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 Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2015 6:44 pm
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I now present to you...
Dashner's custom doll is a three way collaboration between me, Draconia, and MythicalMoonstone (made the jacket, shirt, and jeans) on etsy. I started by taking a Gloom Beach Jackson and taking his hair out, and priming the body. I began rooting but did not finish. MythicalMoonstone made his shirt, jacket and jeans by commission. I sent him to Draconia because she offered to finish him. She painted the body, finished rooting his hair (I believe his hair has three different shades of brown), crafted the talons on his shoes (including his heel-talons!), painted his shoes, painted his face, crafted his bracelet, and added the hankie to his back pocket.
I am BEYOND excited, as this is the first of my characters EVER to have a custom doll!!
Estimated Time of Completion: it took Drake a little over a month to finish. It took MythicalMoonstone about a month to make the outfit, and it took me two years to get the very little I did to him done. xD
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Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2015 6:53 pm
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Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2015 7:07 pm
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Posted: Thu Apr 16, 2015 3:41 pm
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I promised Dashner I'd put up a customization report for his doll, so here it is!
As some of you may know, Dashner has been in-progress for around two years. Dashner's original character design was a collaboration between him and me, and he wanted to put together a doll as accurate to it as possible. Dash had done some work on the doll himself, and had even commissioned an Etsy artist to make the outfit. However, real life got busy (as it does) and a few roadblocks in the way, and as a result Dashner the Doll Project ended up falling by the wayside for a while.
My schedule had finally cleared up to a point where I was considering offering a doll commission, when a thought crossed my head - whatever happened to Dashner the Doll Project? I asked him, and it turned out that he still had most of the parts sitting around. Here's the image of the original parts:
Dashner was to be made out of a Gloom Beach Jackson Jekyll doll, modified with Puma Boy CAM arms to give him claws. The body had already been primed, as had the resin wings purchased from plastic-curves.com. Some hair rooting had been done, but Dash noted to me that it was extremely frustrating for him to do - the needles kept breaking off inside of the head when he tried to do the normal rooting technique.
One of the shoes had gone missing over time, as had one of the ball-jointed posts from the resin wings. Fortunately, these were both problems I knew I could tackle. We discussed the project, settled on a value of the remaining work to be done, and he sent me the parts.
Alas, poor Dashner! I couldn't resist doing this pose for Dashner and his BFF, Rory. After this, it was time to dig into evaluating the doll once I had it in my hands and figure out what needed to be done.
First off, something was wrong with the legs on the body - one leg seemed permanently twisted inward. Upon inspection, I discovered that the elastic band that held the legs together had an issue - the rubber plug in the crotch that held the leg elastic in place had slipped over to one side, making that weird inward twist happen. I was able to fix that with a pair of tweezers.
Second was the missing wing post. I made a tiny silicone mold of the existing post and poured in the resin I have on-hand for model making to create an exact replica. (well, minus about 5% shrinkage, but that won't be noticeable for this project)
I drilled holes in the back of the Jackson body and set the posts in the proper position, puttying them in place with Apoxie-sculpt.
At the same time I was doing this, I started working on Dashner's head. The first thing I discovered was the reason why he'd had such trouble trying to root hair into the head in the first place - the head was stuffed full of sticky, icky glue. Every time he tried to root a plug, the needle got stuck in the glue and most of the time, broke. No wonder he was so frustrated!
I took a pair of needlenose pliers and wrestled with that wad of glue for about 20 minutes. Finally, I got all of it out and ended up with a gross, sticky pile - and a naked head. Pulling the glue out unfortunately undid all of Dashner's original rooting.
It also caused another problem - the hairline ripped open on the forehead. I've never had a rip this bad in a head before, so I had to think of a solution that would let me root through that area without the hair all just falling back out.
Fortunately, I had a lot of time to think....Dashner's head took about 18 hours of work total to root. I didn't think he had enough of his original brown hair to complete the job, so I added in two more shades of brown - an ashy lighter brown and a redder brown to give him a more varigated hair appearance.
About 6 hours of rooting
About 10 hours of rooting
In between, I painted Dashner's wings:
(it took me a while to realize I had his wings on backwards here)
And then I painted the body. Because Dashner had already primed the body, this was a relatively fast job. I did sand a couple of primer drips away, but that was the only prep work I had to do. There are about five coats of paint on the doll's body for the uniform coloration.
