Atelier Garçonne

Oh, hello, you.

I finished Hime up today, for no particular reason. I have been stuck in the late project doldrums, the one where I convince myself that I hate what I've done and have wasted all my time and effort.

But gosh, he's so pretty! He is finished! I am so happy to have him back!

Completely normal things are occuring in the bathroom doll drying room.

The short version of the long story is that I just do not have a spectacular grasp of anatomy, either 2D or 3D, and I tend to be a little lazy in my thinking, so I frequently end up getting to the test stringing phase of a doll before I realize that I've stuck the hips on the front of the doll. Again.

Alas, the almighty automod has decided that the image of his left leg, showing not a twinkle of his wee clay willy but rather illustrative of the original forward positioning of the joint, is far too lewd and obscene for viewing. But perhaps you can imagine it a bit from the illustrated right leg.

Technically speaking, with the old hip sockets, Shime was able to stand. However, it was a rather precarious procedure involving a lot of hoping that the Apprentice wasn't going to start in on kitten parkour. With the new hip socket placement, Shime is much more stable when standing.

I made the executive decision that I am ninety-eight per cent happy with the sculpting I have done for Shime, and proceeded to drill the stringing channels on his joints. It was a surprisingly painful endeavor, as I do not have a proper manual drill but rather use just a plain drill bit, and I lost a fight with a dryer vent this weekend. Yet I persevered!

(Stolen from Noah's BJD tutorial)

My terrible attempts at translations said things like it "protects" the joint. Which... I suppose! I don't string my clay dolls that tightly, and I've never noticed any stringing related wear on 13 year old Shimeji. Just sort of shrugged and forgot about it.

I've been doing some research on jointing, as you do. I was thinking about the elastic, which I've always largely ignored. When you stretch the elastic, you're storing energy in it, but the elastic doesn't want to exist in a high energy/high tension state, it wants to be in the lowest energy state it can be in. (No, I'm not explaining it properly. I'm a doctor dollmaker, not a physicist.) Basically, the elastic wants to rest in the shortest length possible.

The shortest length seems like it should be when a limb is posed straight, but it may actually be when the limb is bent--hence, the existence of 'kicky legs' and 'Hound arms.'

But if you could make the length of the elastic uniform in all positions, you would end up with a joint that is able to hold in all positions without any snapping or buckling.

And you can do that by introducing a "guide" in the joint, which keeps the elastic nearer to same length throughout the range of the joint.

I was speaking with another doll collector the other day and they mentioned that they didn't like visible joints on dolls. All I could think was skill issue how much I enjoy the joints on dolls! Especially these days, there's been such a proliferation of style and engineering; I enjoy when a company has an interesting 'house' style of joints. And so...

I started giving Shimeji a bit of a makeover. (Left: previous update; right: doll's left limbs with modified joints)

Of course I did, since I was considering Shimeji's makeover to be the 'quick and easy' one (head, hands, feet versus whole new body). What's the fun of making things easy on myself? It's a fitting look, actually, because the one instance I can think of Shimeji being depicted with joints in the manga, he has this sort of old school aesthetic.

I haven't strung him up with this new style yet, so I'm curious to see if he'll be as unstable as I imagine. I'm sure it won't be anything that a proper sueding and wiring can't fix.

I am refining Shime's joints, which involves many tedious, tiny adjustments that need to be fully dry. And, alas, the weather has warmed up so I can no longer put parts next to the heating vent to dry. (Past experiments with using a toaster oven have been less than stellar, producing a fragile, dry "skin" over the still wet parts.)

I began working on Shimeji's hands, which are fiddly work regardless of the weather. They're also one of my least favorite things to work on so I am prone to procrastinating them.

And procrastinate I did!

Well...

I was slightly distracted.

But I have managed to eke out some dollmaking progress in the midst of kitten-induced chaos:

I've spent quite a bit of time on Shime's new body; I also altered the existing feet. Shimeji's new head is finished, pending some fine finishing and the eyewells. I've been procrastinating working on his hands and feet as they are my least favorite things to sculpt.

And I haven't made any great strides on Mithrun's body, but I can't wait to finish him:

Henceforth, I will only be creating my conpletely wholesome mixed media owl sculptures. 😔

(Incidentally, it's turned out to be a wonderful week for sculpting! The weather is single digits, so the heat is running quite often, and doll parts dry so quickly when you pop them in front of a heating vent.)

Shimeji's new head is coming along. I think I'll tackle his ears tonight. Ears are one of those weird features which are a right pain to sculpt but it's so satisfying when you get them right, so wish me luck.