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Hybrid Fever.

After putting Mio’s head on a Zaoll body I’ve become A LOT more open to hybrids, especially since I’ve become a lot more fussy in terms of body sculpt both in aesthetics and functionality of joints. Also I’ve surprised myself and I’m finding out I really do enjoy owning the big dolls, though Mio is a shorty, but still. So in a flush of new found love for 60cm dolls my brain decided to hatch a plan as to what sort of companions she needed. XD

I think I have wholly decided on Supia’s Zion sculpt for one of her new companions, but Zion is also a 65cm doll, which means Mio will look very tiny next to him. Then I thought perhaps I could find a slightly shorter body to put his head on so the size difference won’t be so great. This was when I discovered both Spiritdoll and Dollstown, who both have extremely lovely body sculpts with nice jointing systems. Unfortunately it’s been difficult trying to find information as to whether any of the Dollstown or Spiritdoll resins will match, but overall it’s not looking good sadly. However I am not letting it deter me because……

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I ordered Mio the Dollstown Elf girl body in freshkin! You may wonder how I arrived at this since I was all about Zion a moment ago, and it was a long chain of events let me tell you. So to begin with I knew I wanted the elf body when I saw it, because the sculpt is just really beautiful, not to mention it has double jointed knees and arms, AND it’s another shorty girl coming in at the same height as Zaoll at 52cm. 🙂 After researching potential resin matches with Dollmore resin, and double checking measurements, I came to the conclusion that I could upgrade Mio’s body and then I would be able to give my Zaoll Luv back her body. So then I can have two girls instead of one now. 😉 On top of this I will then have a sample of dollstown freshskin resin to do comparisons with for future hybrids. I just have to hope now that since the elf body is in stock that it ships soon and arrives before my vacation in late January. I probably should have waited to order until I returned, but then that would mean I would have had to force myself to wait for nearly two months before ordering and then knowing my luck it wouldn’t be in stock anymore and I’d have to wait another 2 months production time XP. So I’ll be keeping my fingers and toes crossed that she ships within 2 weeks and arrives here in early January. Annnnd I’ll be keeping some extra fingers and toes crossed that Mio’s head will fit well on the new body. The Dollmore Eve neck circumference is around 7.5 and the elf body’s is 7.8 so it should work in theory. I also hope the resin match is close….it does look close from the comparison shots I found and that people shared with me, but it is still probably going to require some blushing.

As for Zion….well I had remembered my original idea that the size difference between a tall boy and a short girl is part of what makes it interesting, so I am considering ordering him as a whole doll with the supia body. However, the boys are out of stock on the Supia site and I read where they won’t be available until early 2014, because their bodies are being re-worked. It was also added that when the new boy bodies are ready they will be having another event as well, so my plans for ordering Zion will wait. To be honest, at this point I hope it will be a spring event this way I can stockpile my money until then, lol.

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Withdoll Taren’s Box Opening!

So, my Taren arrived somewhat unexpectedly today. I knew from tracking that he had landed in Chicago and I figured that since it was a holiday that I shouldn’t expect him until Monday, but lo and behold he suddenly appeared here today and on Black Friday no less, haha. Anyway I shall now dispense with the photos.

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Well hello there shipping box. 😉

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And the actual doll box. Withdoll has a nice simple box with their logo stamped on top. For some reason a simple brown box is always appealing to me. Maybe it’s because it has a eco feel, or maybe it’s because The Sound of Music taught me that brown paper packages tied up with string are good times. XD

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And inside the box is the funny doll shaped foam cut-out, heehee. He also came with an extra set of hands (in different poses) and a nice pair of acrylic eyes by Glib in a hazel color.

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And removing the foam we get the first view of Taren snugly packed and without eyes lol.

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Here’s a shot of his default face-up…this is the softer type A face-up on realskin UV. Overall it was what I was expecting, though the lower lashes are a bit more subdued, which is perfect actually. The brow is a bit lighter and the lips a bit less pink, but it is ok and really it’s a quality face-up. The eyes are the Glib ones I received with the order since the aqua colored glass eyes I selected for him were too large despite being 12mm. TAT I may experiment with 10mm eyes for him, since I think the 12mm fill up just a bit too much of the eye for me.

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Here he is next to my Lusis. I like the way they look together, I think their scale is perfect. I’d also like to point out that he’s wearing M3 studio jeans that fit him well. Unfortunately I do not have a shirt for him yet. ^^; I intend to make a t-shirt for him soon. I’m not sure what I think of the wig I bought for him. I still have to mess with it some more. I am thinking though that he might look a bit better in black.

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And here’s a group shot of him with both of my MSD sized girls. You can kind of see how the realskin UV compares tone wise with Dollmore resin and Unoa resin, though both my Sona and my Lusis have some yellowing.

