Triathlon Progress Journals

Codename: M.V.'sdisciple

I had 2 snags today : 1. not enough hair for the wig! But instead of a 2 hours round trip by bus and metro to get the same hair, I found a store just 1 1/2 hour away, with the same hair at the same price! That store has all kind of textures and colours in hair, I'll go back for sure!!!
2nd snag: while cutting the wig, I accidentally made a small nick in the doppel's arm!!!! So I repaired it, it looks like a little scar now...

And then I thought I had enough fabric to make a pair of leg warmers for my doppel, but no, I was mistaken! No sweat: my doll will wear only one, and her doppel the other!
It's 23:30, I just finished, and I'm totally jubilant!!!! (My doppel's legs are a bit too thin, her neck is not long enough, but still, it has a strange beauty!) I'm not ashamed of it at all!!!!!!
Tomorrow: final pictures!

Total number of hours to make the doppel: 25 1/2.

 

Codename: Sparrow

Because of how bad the DAS clay smells I worked with it outside. After about 4 hours I discovered that it was more than the smell making me sick. When the clay dries on my hands it turns to powder which I was getting in my eyes and my nose and was making my skin red! I was forced to stop. Here is a picture of how far I got:



It is now the day of the deadline so I will have to work with what I've got. The really hard part is capturing with my camera my feelings in such a way that thew viewer will understand them too. I am not good at it. =s

This has been a very interesting...smelly...experience. I've never had a reaction to art materials before aside from oil paints - which also make me sick. So I come away from this with a new understanding: I am not compatible with DAS clay.

Hope you at least enjoyed reading about the process anyway!

 

Codename: Bonnie & Clyde

I've just submitted my entry. YAY!!!

I've done it. I really completed my "Creation of Demon". LOL



My poor demonic Adam is still somehow rough and all, but he's there. Oh, and did I mention that creating the backdrop was a mess this time? As I didn't have anything light blue, I tried to dye a piece of cloth light blue. With a brush. If you look close enough you'll notice how uneven the color became. Also my cunning plan to make the wrinkles in the cloth look like the cracks in the painting didn't really work out. Oh well, anyway. I'm done

 

Codename: Bandersnatch

Twelve hours left as of the time I began this post. I've spent the past 10 trying to make boots and working on a head for my guy. The boots are cut out, but need sewing. They're untested, unproven. I have no idea if they'll work. I'm insane. I believe I have mentioned this before.

Head number one is creepy, small, and creepy. I managed to scratch the back of Zornon's real head in the process of getting this one made.

I started with the masking tape pattern process.




It looked good in theory. Piecing it together was hell and then it looked like this.

Gahh!

The size seemed okay, until I got it on the plump plushy body.


And then it just got creepy. Zornon must be contemplating how his head became a raisin.


I think this is how the teddy bear joint works? I sewed head number two to the fabric disk, but it flopped around and looked terrible. So I stitched the head directly onto the neck as well.


Head number two uses an extreme amount of artistic license. It is just about ready to go on, except that I just noticed as I was posting that I embroidered his face on the wrong side. Zornon is a creepy, but cuddly alien. I wanted his doppelganger to show that. Mix 1 part Dollshe with 1 part ET and we get the head that he has now. It is better. And cuter.

Remember how I mentioned boots? I only burnt myself a couple of times getting them put together.




Real working boots. And thank goodness they fit!


All that is left now is to take photos and submit them! I'm so tired, and in so much pain. I just wanna crawl under a rock for a week or two.

 

Codename: Sparrow

I've just made my submission but I had taken many pictures and I wish I could have used them all!







I especially like that last one and am wondering if I shouldn't have used it. Oh well, the point of decision has passed. Now is the time to be amazed by what everyone else created!

 

Codename: BlueCat

Done! whew! I can't believe how much I got done this week.
I can't remember my last entry =( but I made Kuro's outfit and jewelry in like a day and a night. She shows some Saiyuki influence because my doll universe is modeled kinda-sideways on that series (long story): her earrings are based on Kougaiji's and her weapon is a yueyachan like Gojyo's (no, it's not a shakujou; a shakujou is the staff with rings that a monk carries).

I made the blades by hand in epoxy putty, sanded and painted them and wrapped them in leather and yarn.


I can't get over how cool I think she looks. She's come a long way from that teddy bear pattern!


Taking the final pic was the hardest part of this whole battle, because I really wasn't sure how Koi felt about this alter-ego of hers: was she afraid of it, proud of it, love or hate it, did she think of it as a sister or a demon? but I kept posing them together (I took like 180 pix) and gradually I saw it: Kuro is her strength, an awesome monster protector, the true guardian of the forest.
Then I got my pic. =)=)

--I'm so sorry this is over. Not only have i truly stretched and pushed myself and learned a lot, but it's the first time since I've joined DoA that I've felt like one of the gang, y'know, like it was really OK for me to play in the same sandbox with everyone. Doll people are a shy lot, and meetups...well. But there's been such camaraderie and friendly encouragement in the triathlon thread that I've looked forward to reading it every day. I'm gonna miss it.

ANYway, thanks to armeleia and the mods and everyone who's made this set of challenges such huge fun. Good luck everyone!
*sigh* back to real life now =(

 

Codename: Bandersnatch

Just submitted my entry. With five minutes to spare. PHEW! Talk about being down to the wire!

Today was tough. I wasn't feeling good after my working through the night past dawn, so I slept until after five.

