’m excited/scared of starting on an elbow peanut, plus I have an absolute bucket load of sanding to do, and some eye repairs (I chipped a bit of his lower eyelid... )
Sculpey can be quite fragile. I’d like to get his sculpt finished by May, but that might be too short a timeframe. But I’m ordering a resin casting pressure tank, and since I already have a degassing chamber, I could get moulding...

 

How vital is it to use a pressure tank or degassing chamber?

 

It drastically reduces bubbles on the resin.Without it, urethane resin can accumulate bubbles on small 'upper' corners of a piece, like ears and head's borders . A perfectly smooth cast can only be achieved using a pressure chamber.

 

How would one going about getting a pressure tank and degassing chamber? I want to get them but I have no clue where to start or anything about that stuff.

 

aaa i have received my hemisphere mold.. and it is much better than i thought it would be. very thick plastic, and perfect sizes of the molds for making spheres. here's hoping these two balls i just made turn out well. i need them for continuing my torso!

 

I know Amazon has degassing chambers, vacuum pumps, and kits containing both...but there are so many different sizes and options, and I also don't know which ones are really needed.

Can anyone give advice for that? I mean, surely I wouldn't need a 5 gallon tank to create a head and its silicone mold, but how small could I go? Are there cheaper pumps than the $50 one that are still appropriate for this application?

 

I had made yet another thing!

Using this video as instruction to make a mold with DIY silicone putty.
I had made a mold of my printed head in order to make castings.





