Update on Nabiya! I finally did a last layer on her faceup. I think I change her wig more often than any of my other dolls… I don’t know if I can’t find one that suits her, or if it just suits her to change it up a lot. She really needs new eyes, these are blatantly too small for her eye wells, but nothing else has irises of the same size and darkness and I find those parts to be perfect.
Myr got a really nice response so here’s an update on them. Thanks, it’s very appreciated!
She’s a Garden of Dolls Nabiya I got on eBay for an extreme bargain, but she smelled badly of cigarette smoke, so she had to have a good bath. I think her company faceup was “enhanced” with nail polish. I was really afraid it would have stained her badly, but it came off fine. I did her faceup along with Conchita’s that went really badly in December, so I was frustrated and still haven’t quite finished it, even though I don’t think hers is bad.
Nabiya is an old American artist sculpt, casted by Bobobie/Resinsoul. I’ve liked her for a long time so she was cool to find. She’s dark tan and this is batch is darker and and the cooler side which I love.
I got an Unoa Lusis head at a doll show and decided that I wanted her to be a Sphinx! Imade her body in the posable art doll style and I learned a ton about how to do it better in the future, haha. She has a Buff headback, the sanded Resinsoul Tang upper torso I had left over from Daniel, and a pair of ResinSoul jointed hands. I 3D printed the wrist parts. She borrowed Soony’s wig for the convention I brought her to (November 2019, RIP conventions), then I got her a better one than the gray wig in the top photo there but I haven’t gotten a photo of her in it yet.
In 2018 I managed to acquire a version of a dream doll of mine, Minifee Juri 2014/Elf Soony! Soony was the first BJD sculpt that I fell in love with so I was thrilled to have a small version of her. She started with a Resinsoul Rong body, which I did pretty much all the same mods that I described on Myr on with the addition of modding the hards into wrist pieces for the Minifee hands. I airbrushed her to match the lighter Resinsoul resin, but did a bad job of it, so the pain was pooled around her nose. I still like her faceup, but I’ve since gotten her a Minifee body, so I will need to do one that isn’t airbrushed lighter.
She’s a mean little vampire matriarch who dresses like a goth teen to get people to underestimate her.
Older/progress photos of Myr!
I sanded down a LOT of resin on the mid-torso to rough in the wasp waist and lessen the muscle definition. Then I sliced about a centimeter off the top and sanded it down from there, shortening the torso significantly. I expected to make the torso look short, but it was so elongated that it looks more normal than where I started, haha. It’s also now a rounded joint instead of one with a ridge like the original, so it can be moved without pulling. I significantly reduced the bottom edge of the upper torso. I didn’t change the shape of the joint, I just ground down the edge and the chest. I flattened out the chest as well, which sounds like a weird thing to do on a male body, but the shape actually looked more like modest breasts than pecs, especially with my waist mod, and Myr doesn’t have breasts, so I flattened it out to a more ambiguous shape.
Sanded down the catches on the shoulders and upper knees.
Tried to fix some of the issues with the lower knees. Honestly, they’re just not very well shaped or designed, but I tried a few things that might help. I carved out more of the back so that the edge of the cup is surrounding more of the ball and flattened the sides of the ball.
Sliced the thighs into two pieces added a mobility joint.
Sanded down the tops of the ears so I can sculpt the downturned ones. RIP Seng’s cute ears.
The elbow cup piece is actually pretty round on top, but the upper arm’s socket is oblong, so the joint doesn’t work like a ball joint and won’t rotate. But! The upper arm’s socket is actually round with the exception of the pieces that extend down the sides. If you cut/grind those down, you get a regular nice round ball joint that actually rotates and works well.
That alone reduces the annoying rotate-and-popping thing the bottom joint does, but I really really hate that so I wanted to make it impossible. I did exactly the same thing I did in the lower leg: I carved out the inner joint area of the lower arm (the bottom of the ball part) so that the double-joint/cup part doesn’t get pushed out when it bends. Uh, it makes more sense when you see it.
I didn’t change the middle/elbow/cup part at all. I did also flatten the sides of the ball part of the lower arm; that probably didn’t make a difference right now, but I want to suede the sides of the joint when I’m done.
The arm is no longer a terrible obnoxious pain. The top part moves freely and with sufficient friction (because this joint actually fits well) and the bottom no longer rotates (no more Z elbows) or pops. I also suspect the bottom bends a little further, but I didn’t really check.
I also did a mouth opening with custom tooth piece, downturned elf ears, and filled in the sides of the eyes, then did some general face sanding mods.
They were dyed with Rit Dyemore (after an ordeal where my iDye Poly wouldn’t stay the same color for 5 minutes), sueded, scarred and painted. They’ve had two custom wigs, one with Tibetan lamb and one with brushed yarn, and several pairs of custom resin eyes.
I don’t even know where to begin with posting dolls here, so instead of going through a photo backlog, I’m just going to go doll by doll.
First is Myr (they/them), my heavily modded Resinsoul Seng that I got in 2017 and the beginning of me getting back into BJDs. I’ll post more about the mod process in a seperate post, these are just more recent photos.