I’d also like to mention that I am really pleased with how my Taren poses. He is not strung super tight like some companies so he can hold half bent arm poses without slapping himself in the face. His knee joints too are well constructed as he can stand with one knee half bent in a very natural pose. The upper torso joint is also very smooth working and I like how the hand is magnetized and you can twist it off for an easy changeout with the spare hands. Now I hope that they come out with more option hands to buy like fists and pointing hands because I would have a lot of fun with it!! Overall I have to say that this doll is exceedingly well constructed, especially for the price. I have not had a doll who posed so well out of the box without needing sueding. You will wait a good 3-4 months to get a doll from Withdoll, but when it arrives I think you will be very pleased.

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Finally, Mio is here.

It was a long wait, but finally I got my Mio head. I was so excited to finally have her that I set about doing a face-up as soon as I could. I ended up staying up waaaay too late in the end, but I just had to finish her and get her put together. I am super pleased with my Mio/Zaoll hybrid. I love the Zaoll body and I was able to fit the Mio head right on the body without any trouble. Zaoll’s skintone is a little more pinky than the current Dollmore resin, but really it’s not by much. The first thing I did was do an all over pinky blushing to match her head with the body, and then I just started on the face-up. Really this hybrid was super easy to do and required no modding. Anyway here are a couple shots I got today

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I wanted to give her a really natural almost no-makeup face-up. I’m still really happy with how she turned out, but I’m thinking that perhaps I like her better with her brows showing rather than covered up. It’s easy enough to slide the wig back a bit. Unfortunately I don’t have any photos with her brows showing, but I’m sure I will in the future because I think she’s super adorable! I may have to tweak the face-up a bit though in the future because somehow one of the corners of her mouth that I penciled in, the pencil wiped off a bit after I applied the gloss. I don’t even know how that would happen since I sealed before I glossed. I also really like the For My Doll wig I bought for her, I think it’s a very good quality wig and I didn’t feel there were too many stray hairs I had to trim. It’s also a nice smooth fine fiber and really just excellent quality overall. Despite liking the wig though I think I still want to experiment with other wigs lol…I have an old red k-starr wig I’m going to try on her and I may order a mohair wig to see what that would look like.

Unfortunately the 16mm eyes I bought for her just look too big to me in her head. I ended up stealing Zaoll luv’s 14mm acrylic eyes to borrow for now. However when I removed those eyes I realized that somehow they had become cracked and broken. I am hiding the cracks the best I can, but the acrylic is pulling away from the printed iris which causes her to have a milky eyed look depending on the angle. I have never had a pair of acrylic eyes crack and break so badly. I have no idea what caused it since Luv was sitting in her box for the past month. In any case I probably won’t be trusting Dollmore’s acryclic eyes from now on. Their glass eyes are great, but I don’t want to run the risk of more broken acrylic eyes, even if they are cheap.

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And here’s a quickie group shot of Mio on her Zaoll body with my two MSD girls. I like how Sona’s proportions lend her to looking like she could be a little sister. Luli’s proportions though don’t suit her for that, so I guess she a “friend” doll, lol….

Well, that’s it for now. I actually have other dolly news and dolly finds to share, but sadly I just haven’t been able to find the time to blog much this fall…been super busy! D: It’s ok though, I’m kinda happy to be busy, especially where it involves incoming dolls. 😉

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Eye types for BJDs

I had gotten into an interesting discussion on DoA about the different types of eyes available and peoples preferences and such which I thought might make for a good blog topic. A lot of this information might be common knowledge to someone who has been deep into the hobby for years, but I think it might be helpful for people just starting out or even for people who have had dolls for a while but never investigated the different types of eyes available.

So the first type of doll eye we have are glass eyes. There are a few of mine in the picture below. I have others but I wasn’t about to go removing eyes from my dolls or anything, lol. Glass eyes are naturally, made of glass, and by many doll owners are considered to be the best type of eye. Glass really reflects light the best and can really make an eye light up, but often they will be less realistic than acrylics, silicon and sometimes even resin. It also pays to keep in mind not all glass eyes are created equal. Cheap glass eyes are just that, cheap and often they cannot even rival a good quality acrylic eye.

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The blurry set of eyes in the foreground of the pic above are Mint on Card eyes, which were a free gift. The flatback eyes are Miniworld, and the black and brown pair sitting on parts of the pink box are both Dollmore. The black eyes, which if you look closely are actually a very dark charcoal gray are really very good quality. Rather than being straight black, the deep charcoal will give a slight hint of depth in the eye. They are a bit tricky to photograph though as often they will appear just black. The other pair are special Dollmore eyes and are extremely pretty, they have great clarity and the brown glitter in the glass really makes the eyes sparkle. Both of the Dollmore eyes I consider good quality.

