Kathisofy's Doll Spot

me: 4000 things to do

anyways, I know how to export UV maps directly from blender, so I'll be doing that myself for future projects as so:

I have had. an awful ear infection. all week. I havent been able to do much and ive been in pain like the whole time.

but of course at times like this what do? draw ponies. because ponies cut through the pain.

More designs for this project! Working on and talking about some non-pony MLP related characters, such as donkeys, zebras, and also... bushwoolies! If you didn't know, bushwoolies are fluffy guys from g1 of MLP. Some design concepts I had for them included an owl-like face and striped wings to mimic the striped arms, and more pawlike feet like the furbobs.

I have had. an awful ear infection. all week. I havent been able to do much and ive been in pain like the whole time.

but of course at times like this what do? draw ponies. because ponies cut through the pain.

Meet the 'classic' blank pony - a 90's nostlgia blank canvas waiting to be customised! With articulated neck, pre-punched mane and tail hole and printed eye details she's perfect for customising with endless possibilities!

me: 4000 things to do

Pausing here for the night to contemplate the yarn mane. Adam likes it but my first instinct is that it's too much. Too bright a color or too much volume or both?

But since it's on there, I tried this brightly colored outfit from a thrifted Barbie on her too. So cute 😭

If I leave it overnight it'll probably grow on me; just because it wasn't what I vaguely had in mind doesn't mean it's not cute!

ok this is terrible but I'm still happy that I tried, today

I've been avoiding posting WIPs for the new videos but this one is a little different! I took my fantasia centaurette and I am adding ball joints.

The actual video this is for is going to be a completely new sculpt but... I won't be releasing that one publicly (for reasons that will be explained!); I wanted to have something to add for ko-fi members for that day that is related. So the "bonus" model will be this edit of the centaurette model!

I think I'm gonna add elbow/knee type joints to this as well.

I have improved my speed at making joints for these a bit. you need to have some flexibility in how to add these.

The Xray mode helps me with seeing the joints and making adjustments, although its best for joints that *mostly* move front and back

Front legs have "knees" (I think this is actually the wrist of the horse, but whatever) to prevent the leg from going forward, and also a "elbow" on the back of the arms so it can only really go forward, although its pretty subdued. This will have a limited range of movement anyways since its just a single joint bjd.

Also, I made the face on this jointed version more refined.

trace photos of character from available and cleanest angles. attempt to get a 90 degree*, front and back, side profile and straight on of the face. save additional reference photos such as bottom of body, back, and various extra angles without tracing which may help reference later on.

*more on angles later, but trying to get a 90 degree from each side is the most realistic and practical option if you dont actually have the character you're copying

2. block out the body and head

and by block i mean, yeah, its made out of elaborate rectangles

4 aha, you thought I would hand sculpt those? no. no. I used the curve tool to add these swirls. And yes i exactly traced them over the drawings to match the original as best as possible. The end of the curve tool is flat by default so I added a few spheres to make the ends nice and round. (there is absolutely a way to make the ends of curves rounded but I did not feel like looking it up or messing with the settings)

this wasn't mirrored to the other side- I traced both sides of the body and the front from photos and sculpted the swirls for each side. I couldn't get a single photo of the swirls at the butt area so I just winged it.

6 I am struggling to not make Cha Cha look angry.

I feel like the eyes are basically traced off the original and yet she looks so much grumpier. maybe it just needs to be smoothed out?

I added a little definition to the area around the eyes and I do think it looks a little better. The more definition I add in this stage the better, because I prefer this to sculpting. However, if you're more adept at sculpting you would probably not make this as detailed.

7 Here she is after smoothing everything out in sculpt after remeshing, in both Eevee (left) and Cycles (middle/right). still trying to figure out how best to render things. For some reason her nose ended up lighter in cycles but i cant be bothered to fix that rn

On the previous step I made the elements of her face + ears mirrored but once I start sculpting I'm not using the mirror tool. In fact nothing ends up mirrored, even the back right foot is slightly shifted in position.

this is probably not even the final version, I think i might redo the smooth/sculpt part and fiddle with the underlying shapes (basically go back a step)

Cha Cha's face. is one of the most difficult things to sculpt. It is extremely difficult to understand the shape of the underlying sculpt because there aren't any photos of her with the eye paint removed. There are so few of her out there I don't think anyone would willingly remove the paint to make a custom or anything unless it was in truly awful condition, and I dont think that has ever happened.

I have saved dozens of references from a number of different sites- these pics here are from etsy, the above was from the wiki. Her eyes are different from every single other pony and pony and friends- they're so bulging, so round, the eyelashes are longer. It's wild.

I can only see all the things that are wrong with it.

It's basically impossible to get something like this 100% perfect unless you have like, a set of turnaround photos all from the same angle that you can match up to the camera. You can basically overlap references with the camera view but you will never know the exact angle so if you make edits from multiple angles like this you'll inevitably not match each angle and then have to go back and adjust the angles and then you're fiddling with it infinitely. That's why I usually go for the "trace 4 angles and make the rest up as you go along" method.