66cm+ Dolls Trying to make the head I want

I've gotten into 3D sculpting and printing and somehow my distaste for using epoxy and doing mods led to "yeah, just sculpt a whole head, I guess?" Zbrush has the symmetry button. lol

I had considered buying some heads for what I wanted but after mulling over it for some weeks and looking at the heads again nothing really hit me as the One. And I guess since I am thinking about sculpting heads and props for my comic to assist with consistency and difficult angles, I'm doing the work anyway, might as well try to turn it into a doll head.

The character




The sculpt so far. Still needs so many tweaks...

 

Happier with the face this morning. Still need to fix up like the forehead/brow, ears, and aahhhh the back of the head....

 

@Samsally Thank you!




Ears are one of my sculpting enemies. They are so complicated and unsexy but if you mess them up it makes the head look stupid.

 

Did a little test print in between printing my ginormous horse head.

The paint kind of ate the tearducts.

test by Kaxen6, on Flickr

Need to tweak some of the... angle of the slopes? around his mouth and chin but overall pretty happy with it and maybe soften his under eyelid line a little and lower his top eyelid a little.

Then I need to figure out how to cut the headcap and hollow it nicely and a full size print. I bought some flesh tone resin to print with (clear resin works best for prints that are just hollowed with drainage holes) and I will see how well that matches to the resin of the dolls I have right now. It'll be extra easy if it just happens to match an existing company, but I think I will need to tweak it, but I got white resin and alcohol inks to try to make a good recipe.

 

Learned how to do booleans to hollow the head with eye wells. Made the eyelids too thin. But he has working eye holes so progress I guess. And maybe shrink the ears a little.

Also messed up using millimeters and the head is too small.

headprint by Kaxen6, on Flickr

And if it helps anyone else working on 3D printing dolls, this is some resin comparisons of Elegoo Water Washable Flesh color straight out of the bottle.

It looks closer to Akagidoll and LLT in photo than it does in-person. And it has a slightly waxy/transluscent tone to it. Going to try mixing in a little bit of white into it for the next print.

elegooresinmatch by Kaxen6, on Flickr

 

Now printed closer to the correct size.

3D printed BJD by Kaxen6, on Flickr

I think I need to size down the head overall a bit because his face is bigger than all my realistic dolls right now, but I need to make the neckhole bigger to compensate and fit the LLT body.

I added white to this print but it's only a smidge lighter. I think I need to try a 50/50 blend. This one is like 25/75 white to flesh tone.

Need to make the holes for the magnets a little deeper

3D printed BJD by Kaxen6, on Flickr

His eyes right now are a terrible in-between size where neither 12mm or 14mm fits right >_<

3D printed BJD by Kaxen6, on Flickr

3D printed BJD by Kaxen6, on Flickr

3D printed BJD by Kaxen6, on Flickr

 

Thank you! @Lillith

New print. The face is the right size for taking 12mm eyes.

20210409_143555 by Kaxen6, on Flickr 20210409_143604 by Kaxen6, on Flickr 20210409_143612 by Kaxen6, on Flickr

Added a little too much white to color match LLT. His face is a smidge bigger than my LLT doll but in the ball park I guess. The slightly waxy aspect of the printer resin might make it always look a little off. Though I wonder how it looks compared to French/honey/transluscent resin, but I don't have any to compare.

20210409_143724 by Kaxen6, on Flickr

Needs some further tweaks to the neck hole to fit the LLT body better. LLT Neil has such a deep neck hole.

hybrid by Kaxen6, on Flickr

I have so many heads now lol I'm not sure what I am doing with all my Lejeune's,

20210409_143538 by Kaxen6, on Flickr

 

He is now color-matched close enough and fits the LLT body.

20210410_170106 by Kaxen6, on Flickr

The head cap warped a little bit during printing because I didn't choose the optimal angle because I was impatient.

20210410_173218 by Kaxen6, on Flickr

20210411_134545 by Kaxen6, on Flickr

Going to face-up the head and play around with it and see how I feel about it as a finished product and see if there is anything I want to tweak after the new project hype wears off a little. I think I might want to tweak the back of the head a little bit but I'm not sure if it is a big enough deal once a wig is on. I will probably reprint the head again when I figure out how I want to go about casting him.

Overall I am kind of surprised how fast I got to something I like! Compared to my sewing journal it's absolute light speed lol

 

Gave him a face-up. His eyebrows are a smidge higher than I should have.

20210417_185937 by Kaxen6, on Flickr

So far I just want to make some tweaks to the back of his head and fix the magnet hole sizes because they don't match right now and buying two nonmatching magnets is madness. I think I might try tweaking his eyes just a teenie bit and then print out a copy to prep for casting.

I have decided I am definitely getting him cast because I found someone who isn't going to make me get 10-20 heads.

 

Thank you!

Napoleonic was the sort of vibe I am going for, been obsessed with the time period lately.

 

Made some small tweaks all over after sitting on it for a bit.

Printed this out twice because the first print is 3mm too small because I didn't account for the face having been edited a smidge wider. oTL Well, it only takes about 70ml of resin at least. Been using Siraya Tech Simple because color doesn't matter for a mold master I am already spraying with surfacer and is also a little cheaper per bottle. Simple is pretty consistently $30 per 1000ml bottle. Elegoo Water Washable resin seems to swerve up and down from $33 to $45 depending on Amazon's mood and the specific color.

There looks like a few layers of the print went a little thicker than they should have like the weird line around his cheeks, but not so poorly that reprinting is necessary.

Now for the tedious process of sanding and making sure he is perfect so he will be a good mold master. >_> how to get him quality without falling victim to too much perfectionism

20210517_155858 by Kaxen6, on Flickr

 

After getting hit by that "I am almost done but now I want to tweak everything" feeling, I tweaked him some more and printed him out more times.

8 Lejeunes... representing about half a bottle of resin altogether?


The 9th and Final Final Final Lejeune (that is his file name)
The Final Final Final Lejeune by Kaxen6, on Flickr

The head cap is going to need so much sanding because I did not print it at the optimal angle to the supports were straining really hard to hold on and warped the print. I wanted to avoid putting supports on the inside of the headcap like I did in the face-up test version because it's a harder angle to sand but now I got more sanding to do.

 

Hnnnghh.... I think I sanded a little too aggressively in my quest to polish him and some of his features are a little janky.

20210524_153708 by Kaxen6, on Flickr

But the headcap is done so I can let that alone.

20210524_153717 by Kaxen6, on Flickr

I did learn that it was foolish to daub on filler too recklessly because for some reason Mr Surfacer is way harder in paint jar format than spray format so the dang stuff wasn't sanding away at the same rate.

I think I will print another head and sand it with a lighter grit. Want to tweak the neck hole a smidge.

 

He is a stylized version of Louis-Francois Lejeune, the battle painter and aide-de-camp to Berthier. One time Napoleon got mad at him because he drew a stupid drawing about looting instead of telling people to not loot a church.




x_x I want to get him cast, but I have been just like.... sanding.... sanding... sanding....

Resin prints are already quite smooth, but for casting, it's like.... I want it to be peerrrffeeecccttttttttt

And I had to reprint him another time because water-washable resin is more prone to warping and I saw Rugged Realism have problems with their masters warping, I was like.... better spend for the extra sturdy printing resin!!! (

20211107_172323 by Kaxen6, on Flickr