art journal, wip graveyard

[bernica-art]

Cole Dole (Coll Doll) part 5

Shirt and Belts

I'm combining these because they're both fairly simple and also low on, eh, documentation. I did not take photos of the process, is what I'm saying.

The shirt was actually the first item of clothing I made, not long after completing the sculpting.

I think I drafted a pattern using the "wrap in tape then cut it off" pattern making method, but it's a pretty standard basic shirt, apart from the extra materials.

I made a complete shirt with a kind of yellowy canvas fabric, and just sewed the extra bits on top.

The materials and colours are not quite game accurate, I think I mentioned in a previous post that there was something funky going on with the xbox version of the game, where the colours and/or textures were displaying incorrectly half the time.

Like this:

Versus in a cut-scene:

So yeah, I just kind of split the difference with what fabrics I already had on hand. I think the padding on his shoulder is more kind of like velvet in game? Whereas mine is a more leathery texture.

I'm not entirely happy with the lower edge of the shirt, though it's fairly accurate to game. It's just kind of laughably theatrically scrappy, rather than a representation of how real fabric would naturally wear/fray.

This rear view probably shows most of the "how".

You can see the shirt is asymmetrical at the back so the fasteners (tiny press-studs at the top and small of the back) are roughly centred. You can also see how I entirely failed to take into account that the pants needed to fit under the shirt (they weren't made yet, in my defence).

The collar is actually a recent addition, after I assembled the doll in the full costume and was like, "hm, something's missing". It's not very obvious in the game, except at certain angles, but adding it to the shirt definitely helped tie everything together (to me, anyway).

As for the belt, it's pretty much just a long rectangle of the reddish leathery stuff I used elsewhere, with a rounded shape of a different (thinner) leathery fabric glued on top. There's press stud at the back for this as well, you can see the seam on the left side.

The two smaller belts function more or less like actual belts, complete with working miniature buckles (shout-out to CharleneluDesign on etsy).

They're just thin strips of a couple of different brown leathery fabrics I had, you may recognise the leather on the bottom belt as the same as his pants.

I kind of like how, even if it's not strictly game-accurate, I've been able to tie most of the fabrics together somehow. Like the red on his shoulder and the belt are the same fabric (actually, admittedly I think they use the same material for both in game as well), and the greenish leather on his shirt is the same as his shoes.

Oh, a final detail that was super simple is his... gloves? Cuffs? Hand... thingies? They were just a rectangle of fabric, folded in half and sewn down the side, with a hole to stick his thumb through. I used a slightly stretchy knit fabric, so I didn't even need to hem it or anything, it took like 10 minutes.

Next post will be his hat and then his head, I guess, or just a full reveal? idk.

Sorry there weren't process pictures for this one, but I think I kept all the patterns if anyone wants them (severely unpolished).

[bernica-art]

Cole Dole (Coll Doll) part 4

Just gonna talk briefly about flexibility improvements for customising store bought dolls.

Without completely rebuilding the joints, there are some simple edits you can make by carving or sanding certain areas.

For Cole, I carved out his knee and hip joints for pretty significant (imo) flexibility improvements.

The original flexibility in the legs was pretty bad lol, but I've seen worse.

I used a sharp craft knife to carve the plastic, but I think some people use like electric engraver tools to rapidly file areas. If you use a knife, watch your fingies, I've stabbed myself more times than I can count on my remaining fingers (jk I still have all 10, miraculously).

I actually didn't end up altering any of the other joints for this doll. The flexibility was generally fine, and I didn't think I could get any improvements worth damaging sculpted areas.

[bernica-art]

Cole Dole (Coll Doll) part 3 - PANTS

Continuing on the Cole Doll journey, we find ourselves at the pants. These were a real rollercoaster to make, and if they didn't look so cool I'd be really mad about the costume design.

They appear to be made of leather straps stitched in a plait/herringbone pattern down the front and back, with some leather strappy things down the ankle on the outside.

A more sensible person would have probably just painted the design on an ordinary pair of sewn pants, or omitted that part of the design altogether for doll scale, but I am everything but sensible.

The failures:

Putting them in one image like this really underplays how much time was spent on them, but it all led to the final success so the time wasn't wasted (right??).

These pants will always haunt me, they were so close!

In the end, I found a much lighter fabric that has kind of a leathery effect while being very thin and not rubbery. I guess time will tell if it degrades as well (pray for me).

