Aesthetics Vax'ildan Vessar, Champion of the Ravenqueen

From a practise head to a full character doll....


There is this little D&D show on the internet called Critical Role, with which I'm obsessed with for years. There are a lot of awesome characters but one that stuck with me and touched me the most: Vax'ildan. He's a sassy sad boi, a bad ass, a poet, an halfelf rogue.
I always wondered why no one ever did a BJD of one of the characters and in my mind I planned to do Vax (and his twin sister Vex) someday in the future.
Well the future is now!

The wonderful IzabethS gifted me a practise head (Df-A Susu) when I bought some MSD shoes from her. It was supposed to stay a practise head but then I thought... well I wanna sculpt something, lets give that boy some elf ears. (Because all my dolls must have those) and I made his eyes a bit bigger and more
symmetrical. And then I thought... he's really pretty for a 25$ practise head...I could make Vax with that one.

So I made lose plan what has to be done and I'm going to document everything here.

The Plan:
There is A LOT of official art and fanart of this character. thousands of pictures and concepts and texts I can dig into.
The one I'm going for with his outfit is this one:

This is by the wonderfully talented Ornerine ( https://twitter.com/ornerine )
It works the best for me, because I can really see the different layers of his outfit. It wont be a 100% replica but I'll try to keep true to that concept of hers.

I will try to do almost everything myself. So face up, wig, mods, blushing, tattoos and scaring, sewing, leatherwork.
The only thing I'm planning on buying are the eyes and some basic shoes to work on.

To-Do:

• find a body DONE
• mod some elf ears DONE
• colormatching the epoxy ears
• find eyes (hazle brow with small iris)
• do the face up
• decide on what hair to use for the wig
• get the hair
• make the wig
• tattoo the body
• add scarring to the body
• blush the body
• get all the sewing/leatherworking materials together
• start sewing

I'll probably go into detail about the different steps further down the line. But thats the plan for now.

I hope anyone is interested in this project and perhaps I can find some Critters here too!


Frey
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Update List:
Update 1 ~ new body and painting ears

 

So first thing I did were the elf ears last weekend alread. progress photos of that are down there.
But I also found a body pretty fast on facebook.
It's a second hand Resinsoul Yi body. Not perfect but it will do until I'm able to order a DF-A body.
The RS body is Tan, while the head is normal yellow... so there will be a bit of a challenge. But Vax will be clothed all the time anyways so I don't mind it at the moment. and with the faceup, he'll be a bit darker anyways.
But now... the ears!

First I sculpted the ears with white Milliput. It wasn't my first rodeo so I already had a pretty good idea on how to do it a bit cleaner this time.


Still looks like a mess... so after a day of drying I sanded both ears into shape. Made them thinner and more elegant looking and tried to minimize the milliput residue on the resin.



In the end I wanted to try something new, something I've never done before and so I got a 30 year old mini drill out, my mom used back in the 90s to pierce fake fingernails, and gave this boy some piercings.



Now I have to wait for the body. The seller is cleaning, sueding and restringing it for me. So it will be shipped on monday

 

Lomi's playground just today uploaded a video where she sculpts elf ears in realtime. It's the same way I do it. Check it out if you want.

@JL_The_Lion
Thank youuu

@Jareth
Piercings are so stressful to make. I'm glad it turned out well

@animemom
Thank you! And yes the dream would be to have all of Vox Machina as dolls at one point. So Keyleth is on the list for sure. It has to be so much fun making her leave cape in doll size.
But after the Twins I think I'd go with percy first. He has such an interesting design with that steampunk-y aristocratic vibe

@Ferret-hime
Thank you! I can't wait either. I still have no real plan on how to turn that miss matching hybrid into him tbh And I never did Leather work before so making the armor will be a journey for sure

@SinsoftheSerpent
I only have OCs and I love the freedom of just doing with them what I want. But getting handed all the design choices and just following the plan is a nice change

 

First Update!

So this week a lot has happened. I initially didn't really work on him. I was busy stalking the DHL tracking because his body was shipped.

The evening 10 days ago when I decided I like this boy with his ears and the project formed in my mind I was just for fun perusing a german BJD facebook group and someone was selling a Resinsoul Yi body in tan. Not really a match because the head is a DF-A normal yellow skin and the neck of the body is way to thick. But because I don't care to try new stuff, I thought I could just sand it down and am able to finally blush the head heavily, without the body looking to pale in comparison.
So I jumped on the chance and bought it. And a couple of days later (this monday) it arrived!

Some Impressions...


I have to say... I only own MSD girls. So this is my first big doll and it was... an experience handling those big, heavy body parts . He came unstrung but cleaned, sueded and with new elastics. I probably don't have to tell anyone of you, but damn stringing a 70cm doll is a full workout.
The tension is a little off still (or its just me not being used to handle big bois like that) but I'll leave him like that for now.

of course the resin color doesn't match but it has the same tone so it should be easy to match head and body.
btw I'm so in love with the Resinsoul hands and feet, they are so delicate and detailed. And for that price!

Bonus footage of him sitting naked and awkwardly shy next to my girls, after I sanded his neck to fit the head properly:


Next on the agenda was finally color matching the epoxy ears

It didn't have to be spot on but I tried to match it as well as possible. I mixed these colors together and tried different variations. (I also paint miniatures for Warhammer and D&D so I have an abundance of those acrylics to choose from)



After finding the right color I mixed it with water to get more of a wash and apply thin layers and build the color slowly (mostly to avoid visible brushstrokes)
And here is what came out of that today. I think it doesn't look too shabby:



So whats next, Frey?
I'm glad you're asking! Next I will be taking a lot of measurements of the body and start with the first layer of clothing (or at least get the patterns done. Because I just can't stand having naked dolls sitting around here!

Oh and the faceup! But first I'll have to practise my eyebrow game on his head cap.

Until next time!

 

Yeah he also has a faceup and had a body for some time. Now hes floating again because +70cm boys are too big for me.

But thanks