Do you design your faceups in advance?

I'm a lazy lazy doll owner & don't have any fantastical characters…so nope - I don't design face ups in advance or even have explicit feature requests beyond "make him look masculine" when I send my dolls off to an artist. I'm probably one of those annoying clients because I just let the artist to do what inspires them when they get my doll. I've always been pleased with the outcome 100%.

 

I find photo references or do a photoshop mock-up. If I just wing a face-up without specific inspiration and references, it turns out pretty bland by my own standards.

 

I never design it in advance. I have thought about doing it that way but I think it is better to just "go" at it since I usually get other ideas when I'm in doing the face ups. I always know what I want before I start, my primary points: color of eyebrows/hair and expression. For a sweet expression I know I will use lots of pinks and pastel colors, for a more serious one I would use darker colors, sometimes I feel like adding freckles...it's all a process, it doesn't work for me to plan it all in advance.

 

I usually just go into it with a general idea of what I want. Sometimes it works better than others, but it usually hasn't failed me.

 

I haven't tried designing on paper or digitally before. I think it could be a great help to think it through and work more efficiently afterwards, but... on resin it's a whole kind of different story. That usually takes up all my energy.

 

I usually make a mock up in Photoshop before I do a faceup. I find it helpful. Then I know what does and doesn't work before hand. Not that I haven't said 'meh, I'll just wing it!' more than once. But they're usually better if I plan a bit.

 

I've done faceups for others before, and let me tell you, you are my favorite kind of person to work for! Sometimes when someone has very very specific examples, I'm afraid I can't replicate it satisfactorily. Other times, people have a certain real life model as reference, but the sculpt they've chosen isn't even remotely similar, and I can't make the doll look like that person, no matter how good I am. I feel I do my best work when I'm allowed to just do what feels natural for the features.


On my own dolls, however, I usually have a certain real life inspiration, and choose a sculpt accordingly. I just straight to work on the head. I'm old fashioned when it comes to art, I have no interest in photoshop or digital drawing.

 

I sometimes plan a face up before I do it, it really depends on if it is a natural looking face up or a fantasy style one.

 

I never do. I just follow the lines of the sculpt and the face-up just sort of happens. The only things I have planned in advance were a facial tattoo for one character, and when I tried to replicate the factory face-up of another (that had been wiped by her previous owner).

 

I just go with a general idea and use a couple reference pictures that I have saved to my computer for eyebrow shape, eyeliner shape, lip color, etc.

 

I'm only learning, so the 'planning' I do is test the colors on the head cap to see how they look. I learned quickly that different pastels and wc pencils look different on each piece of resin. I try to make the eyebrows match the wig. If I was to do a fantasy faceup, I might print out a b/w photo on paper to try different ideas. All my dolls are just human, so I go for natural looks and look at real people for inspiration to make sure I'm layering the color in the right places.

 

I always plan out my faceups by drawing them before I try it on the head; however, [naturally] I find I never end up sticking to them! Sometimes its because my planned faceup doesn't look how I want on the face, and sometimes it's because I realize that the mold lends itself better to a different style eyebrow/etc. The only thing that stays preserved usually is the colors!

 

I don't usually do more than just looking at photos to plan for face-ups but I have one project that required pre-photoshopping a blank head to make sure what I have in mind would look good on the doll. It's more than just a face-up though, half of the face is going to be covered in tattoos, so I don't think it would've been a good idea to do it without planning first. I don't have the doll yet but when I finally get her, I'm ready to do her face-up!

 

I don't really. I wait until the doll is in my hand to really see the color of the resin and curves of their face.

 

Thanks for your compliment on my thick eyebrow faceup varebanos.

My motto is "No-one ever planned too much."
In terms of planning for faceups I follow a few different steps. I like to get inspiration by looking at the shape of the face and finding photos of celebrities and models that they remind me of. I always, always try to find faceups that other people have done on the same sculpt and see what worked and didn't work. From there I study things like how their eyebrow shape suites their face. Sometimes if I have a colour or makeup style in mind I will look up make up tutorials as well as other faceup artists' portfolios to see what colours work. When I'm giving a faceup to a doll with a specified gender, I like to follow a few rules about where blush and shadow will naturally fall. I've found it useful to look up cosplay and transgender makeup tutorials, because they have the best tips about how to make any face look either way.

I tend to screen grab anything that inspires me and refer to it while doing a faceup. This tends to take hours, so the end result is usually a big culmination of different inspirations!

With all that said, in the end inspiration tends to strike when you've got the head in one hand and a brush in the other. So be familiar with the rules, but be yourself.

 

For my first doll I actually dreamed her faceup XD then I took a picture and started drawing over it to see how I could do that.
But now I don't do that anymore, I just did my second faceup yesterday and I started by drawing lines on it with a pencil.

 

I started out just winging it, but found that planning ahead works much better for me!

 

Depends on how well I know what I want, and whether I've done a faceup on that sculpt before. I find that usually for first time faceups on a sculpt, I prefer to draw a sketch on paper to get a rough idea, in addition to searching for references of the faceup on that sculpt (noting details I like, and how it's done) and finding real people faces/makeup tutorials to get an idea for colours. For the next few times, I usually skip the drawing, but the rest may still be used to various degrees. I usually like to watch makeup tutorials of similar styles (e.g. natural, or edgy etc) before I start, just to get into the vibe.

 

I think I'm one of the pickiest customer and I usually draw or make mock ups as a guide for the person I am commissioning since I don't know what people usually write in their commission style forms and I'm not good at explaining with words... T^T