Close ups of the details it captured!





~~~A word of warning! ~~~

Once you finish mixing the putty, you must MUST mold it over your piece right away.
I tried to use the remainder to mold something else and it didn't take in the details like it did with the head, it was starting to harden by the time I tried to mold it over my piece.
It was such a sad waste of silicone.

 

@Elysion gear This makes me curious. What would you say your review overall of this method?
I was thinking, The first cast I make of my doll might not even be what is official. I will probably revise it again or something. I've been looking to cheaper methods to make that first initial cast. Silicone get expensive!

 

Yes, silicone can get expensive.

As a hands on review: I'd say it's comparable to the two part silicone mold making kit. Once they are both cured they have the same texture, same rigidity and pliability at the same thickness.

The Downsides are :
1) The smell of the silicone. (Both before mixing and after it's cured.)
2) You have to use it right away before the putty starts hardening.
3) You must make a little more then what you think you need and then trim off the excess. This wastes a bit of the putty, but it's better then not having enough to cover your piece. The putty will dry/cure before you can mix up more putty.

 

Thanks! I think I will experiment with this. I have a spare tube thing of silicone from a previous project. Thank you for sharing!

 

As already stated, if you want professional casts you must use a pressure tank. I’ve tried mould making of large pieces without and you always get bubbles. Some casts look passable but not to the standard of a proper bjd. I’ve played rather a lot with mould making, different methods, materials and resins and there is no sneaky way around doing it right. Silicone putty is useful for moulding, say, a face to work on, but it’d be pretty useless for whole pieces and hollow parts. It can be very useful while still working on your doll, though. I’ve sculpted pieces I wanted to modify, where a quick putty mould gives me a near enough replica to begin reworking.

A word of warning: googling pressure tanks will lead to lots of DIY videos about how to use pressure cookers etc. They are NOT designed for this purpose and it’s not safe to modify them unless you’re a pro. The extra money on a proper casting tank could (literally) be life saving! I’m U.K. based and I know amazon are not the cheapest here... there are specialist shops who sell reasonably large tanks for about £300. You’ll also need a decent air compressor to fill it, and those things are loud as hell. I have a shed I use as a workshop which means none of this has to be done in the house. If you have a dedicated space, it’d really help.

 

Noemi Smith has tutorial about casting in resin, She does everything step by step in studio. Video is long about 10 hours, I was watching it. There she discuses about gass chembers and vacum pumps and showes what she uses. In this video she showes everything, How she makes silicon molds, how she started her first casts, and she mentions that she fixed bubles with polymer clay in her faild casts. Now is sale at curious mondo and you get two video for price of one. I would recomend also tutorial first from Noemi, she made this small double jointed BJD pigy in studio from begining to end from paper clay.It is instructional video I think it is around 20hours long, Noemi is so openminded and generous, I think there is no hiden things, she showed everything and it is not boring. Who can aford it I think that is best source of tryed out info. With buying video you get 30 days acess to Noemi and you can ask her questions, what is also wow! She is clearly showing in video what chember to buy and vacum pump- to be reasonable price. And she has same. I could now dig out somewhere what she says about model and brand but in moment nobody is buying it actualy so it is pain in ass for me.
Molding and Casting A Ball Jointed Doll Course with Noemi Smith
Chek out curious mondo,ocasionaly they have some times free live streamings of BJD tutorials which are great

 

that looks like an awesome course. Thanks for the link! It’s probably cost me way more in waste trying to figure things out than it would have to just buy a course!

 

@Spuggey I was looking bouth classes, here is link for other one for sculptin in paperclay and stoneclay same. I think this other is little bit more expensive, I am not sure for this sale - do you need to buy more expensive one- but it is friction of price only higher price. Price for bouth now is more than worth for material you get.She is puting paperclay in owen and she makes actualy whole doll in front of camera for this 3 days of filming and drying is excelerated by owen.
Making a Ball Jointed Doll Character Course with Noemi Smith

 

Cool, thanks. I’ve always dried paperclay in the oven, too!

 

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you and thank you.

 

Is that link working from EU. When I go to google, search staples. klik on link it says Acces denied from this server. There is no way to get me on that site.

 

I think it's for Staples in the US. You could try a proxy. Or if you want to, I could buy it for you and ship it. It's going to be a bit more expensive for you (we can do store pick up for free shipping) but probably cheaper than other options. I just ordered 4 packs and my total was 12.37 bucks.

 

@YovyDollMaker you are go sooo nice! But who knowes what would be shipping from you to my place. I have one place where I buy my clay for 5euro + shiping, that is ok, But that sale sounds like paradise.
I can't waith see you all working.

 

Yeah, the shipping would make it not worth it for you, I'm afraid.

 

but I realy aprisiate your offer

 

Maybe it's just Amazon UK that isn't the cheapest? £300 (about 415 USD) is a lot of money. Amazon has kits like this for less than half that price. I'm wondering whether there is something wrong with those kits, or if they're too small, or what.