The whole body was then sealed using Dullcote, a matte spray-on topcoat.
I finished Dashner's hair rooting. To get around the problem with the split vinyl in his forehead, I dipped each individual plug rooted in that area in glue and let them harden that way in the head. It worked very well and that entire area is now completely stable.
After that, I tested the overall fit of the clothes by dressing the beheaded body.
(After this picture, Dashner ran around like a you-know-what-with-its-head-cut-off) rofl
I gave Dashner a new pair of shoes (they're Deuce's from the Mansters two-pack) with a new paint job, and crafted his talon design using Apoxie-sculpt. I also put Apoxie-sculpt talons on the backs of his heels, and they poke out from the back of the shoes. They're very stable because I drilled holes in his heels so the Apoxie-sculpt would stay anchored in place.
There were two other items that had to be sculpted - his bracelet and his belt buckle. Both of those items had gone missing from the original outfit commission. I sculpted a belt buckle replacement out of Apoxie-sculpt and glued it into place. For the bracelet, I cut a segment off of a pen cap, added a little "D" charm with Apoxie-sculpt, and painted the whole thing silver. Very quick and easy!
I save the head-painting for last on my customs, even after the hair rooting. I've just discovered over time that this is the easiest way for me to do things without messing up the paint job by trying to do work over it. So, on Dashner's head went.
This image is after the first coat of paint was laid down on the head, but before the eyebrows, eyes and lips were painted. It looks like Dashner just woke up in the morning and hasn't put his face on yet.
Face-painting was a breeze, I think I even managed to capture a bit of Dashner's trademark smirk even on the relatively expressionless Jackson Jekyll head. Then I masked off the body and the hair and topcoated the head with Mr Super Clear topcoat. I use this instead of Dullcote because Dullcote reacts with vinyl and stays tacky.
(Llllllllladies.)
For the very last step of the process, I styled and cut Dashner's hair. I used boiling hot water to 'set' his hair in the fauxhawk style and used hair gel to lock it in place.
I'm very pleased with how Dashner the Doll Project finally turned out. He may have waited a couple years, but in the end, this was one were-chicken that never flew the coop.
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Posted: Thu Apr 16, 2015 6:53 pm
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Posted: Thu Apr 16, 2015 7:42 pm
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Posted: Thu Apr 16, 2015 7:52 pm
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Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2015 10:23 am
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Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2015 1:51 pm
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I love that progress report. I haven't shared this with anybody but I wanted to let you guys know how happy it made me to receive Dashner. You should have seen me standing in the yard because I thought the mailman had forgot to leave his package (he had left the rest of the mail)!!
There's this certain feeling that you get when you see an idea turn into a reality, and that's the way I felt about Dashner's doll. Dashner has been around for roughly two and a half years now, and I probably wouldn't have thought back then that I would EVER hold a doll of a character that was just a little inspiration from a book that I read.
So yeah, I'd also like to say thank you to everyone that helped me through the development of my first two somewhat decent OC's. Especially Draconia, who was basically the first person to read Dashner's first biography draft (he had a different last time!)
In fact, for you guys' entertainment, here's Dashner's very first bio sheet:
I don't know if any of you guys have read the Maximum Ride series, but if you did, you'd immediately be able to tell that this version of his character is basically a carbon copy of the hybrid characters in the Maximum Ride series. Over time though, Draconia helped me develop him into his own character yet keep his inspiration from the book.
I didn't mean to go into a whole thing about Dashner but I absolutely LOVE his doll and I couldn't thank Drake enough!! She helped me put a character into a physical form and that makes me very very very very happy.
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Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2015 9:05 am
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Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2015 6:57 pm
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Thanks! The hardest part of the process was separating the hair from the head. I didn't take any pics along the way, I knew i should have, but the hair is indeed hollow inside. The parts of the head on the face that you can see are really all that there in inside. For Sally, since she has no hair, I just filled in the missing piece of her head with clay.
The hair, when removed, leaves holes on their feet as well. But, since I had to glue her to her tendrils to keep her standing, it wasn't a big deal either. After the clay dried, I just painted over her with puffy paint, so it wouldn't streak or show any color through, on her head. Then just acrylic for the rest. Once you fix the issues the hair cause, its pretty simple from there. |
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Posted: Mon Jul 13, 2015 7:50 pm
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Posted: Tue Aug 25, 2015 6:47 pm
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