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Rainman Discussion

Sep 24, 2018

    1. Oh congrats! Dark Blina looks stunning. (If I hadn't already splurged on 'original' Blina I'd be tempted lol, but I think one of her sculpt is enough in my group. I've already got twin Dollshe Saints - one girl one boy - I shouldn't add in any more!) She works nicely on the April Story body! Agreed about that frustrating neck socket - even my Dollstown body, that on paper was a good fit, needed some sanding to match that shallow shallow socket joint.

      (Gah lmao, as predicted my attempt to paint up Anna as a Marcy-esque character... Did Not Work. Ahahaha - the enforced winter hiatus on all face-up attempts has definitely meant that whatever knack for face-ups I might have had has been lost. I'll try and share some photos in better lighting than I've currently got; at the moment my camera is picking up the undertones of the resin rather than the blushing in this dusk lighting. Which after I managed to match the head to the body is making the poor thing look even worse)
       
      • x 1
    2. Vetinari ha, I learned my part about planed face-up turned wrong. My Kira is not co-op in this very well . But I am very very curious about DollsTown body and grateful for info about neck fitting.

      I like DT body and thinking about get it almost 1 y and there is new type 17y girl body so I hold my hands behind back not to push BUY button.
      I took some pictures today but I need to edit them so maybe tomorrow I put them out. Matching the resin is really tricky trick. My girl is at Iple SID body and this stupid neck is worse on the photo than "live" (or maybe I lost my distance and critical mind).

      I try to share photos but didnt work with me, sorry
       
      • x 1
    3. Oh, I can't wait to see your Anna, @Vetinari ! I hope you captured Marcy better than I did! Sorry for taking your idea, L, But it sold me on Anna. And I really wanted her after that, LOL. I kind of want an even shorter body for her now... She never seemed to fit on the Supia body either. I need to do more body swapping. I want her short, like the RL actress. :D

      @susana789 yah, I also wanted tall and slim for Blina. The April Story has that. ArgBut Myof course the anauticanecks always seem too long, even with other heads. doll has a wider face and always seemed disproportionate to that body. But looks great on the Supia body. I'm happy that turned out well, but I have more bodies to buy for floating heads! Still, I don't mind shaving down the neck of a cheaper body, especially one that is older. I may attempt dying this body as it's yellowed??

      Not long ago, I had a body for every head, then suddenly, I aquired heads again :doh

      Another pic :)

      [​IMG]
       
      #423 IngieBee, Mar 16, 2020
      Last edited: Mar 16, 2020
      • x 2
    4. Such crappy lighting. It's incredibly beautifully dark and gloomy and cold today in So Cal. I LOVE it, but it's all artificial lighting for pictures :(

      One of the things I wanted was these eyebrows! I love them!!
      [​IMG]

      For over 30 years, I've tried to paint such bmrows, to no avail...
       
      • x 4
    5. Oh glad the info was helpful! @susana789 I've got Blina on the Dollstown Vision, and Kira on the Dollstown 17F respectively - personally I like the original 17F body slightly more aesthetically, but I personally think both are excellent fits scale/proportion-wise to those two smaller Rainman sculpts. Just - be aware that with Blina some sanding may be needed no matter how good the numbers seem.

      @IngieBee Oh lol, please, no worries. I'm just glad I wasn't the only one who saw the potential for a likeness there! (Lmao, like how I seem to be the only person in the world who stares at Ryan Gosling and younger Joe Flanigan and goes... hrmm similar face-type they share, yes yes yes this could be useful for 1/6 scale headsculpt acquisition, like a madperson.) I'll try and get some photos of my three Rainman ladies tomorrow, light permitting, though I suspect the comparison to the magnificent work of Opaleighty really won't do my poor Anna any favours ahaha.

      I've got a horrible sinking feeling that like you, I'm eventually going to be forced to rethink her body completely, I'm being v.stubborn with the Spiritdoll Proud, since proportion-wise (and generally) it's gorgeous - but the resin mismatch may be too big for me to blush, being a difference between very pink and yellowy undertoned NSs. (I say... Completely happy with the vast difference in skintone between my professionally painted Kira and Blina with the Dollshe Freshskin bodies they're on, but I think that's down to the heads looking as if they've got a full face of makeup on, so my brain just shrugs and goes, yeah that's normal.)
       