I'm not ready to start casting yet anyway, but if I'm going to have to shell out $400+ just for casting equipment, then it may not be worth it unless I change my mind and decide to try making extra heads for sale (which I hadn't intended to do).

 

That’s a vacuum chamber - the opposite of a pressure tank. I have one of those which I got for about £40, with a hand pump. A vacuum chamber is used to degas the silicone before pouring the mould. Basically, you put the mixed liquid in there, use the small pump to remove the air and thus bring the bubbles in the silicone to the top for bubble free moulds.

The pressure tank is this: Resin Model Moulding Casting Tank 10Litre

That’s smaller than the one I want, but much cheaper. It’s used when you have your moulds filled with resin. The moulds are put inside, and then a compressor pumps air into the tank until it’s under pressure, which compresses ant bubbles in the resin until they’re invisible to human eyes. The resulting casts are near perfect.

So the vacuum chamber is removing air, the pressure tank is adding air.

If you only want a few casts, and of heads, you’d be better off paying a casting company. To be honest, I’m partly doing the casting because I like experimenting with all this stuff, so it’s as much part of the fun for me as the sculpting, but it won’t be cheap in the short term. In the longer term, if you intend to keep sculpting, reproducing and selling your casts, then maybe it’s worth it.

There are pressure pots for spray painting, which are much cheaper, but they’re not the same thing and can’t be used for casting, so if you are interested, make sure you look for casting tanks not spraying tanks.

 

Oh. Someone had mentioned degassing chambers, so that's what I looked up. Are they both necessary, or is the pressure tank more important? I found one online for $199 (though it doesn't include the air compressor). Unless I'm way overestimating how much casting companies charge, it sounds like it would be cheaper to get the equipment than to pay for 10 copies of a head when I only want one.

Has anyone here had just a head professionally cast, so they can share the price? Haru Casting only posts full-doll prices online, that I can see.


Edit: upon further searching, it seems the air compressors are another $200 at least.

 

I’d say you can get away without a degassing chamber but not without a pressure tank. I know haru will cast just heads and the price list is on their site but I don’t have a link right now, sorry! You would need a decent compressor, not a mini airbrush one, but they’re not too expensive. And yes, the problem with pro casting companies is that generally they’d only do batches of ten, so it can be expensive if you don’t plan to sell.

 

I think I edited my post while you were typing. I searched for a pressure tank and compressor. I found a $199 tank that requires a 3.5 HP compressor, which in turn costs another $200.

I found Haru's price list, but it only lists full dolls. Nevermind, now I see the head prices. They are actually very reasonable, in my uneducated opinion. Here's a link for anyone curious: Harucasting : 네이버 블로그

 

In that class I mentioned, they recomend this:
5 Gallon 300mm 11.8″ Stainless Steel Vacuum Degassing Chamber – Not for Wood Stabilizing
and this:
FJC 6912 Vacuum Pump 5.0 Cfm

and this:
TCP Global Commercial 5 Gallon (20 Liters) Spray Paint Pressure Pot Tank with Manual Mixing Agitator

here is how Noemi uses that on youtube;



Hope I am helping

 

@YovyDollMaker Yay! I'm glad someone else could benefit from it! I ordered five packs, but I had to opt for shipping because our nearest Staples is about an hour away. But still! The credit goes to @deadish for mentioning it, though

In other news, I successfully sculpted a foot for my dragon...and then proceeded to burn and horribly disfigure it while baking. Two hours down the drain (or, in the trash, as it were). And I'm starting to think Sculpey III is waaaay too soft, so I might just wait until the Premier gets here.

Is there another type of Sculpey that's not so soft? I worked with some years ago that was a lot firmer, and I'm pretty sure it was Sculpey of some kind. I'd rather stay with polymer clay for the smaller parts.

 

You have super sculpey medium firm and firm. Bouth are gray colour. Try to google it to see how pack looks. It is larger than sculpey III. There is no small packs of that.

 

@HeyJude : you could 'leech' it. Roll the clay out on some paper and then smooth another piece of paper over it. The paper should leech out some the oil that makes the sculpt soft. best to leave it overnight.

 

It’s probably the grey one marked “firm” that you need. It’s what I’ve been using for my sculpt as I find ordinary super sculpey way too soft. The firm one can seem rock hard when you get it - warm it slightly and knead it, then it becomes workable. I sometimes out a little hand warmer on top of the clay as I’m working to keep it pliable.

He he, yep, thanks! I don’t have my tank yet but I’m a bit scared of a big metal thing under pressure, so guidance is great!

 

@LornaLoo My pleasure.

@HeyJude You're right. I should thank @deadish for sharing. Deadish, thank you so much - I can be a bit absent-minded at times.

 

ah, i am glad my constant online lookie-loos were worth something. XD

 

Okay, I have completely forgotten about this. I hope to make a cast really soon but I want to make a couple revisions. Like, I wanna mess with the brow bones a little bit but here he is.

 

I was looking forward to getting some sculpting done and then two pieces of coursework for my degree are due in the coming weeks. So writing computer scripts and essays instead.

 

@thenewmaid in that sculpt, I would put some cheeks and cheekbones, chin and maby under nose triangle of upper lip- I could tell you that if I see profile. I miss some chin.

Look What I have buy in tabbacco shop today for "peanuts monney". I think it is great He has not bad proportions at all. it is some kind of magazine for kids when they colect bones and compleet whole sceleton.
