Ulquiorra is finally done! Well, technically he was done around 2 weeks ago, except I only just had the time to put together a photography setup that allows for his bloody 28″ wingspan.

It seemed that at least one photo of both forms of Ulquiorra (I ignore the dress form) would be good, and since Ulquiorra’s second release is a bit of a secret, I thought the silhouette from behind was a nice setup.

…but back to the custom of the moment:
Ulquiorra’s tail is as non-static as his wings, and poses nicely.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to figure out how to make an energy lance for him. I imagine it would be possible with clear resin, but seeing as how creating a resin sculpt would cost around $200 to set up supply-wise, it didn’t seem necessary enough to warrant the cost. I eventually figured out how to do a similar effect with photoshop.

So what does the future hold for Ulquiorra? He’s going to live in sunny Florida with Ichigo, so they can ‘play’ together. I suspect this Ulquiorra is better off than the unreleased Ulquiorra, who has to put up with Grimmjow’s shenanigans

When the challenge for this round was issued, I sat there and made a mental list that went something like this: Breakfast. Healthy breakfast, unhealthy breakfast. Breakfast being made, breakfast being eaten…at the table, on the go, in bed…?

I figured half the contest would involve people eating cake for breakfast. I was wrong. I debated doing some kind of hoop-skirt type dress made out of pancakes with syrup, jam, and whipped cream as the decorations, but I really didn’t feel like washing sticky off. Plus, when you put a doll on a life-sized dish, there are more complications, like backdrop. All in all, I decided real food was probably out… though I did debate Pajelle swimming in a giant bowl of cookie crunch, since it’s a bunch of doll-sized cookies. If I hadn’t already done the one swimming pool shot, I probably would have.

My first plan was to have Rex, ‘Boo, and ‘Bun all eating breakfast together, with a breakfast that suited each of their personalities. Pajelle would have to have her ‘Paja’ mug, ‘Boo would have panda toast, and ‘Bun would have something unhealthy but sweet. Crowding 3 dals in my dollhouse kitchen did not work out so well. I did get a nice solo shot of ‘Boo with her panda toast though:

I hate leaving things to the last minute, so I checked the other entries that were already up so that I could do a backup shot that wasn’t already overused theme-wise. While there was making breakfast, eating breakfast (at the table), unhealthy breakfast, and breakfast on the go, there was no breakfast in bed, so I went with that. I wanted to have Pajelle in her little maid outfit serving Princessa breakfast in bed, except after the last shot I knew how overpowering it was to have Princessa in a photo where the focus isn’t supposed to be on her, so I wanted to avoid it if possible.

It’s nice. Good attention to detail, good colors, good composition. Doesn’t really *sparkle* though. It’s like the picture from the previous round, which is true to theme, nice, but not really memorable. I’m not that great at photography, and I suck at photoshop–as in, I can use no more than 12 of the basic functions. I’m to the point where I take good pictures, but pure quality-wise, there are tons of people far, far better than me. I make up for my lack of skill with cameras by being creative and usually a bit witty with my composition…but so far, haven’t really had much of a chance to shine in that department. Must try harder the next rounds.

The bad news is they’re all tiny pictures, and I haven’t been able to find any bigger ones. Choose an icon below to see the ‘full’ size.

Although I fell in love with the Lunatic Queen at first sight, convention photos taken of her since then have made me wary, especially after Lilith turned out to be so underwhelming in person. Lunatic Queen’s makeup looks a lot less contrasted and striking in Groove’s and the convention photos, much like Lilith’s did. If pullips still cost $55 to preorder, I’d take the chance, however, at a preorder price of $115, I’d like to get what I paid for. Simple economics.

It didn’t take me long to pull out the customizing supplies on Lilith. My thoughts were basically: If the doll looked better in promotional pictures because it looked like she had pink lips and dark eyeshadow… well I can do that. Why not try?

