Zoid’s Desktop

The initial idea for the Bone Lord was for him to be a spooky almost grim reaper like character with long black hair and a basket of skulls and several skull masks

Then I tried a purple fluffy wig on him and that lead to him becoming a glam rocker

I’m not complaining lol, the creative process doesn’t always go as expected

One that isn’t though is this doll I am making inspired by a wig I got a while ago! Since the wig is half black/half pink I had planned on making the doll have the same split but reversed. I printed a test head in white and black (what I had on hand) and discovered two things.

1) I really like how the white and black look with this wig

2) the head is way too big

Now off to resize and try again!

He is a partially skeletal drider! Basically this idea started with the fact that I wanted to do a doll with an exposed skeleton and hidden elastic in the spine. Putting him together has been something else 😖

First I printed his bone bits, and then my beloved Elegoo Mars 3 broke (resin in the motor. Luckily it didn’t get anywhere else so it is an easy fix, but the replacement motor is taking a while to ship thanks to the Chinese new year. Lots of love to Elegoo support, that machine is seriously out of warranty and they still got me sorted within 24 hours on a weekend). Luckily Elegoo happened to be having a sale when I was looking for a solution, so I now have an Elegoo Saturn 4 ^_^ seriously looking forward to being able to have both machines working at once 🤩

Once I had the Saturn set up I redid the files I had set up for this guy. This lead to some sizing differences, but nothing too bad.

The worst is probably the connection point between the spine and the upper spider torso. There are some notches I made in the hip bone for the spine to slot into, but they don’t line up now. I have had a few scares where the upper torso has fallen apart because I haven’t waited the 48 hours the glue needs to dry. Once that happens it should be very secure since I am also backing it up with a good thick wire

Stringing was interesting

I think if I were to make him again I would 2/3 of the leg joints smaller. The biggest two leg joints are too big for the leg-to-body joints so I got some breakage when putting it together.

With the top and bottom of the spider bits fully assembled he is almost ready to be fully connected. He snaps together pretty securely, but I want to add a bit of extra support so I added a loop in the top and bottom that I plan on putting a bit of elastic too.

This ended up being a great idea. I was able to give extra support to the bone abdomen by tying it to the bottom loop, and I used the top loop to secure the head more gently and secure the spine wire!

Finally got some days that were nice enough to leave the windows open so I got caught up on doing some face ups! All of these dolls are ones I 3D printed. Most of their files are from Thingiverse.

The older woman is Baba Yaga and was modelled by 3DprinterArtDolls. I based her makeup a bit on the game Reka and love his she is looking. She is a bit on the small side for an msd so I am still looking for boots for her and if the ones I ordered don’t fit I may have to learn how to cobble.

The red dragon pirate lady is Ruby, and her body was also designed by 3DprinterArtDolls, though her head is a Polaris remix by Nagibator3D. I did use some of 3DprinterArtDolls ears for her as well. The pants I got for her don’t fit at all so she is rocking random shorts and an overskirt until I find/make something better. I ended up using glitter in all of her makeup to go with the glitter in the resin. It is definitely giving me drag queen vibes, but like, she is a pirate dragon. She can be a pirate drag(on) queen and it still works lol. May make her a treasure chest and pirate hat to really sell the pirate vibe, but my vision of “a dragon wearing their treasure” is working here.

The satyr (who is still a WIP) is male Ball Jointed Doll by ixodes, and they modelled the satyr parts too. One nice thing about printing my own dolls is I am a lot less nervous about doing things that can’t be undone, cause if I hate it I can just reprint the parts. With that in mind I actually painted ink onto he horns and legs cause I wanted them to really keep the color, even at the joints. I tried to make him pants the same way I made his wig out of brushed out yarn, and it was not working, so I have some fur coming that should be a close enough match to the wig and the leg paint that I should be able to make it work. Eventually he will also have a vest and scarf, I am aiming for Mr Tumnus vibes, but he is like a skinny 1/5th doll so sizing has been weird. I did order him a cute Blythe doll vest that I think should work, and I used a Ken-doll-esc censored lower body for him so if I end up needing to scrap the pants and just continue the painting up it won’t be the end of the world, but I really want him to have fuzzy pants.

