I was working working on these since the 5th and needed to finish them by Chrstmas. And I DID IT! So, woo! I literally finished them on Christmas day, then found some random clothes and wrapped them up. That was difficult. And as you can see, the first one isn't really dressed in very nice pants. But I was lucky I found those. The two are original characters of my brothers, Crash and Luke. The images leading up to these in this post: http://www.bjd-artists.com/showthread.php?6160-Two-new-dolls! View attachment 584 View attachment 585 View attachment 586 The only issue is they're really bad at standing. If anyone has suggestions on how to fix that, I would love to hear it. I would also love suggestions for making a balanced doll in the future. Standing has been a big issue for me.
Oh wow, they look fabulous! You did such a great job! They have such expressive faces, and I love the sculpted hair. As far as standing goes... make sure all your joints are lined up vertically. That is, if you draw a line vertically down through the doll as seen from the side, the line should go through the center of most if not all of the major joints (especially shoulder, hip, knee, and ankle). Locks can also help too, as can really tight-fitting joints, and sueding.
The best advice I've been given for improving how my dolls pose is "if the pieces can stand stably while unstrung, they'll stand stably when strung as well". Which basically means that when you're sculpting, you should try to get the feet+calf+thigh pieces to balance stably, and adjust the sculpt if they can't. If you find it impossible to balance all three pieces together, working with just the calf and thigh will add a lot of stability, as well. And with smaller dolls, you can test more parts as well - I was actually able to get calf+thigh+lower body+upper body+head to all stand stably while sculpting my doll, which definitely helped with the overall stability of the sculpt! For finished sculpts, hot-glue suedeing is an absolute miracle worker and should take care of any problem other than super loose stringing.
Thank you! I'm glad you like them! I'll try to do a straight line and try balancing the parts next time I make a doll. I don't want to make any more failures. :P I did use some hot glue. It helped a little, but then I also was trying to do it really quick. So maybe if I hadn't been so quick it would have gone better. Thank you both for the advice. It will most likely be very helpful.