    6. Nah, @Vetinari , I think that's totally abnormally normal, LOL. I happen to have a nose obsession, LOL
       
    7. IngieBee yes. eyebrows. I bought 10 tiny super quality brushes. Maybe much earlier in time it will be better: my eyes failed me, my hands are shaking. I bought myself eyeglasses for reading. I saw all this YouTube and Instastories videos where painting this tiny lines is fluent and perfect and than I try it myself and ended with FUBAR (not one time - 10 times). My poor Kira.
      So this time I try to be happy with pencil-draw eyebrow. My lovely sister gave me her Caran D´ache and Koh-I-Noor Mondeluz (she is not in hobby and is kidding me because of it but I love her because this pencils are drawers dream). So brows are great until I look at picture you sent and I realize how far I am from dreamed results.
      But Dark Blina is really great. And these lips ...
       
    8. Well, I can share what I feel made the best tools, the rest of my fails are me, LOL. The tools i use are the series 33 sable brushes size 1. They have an ultra fine tip that goes down to a couple of super fine hairs, but the body makes for a good reservoir of paint so the strokes don't dry up too fast. I then use Daniel Smith extra fine watercolors. These come in 1/2 oz tubes and I am sure other brands will work. One small tube will last forever! You add water and paint. No special additives needed.

      Why watercolor? I've tried acrylics, but if I make a mistake, it won't wipe off, even if I am quick, some of it has already dried. But with the watercolors, even if they dry, I can wipe them cleanly, no scrubbing, completely off. I can even get a sharp q-tip til going and remove a single brush stroke! Watercolors are super saturated in pigment as well, they also don't dry up so fast.

      A layer of MSC or whatever you use, and it's permanent as it gets :)
       
    9. [​IMG]

      So finally I learned how to share photos as a civilized person. My Kira (with Granado Udell as background). Iplehouse SID body in peach gold, head is RR normal.
       
      • x 2
    10. @susana789 oooh great job on Kira - she looks wonderfully rock and roll there! (PS how are you managing to share photos if you don't mind me asking? Post Flickr demanding cash I've yet to work out a new place to host mine!)

      Right ahem... Speaking of which - please excuse the quick and dirty instagram link - but my three Rainman ladies side by side (Please excuse the terrible lighting/doubled up shot, not sure what happened there!) Lmao, poor poor Anna - some day she'll be finished to a decent standard, but until then...
      Jen on Instagram: “My three Rainman ladies more or less complete. (Some day Anna will get a face up worthy of her!) #bjd, #bjdhybrid, #dollstown,…”
       
    11. Vetinari thanks for your love for Kira :-). Yes, I would like her to be a rock and roll chick but her undertone is rich bitch attitude (with every face-up I ever tried on her). But I have one more face plate so one day she will be hard rock bitch I hope.
      I love " troika" of R&R ladies you have. I Your Kira is wonderful, I know her from Instagram so it is nice to know her owner, nice to meet you. And my greetings for all ladies, too.
      About photo sharing. I was home-office procrastinating all morning (mean until lunch).
      So you need photo-sharing account (I use Flicker). Open on PhotoStream. Click on picture, open it. In right corner of photo-screen is small icon "download this photo" (down arrow).
      Click, choose "view all sizes". New window will open with all size option. For DoA publication, normal/ medium is recommended so maybe some size edit must be done before publication on DoA, I made save with medium size.
      Selected photo TRY TO OPEN VIA RIGHT MOUSE CLICK IN NEW WINDOW. And this is tricky trick: you have proper link form ending with .jpg
      Enjoy :-)
       
    12. She's lovely - it's great to see what you've done with the sculpt, I really do think you hit that rock vibe you were aiming for dead on. (Though hee! haha yeah I know what you mean about the sculpt's snootiness - I embraced it for Amanda (my Kira) since it fit the character to a tee but, in a similar way to Anna's melancholy being an absolute pain to try to work around I'm guessing it's a PITA to try and avoid!) Thank you! Hee! Nice to know my terrible photos haven't actively put people off the sculpt! I absolutely adore the way Opaleighty painted up the fully-finished heads, but alas my potato phone camera really doesn't do them justice.