Today I went to the park near the river. It was bright direct sunlight (yuck) and super windy (double yuck). My background wasn't ironed and looked terrible, it also served as an efficient sail. My PVC frame for holding the dolls kept trying to blow away, or blow over. The background did blow over a few times. I got some okay shots, I guess. I'm still trying to figure this suspended doll thing out.

When I got home I realized I didn't have enough photos to fill the requirements, and I didn't like my comparison shot. So I set up my now dirty fabric over the couch and snapped away.

Photobucket, thank you for having easy to use editing software! In the last moments before the form closed, I was able to finish a collage of my favorite details and get the form submitted. PHEW!

I'm so glad this is done! I'm really proud of my work, but I'm also really happy it is over. I was getting fairly desperate, burnt out, and a sense of dread was coming over me. Now that things are submitted, I'm feeling more positive and optimistic. Woohoooo!!!

GOOD LUCK EVERYBODY!!!

 

Codename: j3lly

To those reading this last entry, it will be my last and final entry. I will have died by the time you read this so there will not be another one....

KIDDDINGGGG!!! So although I technically dropped out by saying I was out a day or two ago, someone's sweet message on the forums brought me back in. I really was just too stressed with trying to get it perfect and knew I"d just drive myself crazy in the short amount of time I had left. To add on top of that, there is a convention this weekend as well.

I managed to cobble together (with bits of what I already had done) a little doppelganger. I would call him the neglected doppelganger, only loved by the one in whose image he is made in.

Basically if I was going to complete him, I would've used a similar structure for the underlying parts and then carefully coated it in more pipe cleaners. Then I could call him a true pipe cleaner sculpture. In this case though...you get a little heart, some intestinal squiggles, some muscle and rough ears. I think he still looks really cute and could speak wonders but I know I"m already out for the voting portion. I only got a few other votes in the second challenge so I think I may be just failing at being creative xD.

Had a lot of fun though and glad I joined for this . I will HAVE to join again next year though. Seriously, I have like 5 packs of pipe cleaners that I don't know what to do with -_-;.

Here's a few pics of my little pipe cleaner made doppel!

 

Codename: Mashaka

I cut out the pieces a couple days before the deadline, but due to all the paperwork of a coming new job (Hooray!), I didn't get a chance to actually do any sewing. I made the actual doll itself in a single day, but it was a single day about 8 hours long... You know, the day we were supposed to submit it! I can sew pretty fast, but stuffing it took forever! I have never sewed a doll quite so large before, and while I estimated the size of fiberfill bag properly, I simply didn't correctly envision how long it would take to pack all that stuff inside little cloth bags. Argh. On the plus side, though, this is the first time I have made a doll large enough to use individually articulated fingers. To turn them right side out, I coated the seams in fray-stop, inserted a drinking straw that I slit along one side (so I could curl it up smaller), and then placed a bodkin with a round tip on the other side of the material ("inside" the tip of the straw), and then pulled the whole thing right side out. To make the fingers bendy, I braided floral wire, and I wrapped it in fiberfill; it looked like strange, skinny cotton candy! Then I tucked one into each finger and tied them together at the base with wire, and then stuffed the rest of the arm around the wire bundle. It was rather time-consuming, and I have many little wire punctures, but the fingers can do all sorts of wonderful poses (including some that human fingers wouldn't dream of attempting!) and can hold things quite securely.

I decided on the button eyes mostly because it looked creepy, and it's something that we recognize as "doll-like," yet it's not something that we pair with hyper-realistic dolls like BJDs. The idea for the photo shoot was actually something I was dreaming (I know, right? Work on these things long enough, and you start dreaming in doll patterns...), although I originally intended to shoot outside. That became impractical for two reasons: first, my light was fading fast, and I was more interested in making sure my doppelganger looked nice and was assembled well; and second, I live in Texas and none of my grass is alive, and I didn't like the idea of getting the cloth doll covered in dirt! So I went with indoor. I have an old doll bench that my daddy made for me when I was little, so I covered it in black fabric (I didn't think the little pink hearts on it would be appropriate) and used my mom's bamboo screen as a backdrop (because bamboo comes in all sizes, so it didn't look particularly out of scale).

They're currently still set up in my living room, 'cause I like them. My dad thought it looked amazing (we both like sci-fi and weird concepts); my mom agreed that my artwork was good, but thought the whole scene was absolutely disturbing and wrong! I suppose that means that it works, though, yes? I debated back and forth making an outfit for my doppelganger, because it seemed so many people were, but I decided to stick with my original concept. I liked it better, and it more completely embodies the idea I was going for: something similar but incomplete, searching for a way to make itself whole.

So happy to be finished. I actually cleaned up the sewing room completely when I was done, so I actually feel finished. I also was able to experiment with Photobucket's editing tools a little more this time, and managed to create a "details" collage, which made me happy. I didn't manage to do that for my previous entries. I even submitted a whole 42 minutes before the deadline! Yay! Overall, this was a lot of work and planning, and the whole Triathlon even more so. I am very pleased to have made it through the whole thing, though, and even learned some new skills along the way. Now, on to the banner!

 

Codename: Haradan

Oh man...

I just realized that in my excitement I forgot to list one of the materials (black and white ink jet printer) I used in my entry form.

I sheepishly e-mailed Armeleia the Mod about it, but I'm worried that I may be disqualified because of my error.

I sure hope not!

 

( I'm really giggling here that I'm one of three people who used teddy bear locking joints for the first time in this project and not one of us got instructions along with them. I think we all guessed right though!

So much unbelievable detail work, wow! talk about blood, sweat, and tears...)