So now I’m pretty happy with Lilith. I fixed her hair, face, and tweaked her clothes (I still need to do a full resewing for them to fit her *well*) and now I feel I have the doll I thought I was getting when I paid for her, much like the whole problem with Eos and needing to fix her face, wig, and stock right out of the box. This is an unpleasant trend, and I hope it changes soon.

Ok, so for Round 2 the theme was Chores. My first thought was “Rex spends all her time getting ‘Boo and ‘Bun out of trouble” except I’ve already done that quite a bit in photos, like the Gumball Incident:

….and really, can you beat that? It’s pretty hard.

Princessa is also working tirelessly behind the scenes to sabotage Rex so she can maintain her place as Queen of the Dals, so a la Cinderella, I came up with this shot:

Unfortunately, even with the camera focus on Pajelle, and Princessa slightly blurry in the foreground, this shot is still very much about Princessa. She just has the kind of presence that makes her the automatic focus of any picture she’s in, and because of that this shot doesn’t really say ‘chores.’

What it came down to, was ‘what do I have enough props of, that other people don’t, that I can make a chores picture that will look convincing and not be too unoriginal’ and the answer was laundry because of my customized laundry furniture:

In the end, ‘Chores’ was a pretty hard to do because anything that isn’t obviously a ‘chore’ is not going to rate as well, even if the picture is well composed and sticks to the theme (I put up the two pictures above for a vote on flickr, and the laundry one was chosen almost unanimously) and in modern times, there aren’t that many ‘chore’ classes. As a result, almost all of the entries for this round fell under ‘cleaning’ of one type or another.

         Initially, I was pretty excited for this doll! She’s a Byul that manages to make the freaky work for her. Later on though, other promotional pictures were released, and I began to get suspicious that the doll had either been photoshopped a little too much in the initial pictures (darkened eyeshadow, reddened lips) or they had changed the doll slightly, which often happens with prototypes. My fears, unfortunately, were confirmed when she arrived.

         Believe me, her colors are not washed out at all in this photo. Her lips are barely colored and that’s as smokey as her eyeshadow gets. And goddamnit, her buns, which are sewn into her head, are askew. Her stock also had a pretty good range of issues. The whole thing, assembled, looks like she’s wearing the outfit meant for a larger doll.The sleeves, once I took the plastic protecting her arms from staining off, fell down past her hips. From the tip of the fingers to the sleeve opening is about an inch, and then there’s another inch of ruffle beyond that.

         The outer skirt is in layers, and the layers aren’t sewn together. This wouldn’t be so much of an issue, except it hangs off of her, and it’s designed to have a bit of a bustle which starts poking out mid-butt.

         The under skirt is equally emarrassing with the lace that is barely sewn on.

         The quality of these ‘limiteds’ is becoming a serious concern for me. A $20 Barbie has her clothes put together better. I know, barbies don’t have big eyes with articulated eye mechs, but I have a hard time believing that Pullips cost more to make than the 1/4 scale Moxie Teenz, which cost $26 and are put together wonderfully. There must be a HUGE profit margin on them, would it hurt that much to put clothes that fit on the doll and have them sewn half decently? NOT have one of her buns hanging down one side of her head?

Anyway, Lilith as she is is not going to be sticking around. I have a few options:
1. Sell her as-is.
2. Harvest her stock, wig, make a dal or pullip Lilith, and sell the byul base.
3. Harvest her stock, wig, make a dal or pullip Lilith, and customize the byul base into… something.
4. Customize her to look like her initial promotional pictures, cut apart and re-sew her stock so that it fits her.

Along with The Mad Hatter/White Rabbit (I guess Tae plays both):

This time Alice is a Dal:

Along with Humpty-Dumpty the Byul (I picked the least scary picture…):

Personally, I think Byul would have made a much better Cheshire cat, with giant slit-eyes and crazy eye makeup. They really need to stop making Byul cute, and start making her creepy. Creepy just works so much better.

This month’s minis are animals:

October’s minis make me both happy and sad. Specifically, the dal. Years ago prototype pictures were released of a dal in a black and white penguin suit. It may have been one of the cutest dals EVER. Penguin suit! But if they’re releasing her as a mini, the chances of her being released as a full size doll seem much diminished. Also, a pink penguin. Eh.