Great for anatomy.

 

Oh! This skull is so cool! It is a lot easyer to sculpt using such a reference. Dose the jaw move?

 

yes it moves. It is momentary 1$ at my place. It is first number.of new magazine so it is under price, in next number it will be scull cap, eyes, and half of brain but the price will be around 5$. I am not sure will I colect whole sceleton, but this is realy nice scull. if scelet would be anatomicaly and proportionaly right like scull, maby it would be nice investment. But I find risky to buy every bone and on end find out that proportions are off.

 

@LornaLoo I don't think he would look like what I want with prominent cheekbones . Or more chin for that matter. He looks exactly how I've wanted. Except the brow bones but I fixed them yesterday. Looks a ton better in my opinion.

On another note, I started a more realistic sculpt not too long ago. I'll post pictures at some point. But I have way more ideas and fun for stylized sculpts. I prefer them. All my dolls are stylized sculpts. I know a lot of people here are doing more realistic sculpts and that's cool. I love to see them. It might sound crazy but it makes me feel like I have to sculpt more realistic.

 

@thenewmaid you are totaly right, but I was thinking, it is maby not good to praise always

People, do you knowe what is going on with blog atelier de poupee?
I am devastated because it is down, I started to read it from begining. Does somebody knows contact from creator so I can ask for access? Maby creator of that blog is also on this forum? Because access is denied I can't contact niether see contact info.

 

I had started to make my own 1/6 doll. Here are the progress photos that I have thus far:




1) Armature is aluminum foil

2) Then filled out with Perimier.

4) Covered with a 50/50 mix of two part epoxy sculpt and polymer clay. Using a tool to make a rough texture.

5) With the rough texture, it was easy to layer on more polymer clay ( I had sawed off the limbs for easier sculpting of the torso)

 

Is that the head that broke into a million little pieces? Or was that someone else?

 

@LornaLoo I don't quite understand

@Zardi I think it was me. I didn't break it into a million pieces. I just broke the entire bottom of it. The face remained intact except the bottom of the chin.

 

I could be wrong, but I think they are saying that constructive criticism, as opposed to praise all the time, is a good thing I agree. I look forward to getting an entire project thread after the merge so hopefully people will be more likely to give constructive criticism.

 

I would like this place to became place for constructive criticism, because I belive here are some very talnted artists and I hope they are not shy to tell what they think and see. That is precious.

Other thing is that bouth sides learn that way, who gives critiq- to look at work analiticaly and artist - to take other opinion so he can choose concious of many diferent options.
Some times when I look long in mine sculpt I need pair of fresh eyes

@Elysion gear you fascinate me with that mixes of materials, I belive you have lot of expirience. You did not put wire under folium?
I don't have good expirience with folium, I can't tame it. Like it has will of it own.

Last weekend I was playing with this armature it was mithycal fail. I have cut aluminium pipe and I had idea that I will on every joint put gap betvean pipes and conect it with coresponding wire to conect two pipes, Idea was to have hard limbs and wire where are joints so when I finish sculpting I can easy cut limbs take out wires from pipes and have nice place for joints and hollow parts. Man.. whole contraption was so weak like old women teeth- swinging. I have so sore hands from cutting aluminium pipe with hand saw, and that huge wire handling. That creature will spend his life in garbage.
Hahaha, I will make diary of experiments when we get room for that. Experimenting laborotory.


sory for writing in 3 posts, but I decide to put work I stil belive in. This is what I work this week. I am trying to bypass armature by making plaster push molds. So I made solid parts from plasticine/ oilclay and I will transfer it in hard material when I make all molds I still belive in this work, I hope it will not go in vain. Oh, I realy hope.

 

@Zardi I agree that constructive criticism is good but I didn't really see it as constructive criticism as more things I should change about the appearance. Or what she would do.

 

A lot of experience with experimenting perhaps. ^^;;

In the past I had brought the Junga-toy head sculpting kit to try my hand at making my own head sculpt.
It came with a resin head-base that was devoid of most features. (Looked like a blank skull)
Basic metal sculpting tools
A tub of two part epoxy clay
A generous portion of polymer clay.
a package of La doll paper clay

The instructions for sculpting with the kit was online and I followed it to limited success, my skill wasn't high enough to produce something that was satisfactory (to me)

The mixing of polymer clay with the two part epoxy was in the instructions and it produces a material that has no need of heat to cure and wasn't too hard to carve and sand. It was also easy to add to once hardened so that you can build up your sculpt as needed.




In the picture below, you can see the different shades of gray that make up the different ratio of mixed clay:

White: 100% Epoxy
Light gray: 1:3 mix (1 polymer clay ball)
Mid gray: 50/50 mix ( 2 polymer clay balls)
Dark gray: 100% polymer clay.





As for my current project, I have more experience with sculpting with Super sculpty firm. So I used it for the surface sculpting. The premire clay was used to fill out the foil armature, I didn't want it to be solid polymer clay. The foil was pressed very thinly so that it held it's shape better. I used tape to tame it.

I had used La Doll paperclay before and used it to create head-bases to work on. ( if anyone interested, Here is a link to my DA page where I show my various projects.)