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Now on to the lesser quality eyes. Above is a cheap pair of glass eyes from Miniworld. Inside them there is a dotty print in a low lpi of an iris. Of course it has all the transparency and glossiness of glass eyes, but because the iris is some sort of print, it does not really refract the light.

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This next set of eyes are from Mint on Card, they are just their basic glass eyes that they sell. These were a freebie so I shouldn’t be too hard on them, but on the other hand, buyers should be informed. These eyes are not as bad as the Miniworld ones, they are all glass and they light up quite nice under the right conditions, BUT they are certainly a very goofy color of blue and the threading which you can just barely see in this shot is irregular. They also seem to like to cast their blue color into the whites of the eye at places as well. If you compare these eyes with the Dollmore eyes, there is no comparison, Dollmore wins.

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Next up are silicon eyes, this pair in specific is eyeco A113 I belive. The benefits of silicon eyes are they they are rubbery and therefore can bend and be pushed quite flush in the eye wells of a doll. Their irises are basically a print encased in clear silicon. Because they are a print they can be as detailed and as real looking as a human iris. However because they are a print, they can’t refract light, all sense of light from a printed silicon eye comes from the high contrast of light against dark in the print itself. Another drawback of silicon eyes are that because they are rubbery they can collect dust easily and may need to be wiped with a damp cloth periodically. Overall I do like silicon eyes, you can get some really nice variations of irises and if you have a doll with an odd or irregular eye well it’s easy to squish the eyes in there so you no longer have any hollow spaces around the eyes. I haven’t tried any other silicon eyes besides eyeco though, however people do seem to praise Soom eyes as well.

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So now draw your attention to the pair of eyes in the middle of the shot above. Those are acrylic eyes and this particular pair happens to be my default unoa eyes in a dark blue. This isn’t my best pair of acrylic eyes sadly and they are just dark and don’t offer much reflection at all. If you want to see a better pair of acrylic eyes then have a look at my Lusis here: http://www.genkigirl.com/dollyblog/?p=1168 Her current pair of acrylic eyes can light up a little bit similar to glass, but not nearly as well as glass. So, acrylic eyes usually also rely on a print of an iris that is set under plastic. Occasionally you can also find hand painted irises, but those are kind of rare. Another benefit of acrylic eyes are because it’s a print, many different types of eyes such as cat eyes or fantasy eyes with symbols embedded in them can be done.

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As with glass eyes, acrylic eyes can be good or bad quality. In the above pic you can see the worst quality acrylic eyes I have which came standard with my AE Yara. They are little hollow flatbacks in an odd shape that you can really play with to angle up, down or side to side because usually you wind up seeing the side of the eye and having a gap. On top of this the iris section of the eye is a completely different plastic part and there is a visible seam between the iris and white of the eye. The print of the iris isn’t anything to write home about either.

The last type of eye I will talk about are resin eyes. I do not have any resin eyes yet, but I do know that they are the best at imitating the reflective qualities of glass. Their only drawback is that like your dolls, they can yellow over time, that and they are often very expensive. Enchanted Doll sells eyes for $50 a pair, but they are definitely beautiful and something I might like to own one day.

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So, in the end basically remember this….you get what you pay for…If you buy a cheap pair of eyes, that’s what you are often getting, something cheap. A really great pair of eyes can make a big difference in the way you doll looks and is photographed.

Here’s a quick list of the eyes in this post: Miniworld glass flatback, Mint on Card glass eyes, Dollmore glass eyes in Y03 (black), Dollmore Special glass eyes ET27 (brown), Asleep Eidolon acrylic, Unoa default acrylic, eyeco silicon A113. I will also be posting the “group shot” of eyes on my flickr and annotating them.

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An update on the Mio situation

I heard back today about what can be done in regards to me receiving the wrong head in the group order. It’s not an optimal solution, but it is not a bad solution. The group order organizer said she would buy the head from me and then I could try to order the Mio head again the next time she hosts a group order. In the end I’m glad that I won’t be out $100, but I am also disappointed in not getting the correct head. I really appreciate what the group organizer did for me though. I would tell you who they are on DoA so you can join in any of her group orders without worry, but I’m worried it might be an invasion of privacy so I’ll just leave it at this.

At this point I am not sure what to do about my SD sized girl plans. I already have the Zaoll body (and head) which has been in it’s box since the box opening. The thought has crossed my mind to just sell her while she is still new and forget about SD sized dolls. Though that would mean I would have a very lonely Mudoll Ash…and my Danbi rarely comes out of his box. ^^;;; On the other hand I feel I haven’t given the SD sized dolls a fair shake. I don’t have the necessary stands to display them, nor the space, which is why they hang out in boxes. To compound issues I just found some more lovely and mature looking MSD sized dolls at Withdoll. So now I’m feeling even more than I should just stick with MSD and round out my ranks there…As you can see, I’m just waffling all over the place, so I probably shouldn’t make any dolly decisions for a while.