I made this by stretching a nylon sock over her head, painting it with pva glue, trimming the sock to be a wig cap, making hair wefts by cutting satin ribbons to the rights size, sealing one end with a lighter, and unraveling them. Then I just had to glue them to the wig cap. I tried to make the back base of the wig with darker colors (dark blue and green) then gradually having the colors get lighter towards the front/top. I was trying to mimic the colors of the ocean. I like how the shiny satin looks appropriate for a water doll, not sure I would like it for a normal doll, but I could always try some of those “make a cheap wig less shiny” hacks on a future wig if I use this technique again. Not bad for my first non-fur wig!

This blog will consist of me saying things that are happening in my life right now, followed by a *translation* of how I am really feeling about them.

So, I'm graduating this weekend. No big.

*FINALLY! I have been in college for six years, SIX YEARS! I went to a pretty nifty community college for three years and got an associates degree, then transferred to a big college to finish out my Bachelors degree. I was supposed to graduate last year, but my councilor who I had been checking with every term to make sure I was on track apparently lied to me. I'm kinda making up for it now by having two graduation ceremonies. The one on Saturday was just a small department thing that some of my awesome friends went to, and Sunday is the BIG one. Now I am finally graduating with a double major and a minor and I will be FREEEEEEEEEEE!*

Oh, and a friend of mine has started doing drag. They are pretty good.

*Pretty good, PRETTY GOOD? How about beyond fabulous? Seriously, my friend Blomi Malone performed last night and she was fantastic. She is going to be the next Camp Queen of the world, just you wait!*

I might not be able to see her or my other friends in town that much any more. That is kinda sad. At least I will be doing something pretty cool.

*Part of me graduating means that I will be leaving the city I have been living in for three years. I am not sure I can truly convey how this makes me feel. This is a beautiful city with wonderful people, and especially over this last year I have made some fantastic friends. I really don't want to leave them, but it is necessary.

Ever since I was in high school I have said that I wanted to go to live at this place called Holden Village for a year after I graduated from college. It is a wonderful, magical place in the mountains of Washington that is very artsy and very... Good. I am not even sure how to describe it. I used to jokingly describe it as a Lutheran-Vegetarian-Hippie-Commune, but it was pointed out to me that phrasing it like that was making my dad worry I was joining a cult. Basically it is a village that used to be a mining town and is owned by the Lutheran Church (the nice Lutherans, they have been having gay pride parades and allowing gay pastors for years) and it has people who volunteer to work and live there. It seriously looks and feels like Hogsmeade. It also works as a resort, so the people who live there have the job of maintaining the village while entertaining the guests. They are also a place that shuns technology, and I have been offered a job as an IT Assistant there.

Apparently living in one of the hipster capitals of the world means that your life will become full of ironies.

It is a wonderful place, and once you have been there it feels like... home. I have been longing to go back ever since I left. I have a fantastic family and wonderful friends, but I will be the first to admit that I need to begin relying a bit less heavily on them and grow up a bit. What better way than to go on a great adventure?

I will be seriously pissed if they don't write to me though.

I also get to go to this Harry Potter convention at the end of the month. That should be ok.

BAH! OHMYGAWDLEAKYCONISALMOSTHEREICAN'TWAIT!!! Yeah, I am friggin stoked. The Harry Potter books and fandom have molded my life for the better, and I CANNOT WAIT! I've gotta get back to Hogwarts, I've gotta get back to schooooool. I've gotta get back to Hogwarts, where everything is magi-coooool.

Yeah, I am a bit of a nerd. How could you tell?

I think that Moffet may be making me jaded. Don't get me wrong, I like him as a show writer and I like what he has done with Doctor Who (even if all of it doesn't make sense). The problem I have is that I don't know what to believe when the show isn't on. When I heard that Matt Smith was leaving Doctor Who, I became sad, but not as sad as I should be. I like Matt Smith, he makes a great Doctor and I feel like we have only recently begun to know some of the deeper aspects of his character that take a while to discover, such as how he deals with grief. When he does leave Doctor Who I will be very sad.

But there is a large part of me that just doesn't believe that he is really leaving.

It is a well known fact that Moffet lies. It is understandable, lying is a good way to distract people from the truth. Since he has become showrunner Moffet has lied so much that I am having trouble believing anything he says. There is a very large part of me that thinks that he could be crying wolf. I had a similar reaction the other day when it was announced on TennantNews.com that the list of Doctor candidates had been narrowed down to three people and the BBC would announce who it was the next day. I saw it, read the article, and even made a meme of my favorite of those candidates, but I readily admitted that this was most likely a ruse. Sure enough, the next day nothing was announced. I know not all of this is Moffet's fault, I have no idea if he even knows anyone at tennantnews.com, but these kind of shenanagains do seem very Moffet-ish.