      Ah thanks for the info! Yeah looks like I'm going to have to bite the bullet wrt Flicker... Urgh!
       
    13. @susana789 she looks great and I really like that shot. It reminds me of an old Blondie photo. So like Vetinari said, very rock'n roll :thumbup

      @Vetinari try going against where you think the brows should go. That's what I tried to do and I do think it helped????
       
    14. IngieBee you flatter me, Blondie is real IT girl so with expectations known I must work very hard on her outfit. I have Taylor Mommsen as outfit style example but face-sculpt is different and nordic pale blond is not for her.

      Vetinari for me , painting Kira brows was stumbling-block : until I draw line with dry-pastel and and redone with soft eraser several times (for this particular face-up).
      In one try, I ever do "targeting" key point for brow shaping with toothpick (one YT video suggested this. Crazy but doable).
      Before this, I draw lines, make them perfect and sealed. My sister is perfectionist (you know THAT type of people) and she said: are they crooked, right? But fringe wig means safe solution.
      Rainman head is tricky for brows: I think he likes slavonic face-sculp (cheekbones) but eye arch is not clearly defined. I had few try with line draw very high (lines was painted with acrylic and I made it almost perfect). And suddenly there were feeling "it is not right" and yes, she had VERY strange look.
       
    15. Eyebrows are the bane of my Faceup existance!!! LOL
       
      #435 IngieBee, Mar 18, 2020
      Last edited: Mar 18, 2020
    16. Oh yah, she has great style! I had to look her up, LOL
       
    17. haha! Relieved I'm not the only one with eyebrow troubles - if a face-up has gone wrong for me, 99% probability it will have been the eyebrows that did it.

      As you could probably tell, I didn't actually bother to finish Anna's face-up there, since I could see it had gone thoroughly sideways. Agreed about the brow ridges, whilst they're gorgeously realistically done, ye gods I'm struggling to even approach the skill level needed for these sculpts. (It's assuaging quite a bit of the guilt that I splashed out on the artist's face-ups for my other two Rainman ladies, since I just know I'd be even worse at getting them anywhere close to right if I'd tried to paint them myself!)

      Yeah thanks, somehow I almost always end up positioning the eyebrows too high up when I overthink them! I think when I try again I'll be lowering their position to at least 2.5mm below where they're currently located, at the moment she has no forehead to speak of lol - realised that the reference picture I used really didn't help matters, she's looking down at the camera from above, and it's thrown off the proportions of the photo entirely.
       
      • x 1
    18. It sucks, but redoing it will make you better at it. If you are in the USA, use Winsor Newton brush cleaner and a tooth brush. It makes the job so easy, it's a sin (make sure you have fresh air)

      Apparently it's not the same in Europe?? A small bottle will last you. Don't bother soaking - too expensive and not worth it as it disintegrates the paint so fast!

      A bit of fish soap and letting it dry, and you're ready to go again. Again, if you use tubed watercolor, you can wipe it off with a moistened q-tip and try as many times as you like, and you can remove a wayward stroke if need be. I'm tellin ya, it the best stuff since sliced bread, LOL

      I've become quite a pusher over this :mwahaha
       
    19. IngieBee, Vetinari thanks for tips, especially about using watercolors for eyebrows. I was afraid this sort of color is not strong enough but I will definitely try this. I never heard about tubed watercolors so I'll look for it.
      I heard references about Winsor Newton brush cleaner but I'm not in range with it so winner is nail varnish remover without acetone and colorless. And very soft toothbrush, my favorite is curaprox (very very soft), its flexible, elastic and no scraps or damage on resin.
       
      • x 1
    20. It's kind of expensive to get fine watercolor tubes (you don't need a lot, tiny tube will last forever!) And you only need one, don't buy sets where you will get colors you don't need :) prices are going up everywhere! I see them around $7 - 10 USD at online discount stores for 5ml

      I hope you like it if you give it a try :)

      BTW, you do add water to it, and don't use straight out of the bottle, just saying... LOL