This was my first time playing with Premier clay and I must say that I am curious on if I could make a whole doll with it. But I am limited on how much I can spend. It's rather expensive here in Canadaland.

Whew! Long post, I hope that it was informative.

 

@Elysion gear you inspired me to try out that. I was dismising epoxy putty as fast drying and hard for sanding. Great sharing, thank you.

 

Thank you!

You have inspired me too actually. ^_^
Your idea of the plaster push-molds, I am going to try it as well. but instead of making a solid piece, I am going to make the piece hollow by using the Epoxy-polymer mix to make a half "Shell" of the piece, with two shells made, then it would be simple to add more epoxy in order to attach the halves together complete the hollow piece.
Of course the walls and channels will be strengthened with pure epoxy sculpt on the inside of the shells so that the copy is sturdy.

Like this technique:

Spoiler

 

@Elysion gear you got it. I plan put Premix in it. Problem with La Doll Permix is shrinkage, so I need to close two halfes of mold, stick pieces together as wet and dry them in molds. Your mix is not shrinking and I don't see why you could not dry half and half and after that glue them together- only if it is not sticking on mold while drying.
So I have make 2 holes in every mold to help myself dry faster. (ref.for tehniq is Yoshida book 2)
In mine case orginal is not holow it is made from plasticine and it is wasteable. Finished Piece will be hollow because I will push pancakes in it same as you.
hehehe, chockolate ball joints.
Who knowes what would happen if mixing stoneclay and epoxy, maby that would also be funn for sculpting details.

 

Hello, I plan on making my own doll over the summer and I REALLY need help finding a good casting company that I can just get ONE resin copy/print of my doll, whatever its called. Does anyone know any affordable casting companies? Does anyone know anyone that I could commission to make me 1 resin copy of my doll? (would that even be possible?) If I cant just get 1 resin doll of my sculpt, then I'm open to buying 'batching' of dolls. (Im not sure how this works, and there's so little info out there about this.)

And if there is no way for me to afford sending to a casting company, can I get help about making my own resin casts? Any videos, or tutorials, or blogs. (I would mostly be confused about casting dolls since their parts are hallow. How would casting that even work?) And then help on even using the resin, what resin I should use, and how the world would I make skin-tone resin?/ How would I dye it?

I would really like some help in my journey of research on this topic!

 

You can try emailing MiroDoll They also respond to messages via Facebook messenger.

 

Wow, never knew you could mix epoxy and polymer. Thanks a lot for sharing!

 

The reason there is usually a minimum number to a batch is that the single largest cost in materials is the silicone for the molds. A set of molds can make a number of dolls, so using it just once is not very economical. Making just one doll and then destroying the mold would make that a very expensive doll.
Add to that it takes time to make a doll. An experienced sculptor and doll artist will work faster, of course, but it is very rare to see a beginner make something ready for casting in less than a year. Especially if you just work on your own free time.
If you factor in the time you’ve spent and try to put a monetary value on that as well you will see that making a doll is expensive in deed.

Most first time projects never get to casting, though, as there are a LOT of things to learn and just finding your preferred size and materials can take a few trials. Most of the time the first couple of projects will be riddles with false starts, parts that can’t be easily cast, materials turning out to not be what you wanted and failed deadlines.

Luckily, you don’t have to pay for your own time, so if you have time to spend, I’d say go for it anyway!
Just make sure to set yourself up for success. Go in with a plan, test out your materials before you commit and be ready to adjust and take things as they come. Setting up an approximate time frame is not a bad idea, it will teach you a lot about managing your projects and can help you stay motivated, just be aware that every single step of the way is likely going to take a lot longer than you think.
Seeing a doll cast is amazing, but there is a long road before it will ever get to that. Don’t forget to enjoy the journey.

 

@Lillith you have told this so nice and true. The main thing what I have learned in this project of mine is to enjoy journey
@Kaygabrielart I understand you, you must knowe your way and chances on begining. I considere now my polymer and airdry clay dolls finished and when I make mine masterpeace I think I will have enough expirience to start jurney in casting. When you start to make your doll time will pass and maby there will be new deals and chances.

 

Ugh... Working on my new 1/4 scale doll has made me realise how bad certain parts of my 1/3 sculpts are. I wanted to get Ramiro ready for casting but looking at him now, his eyes need more work. They don’t look like proper eyes, with shape and folds. I’ve been sculpting various heads since I started this whole bjd idea (march 2017) and every time I work on a new head, the older ones look worse!

 

It shows you're improving fast! It may look like you're just wasting materials, but these previous heads are very important steps on your learning journey.

 

Heya! I don't really have the time to scroll through every page in this thread but I have a question.
I want to start sculpting my own BJD and I already have my blueprints made; is there a way to make an easily removable yet still smooth-surfaced armature? What materials would I need for that? I don't want to use foil because it's a pain IMO. I was thinking I could just make the pieces and then drill holes through them, but it would be easier to sculpt on top of something, I think.