#elsewherecafe

Mx. Fumetto is an objecthead OC of mine who runs a little café in a pocket dimension. They're mute, but "talk" through their speech bubble. 

So for this doll, I had wanted to nab a doll or figure with an appropriate outfit. Because really I knew the outfit was going to be the most fiddly thing. And finding a detailed, not-specifically-gendered outfit in the style I imagine for Mx. Fumetto was very difficult! 

Lucky me when I stumbled across a gently damaged J-Doll Friedrichstrasse for a song, then. Admittedly the outfit was a tad too feminine, but since I had to add gloves and replace the broken shoes anyway, she became the base doll. 

The shoes ended up being fiddly, but easy. I sometimes buy doll lots and these damn Anna (Frozen) boots show up everywhere. So I carved & sanded off the motifs and extra line of buttons, carved some leather seam lines, and painted them with a higher gloss. I can't really recommend this solution; the shapes of the motifs are still somewhat visible. But it worked well enough for my purposes! 

For the undershirt and gloves, I had some very thin gauzey crinkled hatch patterned light fabric. Good thing, too, because the outfit from Friedrichstrasse has basically no clearance, and pulling at it too hard splits and frays the fabric at the seams! 

The J-Dolls have the Type 3 Pullip body, which I hadn't had a chance to see in person before. It's not my favorite, for a variety of reasons even aside from the typical lack of body color options. For one, while it's very posable (++!) it's mechanically jointed, and in such a loose way that cannot possibly support itself nor the normally-giant Pullip heads (-). This is only made worse by the J-Doll stand being the worst stand I own. It's beautiful in theory, but it's telescoping, and it just doesn't stay the fuck up! (--!) Also, it was an incredibly lightweight stand. I had to add quite a bit of weight to the bottom to keep it from tipping over (-). And finally, I just generally find the Pullip body proportions boringly awful (--!). It works for the Pullip dolls, but it's just not my speed, you know? Thankfully, this outfit hides most of what I dislike about the sculpt. 

But one other thing about this body is that the hands come out surprisingly easy. Collector's doll only-- a kid would lose those hands within five minutes! (If the original pricepoint of 10,500 ¥ didn't already tell you that, I guess.) So instead of trying to make gloves to fit the hands, I just replaced the hands entirely-- forming a wire base that I hand-sewed the gloves onto. This makes the hands entirely posable, so long as the wire holds! 

And finally, the head! I had a little promotional white-board-magnet that I ended up cutting out for the front and back mirrored faces. Between them is chipboard, with a special cutout to accommodate the Pullip body head peg. Then, wrapped around the edges is the black EVA foam, just a little bit wider than the rest of the whole construction, in order to provide that black border no matter the angle. And then I bought some very-fine-line dry erase markers to doodle text with. Admittedly the head is a little loose, but it definitely works well enough for picture posing.

That's about it for details! As a special treat for clicking through, have these empty-text poses for placing your own text on Mx. Fumetto. Would appreciate a link back here if you use them. And as always, any questions or comments are much appreciated!