The pullip is gorgeous enough I’m just going to have to buy her. She reminds me a lot of my Red Queen, one of my earlier customs. Back when you could buy your wigs from 2 stores, there was only one page of SD sized wigs on ebay, and the only pullip chips were blythe chips filed down…and my sewing skills were not nearly as good as they are today. Not all that much in common aside from the black vinyl type outfit, blood-red hair, and red hearts painted in the center of her pupils, but I think if I had redone her now, with all the options available, she would have ended up a lot more stylized like this queen is.

The taeyang is… confusing. Along with the melding of 2 characters, there aren’t enough close-ups, and his ‘eye patch’ covers up one eye and his hair the other. He might be awesome. I just can’t tell yet.

It makes sense to make Dal be Alice, finally. She has very interesting eye makeup, but not my thing. I’m sure a lot of dal-lovers are going to adore her though.

The theme for Round 1 was Summertime. Pretty open-ended. I immediately thought of the Barbie Pool set I picked up on clearance a few years back that has been sitting in my basement with the other unused doll furniture I’ve collected. If the pool had been bigger (it’s about deep enough to come up to Barbie’s knees) I had dreams of Princessa with a fake shark fin, but…well things just didn’t work out that way. She’ll play her hand, just not this round.

This is the picture I ended up going with. It’s simple, and with the required contest size of 500×375 pixels, complicated pictures can backfire and look cluttered.

Runner-up was this shot. I almost went with this picture, but I felt it didn’t focus enough on Pajelle, who is supposed to be the contestant. And while it does a great job at saying ‘adorable’, not quite as good of a job at saying ’summer’

Zoomed out just a teensy bit more, and it becomes pretty obvious just how tiny the pool is. Still cute, but at this size, three is a crowd, and the pool’s at capacity

I put her through the rigors along with some 1/6 jointed bodies. Two are american, the new super-jointed barbie body and a Liv doll; two are asian, a 27cm obitsu and a type 4 pullip body.

The new moxie girl is jointed at the neck, wrist, elbow, shoulder, bust, hip, knee, and ankle. Not all articulation is equal though; the knee joints only hinge, they don’t hinge and pivot, which means no crossed legs. The bust joint also is pretty useless, it doesn’t really add much movement to the torso, either leaning or turning. The wrists and ankles are very nice. She has larger feet proportionately than the average fashion doll, but she is not balanced well enough to be able to stand alone. She didn’t come with a stand.

I really look forward to seeing the customization options and clothing that these dolls come out with. I really like the wig swapping aspect, and I think this will be a great intermediate doll for girls who are more interested in doing things with their dolls (like sewing–every try to turn a Barbie’s sleeve? Hahahaha…) that will encourage more creativity.

Here’s just hoping this differently-sized doll will beat the odds and catch on. She has a lot of potential, and I hope she lasts long enough for people to notice it.

The flea market is an excellent source for old toys, as well as weird props. A couple of weekends ago I found the bratz purse-case, as well as an American Girls doll trunk.

…it doesn’t look like much. The interior is even more run-down:

But I saw potential. BP (short for Big Pullip) needs a home. She’s a pullip head with a proportionate body, and… well, see for yourself:

(a little big for the dollhouses)

All of her clothes, shoes, and she herself need a place to be stored when she’s not sitting out modeling them. The trunk was around 2′ high, and I figured just the right size. Just desperately, desperately in need of remodeling. The contact paper I used on the purse was ordered for the case originally, I just decided to start with the small project first since I’ve never used it before. Aside from contact paper, I had a handy glue gun, but other than that it was just a matter of stripping and refinishing.

Yay! BP is slightly tall for the case, but a lot of that is her platform boots. Let’s see everything loaded up:

The outside’s still a bit dinged up, but I haven’t decided what to do with it yet. I may just polish up the brass edging and sand and spray paint over the scratches on the white. I might paint it another color. I might cover it with designs. Still thinking.