the making of bjd!seimei, part 1
Part 1 because he doesn't have his ears or tail yet, and we really need to get him a better wig (we... fried the original one trying to curl it, eheheh. Short, curly wigs for MSD boys are so hard to find).
So we decided to get a Seimei, to go with the Soubi; a 14-year-old Seimei, specifically. Soubi isn't ready yet, but we wanted Seimei to be finished sooner, so we decided to put him together and do his faceup ourselves - or rather rubyprism kindly offered to do it for me.
Sanding his limbs, to make them touchably-smooth....
...and painting his nails in clear gloss, to make them stand out.
The blank head, ready to be painted. He's a MSD Kohaku boy. This is where the real fun begins... and by "fun", we mean "hours of tricky detail work on a $400 doll". I'm glad I had rubyprism to do this part for me.
The initial face detail. The eyebrows are blushed in nice and neat, thanks to this great tutorial on using masking tape to make eyebrow templates, which I dutifully copied to give him some nice, arched eyebrow forms. Then rubyprism blushed them in using soft pastels.
Second pass over the eyebrows, and more detail on the lips and eyes. The finishing spray we were using caused the eyebrows to smear at this point, sadly, but it was salvageable; we were going to do them darker anyway. Apparently, the trick to this is to keep the can of finishing spray in a bowl of warm water. I have no idea why this works, but it does. Arcane and esoteric are the ways of dolls.
The final face-up (except for eyelashes), with a tiny amount of gloss added to the inner eyes and the lips. For the very final doll, the eyelashes were trimmed, and the eyes put in, and this is the result so far....
Little Seimei mourning his detached ears. Eventually I'll drill little holes into these and run wire through them, and poke the wire through the wig cap and attach them to the head that way. Or something like that, anyway. But I don't have a hand-drill to hand, so it'll need to wait until I do.
Closeup of the ears that actually shows what they look like.
Just relaxing in a comfy chair.
Baby Seimei doesn't like you. I made the tiny knife myself out of clay and a scalpel blade.
He could go into advertising quite well, couldn't he?
More pictures when it's light, we have a better wig, and/or his ears and tail are affixed. (I have yet to make his tail. I keep flipflopping on what I'm going to make a tiny tail out of.)
So we decided to get a Seimei, to go with the Soubi; a 14-year-old Seimei, specifically. Soubi isn't ready yet, but we wanted Seimei to be finished sooner, so we decided to put him together and do his faceup ourselves - or rather rubyprism kindly offered to do it for me.
Sanding his limbs, to make them touchably-smooth....
...and painting his nails in clear gloss, to make them stand out.
The blank head, ready to be painted. He's a MSD Kohaku boy. This is where the real fun begins... and by "fun", we mean "hours of tricky detail work on a $400 doll". I'm glad I had rubyprism to do this part for me.
The initial face detail. The eyebrows are blushed in nice and neat, thanks to this great tutorial on using masking tape to make eyebrow templates, which I dutifully copied to give him some nice, arched eyebrow forms. Then rubyprism blushed them in using soft pastels.
Second pass over the eyebrows, and more detail on the lips and eyes. The finishing spray we were using caused the eyebrows to smear at this point, sadly, but it was salvageable; we were going to do them darker anyway. Apparently, the trick to this is to keep the can of finishing spray in a bowl of warm water. I have no idea why this works, but it does. Arcane and esoteric are the ways of dolls.
The final face-up (except for eyelashes), with a tiny amount of gloss added to the inner eyes and the lips. For the very final doll, the eyelashes were trimmed, and the eyes put in, and this is the result so far....
Little Seimei mourning his detached ears. Eventually I'll drill little holes into these and run wire through them, and poke the wire through the wig cap and attach them to the head that way. Or something like that, anyway. But I don't have a hand-drill to hand, so it'll need to wait until I do.
Closeup of the ears that actually shows what they look like.
Just relaxing in a comfy chair.
Baby Seimei doesn't like you. I made the tiny knife myself out of clay and a scalpel blade.
He could go into advertising quite well, couldn't he?
More pictures when it's light, we have a better wig, and/or his ears and tail are affixed. (I have yet to make his tail. I keep flipflopping on what I'm going to make a tiny tail out of.)