I started with some basic yoga pants in a stretchy brown fabric from my scrap bin, and, keeping them on the doll, I wrapped and glued the strips of the new faux leather fabric on top of them.

Sorry, I don't have process photos from while I was wrapping and stuff because it was a lot of fiddly gluing and I didn't know if it would work (nothing worse than recording a process only for it to be another failure).

The design ended up being a little bit different to the game, as the seam is up the back of the legs rather than the sides, but I think it was a reasonable compromise for the scale of the doll, and it made them much more flexible than the original.

So without further ado, the final results:

You never see the closure in the game, but I figured this kind of closure made sense. So while they are technically removable, I won't be removing them unless I absolutely have to. My heart couldn't take it if I tore them getting them on or off.

I'm really happy with how they turned out in the end, and I absolutely won't be revising the design again.

[bernica-art]

Cole Dole (Coll Doll) part 2

He is finished!

The doll I started while my dad was dying in 2023 is finally done!

Unfortunately I don't have a lot of process photos, because a lot of my process is trial and error, and there's usually a lot of trials and a great many errors before I call something done.

One time I tried to make a video of a project I had been working on, spent hours cutting down the footage, only to find, as I reached the end of the clip, that I'd completely given up on the process I'd been using and started over from scratch. Needless to say, I never finished the video and never tried making a cute tutorial again.

I do however have a few prototypes I've saved so there's some potential for insight there.

I'll do posts sort of in the order I made things, starting with his shoes.

Cole wears these adorable little pointed slippers/clogs that I really want in my size. These are the main reference images I used, they're not ideal, but at the time I only had the game on xbox and there was no like "free camera" mode to zoom in on things.

I started out making a pattern with the ol' "cling wrap and masking tape over the body part" patterning technique, with the intention of sewing them.

However, once they were sewn it was clear that they were terrible and not the correct shape at all (if you're picking up that I'm a perfectionist, there is no prize for that).

So I sculpted them out of light air dry clay instead (any brand would do, I use stuff from Daiso):

I like light clay because it's so light (wow) and doesn't set completely rock solid. Sometimes it can be annoying to work with, but it worked out really well for the shoes. I don't think I even put any lining over the feet, the clay isn't super sticky so they pulled right off when they were dry. After that, I covered them with green faux suede, and brown for the soles.

I'm gonna be real with you, I genuinely don't know the exact colour they're supposed to be, I think like a camel brown? I'm pretty sure there's a lighting bug on xbox because the colours and textures on the clothes at "home" and in cutscenes look way different out in the world.

Anyway I already had the green faux suede and I was using it on his jerkin so I figured it would tie in okay (not the only artistic liberty I took in this project).

Behold, the final shoes:

I'll post the pants next, they were an absolute nightmare. 🙃

[bernica-art]

Cole Dole (Coll Doll)

Been working on a doll of Cole Dragon Age on and off since early 2023.

Summary for the uninformed: Dragon Age Inquisition is a video game, and Cole is a companion character in the adventure. He’s a spirit of compassion in the form of a young man, and the most precious cinnamon roll you will ever meet.

I had to horribly maim an innocent BTS doll to sculpt his unique features (sorry I know nothing about BTS, the dolls were briefly cheap and make great bases for custom male doll projects (basically impossible to get male dolls with any posability for cheap??)).

I think I did the head shrinking in acetone thing, then carved him up and sculpted over with Apoxie Sculpt.

Sculpting the face took ages, I retried several times, screamed, cried, threw up… bon appetit.

Once sculpting was done, I completely painted the face and took a bunch of pictures, then decided I hated it and stripped it back to do over. This is a trend for me.

RIP Cole’s first face (shown here), his new one is much better anyway (especially now he has hair covering it, as The Maker intended).

Anyway, the doll is getting close to finished now so I figured I might as well start sharing the process.

I can’t manage clear or aesthetic process pictures, but I’m open to questions and can probably get more photos if anyone wanted to see something specific.

Once he’s fully finished I’ll make my best attempt at a proper photoshoot, but until then the best I can do is grubby candid shots on my goblin trashpile of a work space.

Currently I’m wrestling with his hat and gearing up for my 500th attempt at his pants because apparently every faux leather vinyl on earth falls apart after 5 minutes??

To be continued…