Elbow grease

Easy, my automail mods. They're still in progress (school is, once again, getting in the way), so they're currently unfinished, but hopefully once I graduate and have a bit more time available, they'll be finished up within the year. I'm doing two of them, aiming to be as precise as possible, and entirely by hand so far--no power tools involved at all, so it's been an extremely slow process, but I'm really happy with the results so far, so I don't mind the effort.

After them would be my first rescue boy, who was badly and unevenly yellowed and stained all over; his head needed some minor "repairs" done, so while that was with the modder, I spent about a month soaking, sanding, and scrubbing his body until the color was mostly evened back out (some areas were at risk of losing detail, so I had to stop and finish the job with blushing), and the majority of the staining was removed (his hands were too yellow and too stained, and had to be replaced). His feels like more work because I did it in a short period of time, but the automail mods are definitely the ones that are taking more time and effort overall.

 

For me it was shortening the legs on a 1/3 boy body. I cut about an inch off the calves with a saw, then had to sand and carve out the bottoms for the feet to fit in and pose.

 

Sanding Muninn, my Senior Delf Bliss "project doll"... He was (very) badly stained from an unsealed red and black tattoo attempt and (very) unevenly yellowed and it took a long, long time and I-don't-know how many sheets of sandpaper to even begin correcting. My hands were a wreck after that. o_0

 

The most elbow grease... that's a toss up between three mods.
1. repairing the wreck Nobility made out of our custom order for a Muscular Female Body.
2. Modding a doll called Aleph- a Steampunk Golem mod, was 6 days of 14-18 hour workday in a row!
3. Aneirin, a monster mod with totally rebuilt legs.

 

@Rosslyn I love the name of your steampunk golem -- very appropriate!

 

Most elbow grease had to be Lukas. He was a disaster looking for a home. I worked on him 4-6 hours a day for about a month. He's a weird one but he is packed with love. I sanded, carved, sculpted, drilled and apoxied almost every part on him.

 

I think opening the eyes on my LittleFee Shue sleeping head was the most painstaking for me (thus far, anyway)..

 

Thank you! I always figured if I did another one I could call it Beth.... and so on... Even if he was so much work I do not know if I'll ever try it again. Maybe in YoSD size next time! (Also Congrats, You are the first person to notice his name)


This is Aleph.

 

Wow, he's gorgeous!

 

Oh my heavens, Rosslyn, he looks like ivory with scrimshaw melded to brass and copper. Gorgeous!

 

Thank you very much!

Thank you very much! You're one of the first people to 'get' that I was hoping for an aged ivory effect. He had been dyed very dark and when I scrubbed most of it off and polished the resin, he looked like antique ivory, so I incorporated that into my rebuild.

I would have to say, now that I look back, that Aleph was definitely the most "elbow grease" out of all my mods. I did his work in such a short period of time I forget how much went into him until I think about it- I had to document a project for a photography assignment, so I ended up doing the entire restructure, restoration and aesthetics mod work in one week! It really tested my skill and my ability to get an intensive project done in a hurry!

 

I'm not 100% sure it counts as a mod but I am in the process (and nearly finished!) metal leafing an FL event arm. Metal leafing can be very fiddly and I've found out the hard way that it's also not something to be rushed. I can only work on the arm for about an hour or so at a time before a headache starts to form from the intense concentration and possibly slight fumes from the adhesive. To leaf the 5 pieces of the arm has taken me about... 15 hours so far and I'm not including the first 4 hours of work that had to be completely scrubbed off (there was another 1.5 hours of elbow grease involved in that *sigh*) when I screwed up and didn't clean the pieces properly before leafing. I will have a few touch-ups to fill next and then need to coat everything in several layers of mod podge to protect the leafing from damage. I really like the way it's turned out but I didn't expect it to take me as long as it has to do the leafing.

I've also modded a wig in a fairly big way. I sized down a 7/8 to a six and made slots over the ears so it would properly fit on my RS Jun's head. I also hand dyed all the individual wefts (I'd removed all of them to size down the wig) before sewing them back onto the wig. Just taking all the wefts off probably took me about 1.5 hours. Dying the wefts was probably another 1.5 hours and sewing everything back together probably another... 4 hours.

 

I've seen that metal leaf work, and it is impressive!

 

Thank you. I need to update the project thread but wanted to do that once all the leafing was finally done. I'm pretty excited to see it strung together and on the doll it's intended for (whenever he ends up coming to me due to production delays *sigh*).

 

Nope! Though Borg mods would be cool. They're two different sizes of the main character from Fullmetal Alchemist, a popular anime/manga series. I'm nearly done with both legs, and when they're complete each will also have a chest and arm mod done, too.

 

I'm currently in the middle of my most labor-intensive mod project to date. I'm completely overhauling my Impldoll Idol Azalea. Azalea is a smallish head to begin with and when I bought her Impldoll was only offering one breast size on the Idol body--- EXTRA HUGE. So huge that they make her head and torso look like they're not in scale with one another. The neck is also CRAZY long which adds to the disproportionate effect. So I am doing a major breast reduction and also shortening the neck. There is SO. MUCH. RESIN to sand away.
I am also planning to dye her when I'm all finished reshaping her to my satisfaction. And pierce her ears, and slightly modify her hands so her fingers aren't stuck together, and finish the MASSIVELY time consuming rooted fiber wig I'm making for her. Like I said, she is pretty much a complete overhaul. (Though I am not planning on changing her face at all!) But as far as pure elbow grease--- sanding down those enormous breasts has got to be the most intense mod I have done so far.
I did reduce the "overinflated balloon" breasts on my Elfdoll/Mirodoll hybrid, but that wasn't as bad because I only wanted to take them from "silly cartoon boobs" to "large breasts that sit at least somewhat like a real large-breasted woman's might". With Azalea's I am taking off quite a bit more.
@CloakedSchemer--- I did the same leg shortening mod too... also on my Mirodoll girl body. It was a bit of work! With the Mirodoll body doing that mod gave the feet a lot more range of motion-- before I did it she couldn't point her feet at all. Plus her legs look nicer... her shins were just too long before.