BugMemory

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Drew my boy Clyde

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Drew my boy Clyde

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I'm working on a few of the numbered n signed limited edition art prints for Resin Rose. I couldn't get a good foil print from my usual printer, so I'm adding gold accents to all of these by hand! Which means they will all be unique! Each one might have slightly different gold parts, amount of gold, etc.

Also as a lil update, I have finished three of the four large Werewolf Violet dolls. I want to post pics here, and I still might sometime soon, but it's kind of a drag when I take the time to harmoniously censor them myself only for Tumblr to flag them as adult just because I sculpted a semi-realistic monster body? So... yeah... if you follow me other places, there are photos there. Thanks yall.

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Reunited

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Welcoming some thoughts on how I handle preorders in the future

Hey all, this is the only site where I can type more than a few words about this, but, basically I've been contemplating changing how I take orders a bit

Basically, the resin I use is costly to a prohibitive degree for me to exclusively create ready-made dolls; however, I kind of want to move in the direction of not having more than one or two orders I am printing at a time. Because I make larger dolls, they take a good amount of individual attention and effort, and even doing five of the large Werewolf Violet orders has taken quite a bit longer than I would have liked (they are all printed, and I only have one other paid off one I need to send out, but I still am a little disappointed in myself that they are taking me this long. I think it's mostly because I delayed them to make stock for NYC Doll Con, though, and I feel like delaying finishing those preorders was a bad business decision on my part).

But, anyway, I'm kind of wondering how I can do this while still being fair to those who want to purchase my work, as well as being able to accept layaways as well.

Basically I wonder whether I should open like, one or two "slots" every month or so for printing projects. These could potentially be for only certain sculpts of mine, or only one sculpt that I am accepting orders for. I dislike the idea of infinitely offering a particular sculpt, however, so I'm not planning on still offering like, Werewolf Violet a year from now.

I know that some artists who do commissions will have people fill out a form and then they'll pick a few of the projects they want to do. However, that doesn't really work for me because I'm offering a specific sculpt, so my work is going to be mostly the same with slight variations in color or smaller special requests that wouldn't affect which orders I accept or not. So it's basically first-come, first-serve? I just feel bad that it comes down to whoever can fill out the form the fastest. Is that just how it is? I definitely will give people a heads up on the time and make sure it's exactly that, but I'm wondering if that's the best way to take orders for dolls. If anyone has thoughts on this or knows of how other smaller doll artists do this, please let me know.

[bug-memory]

Welcoming some thoughts on how I handle preorders in the future

Hey all, this is the only site where I can type more than a few words about this, but, basically I've been contemplating changing how I take orders a bit

Basically, the resin I use is costly to a prohibitive degree for me to exclusively create ready-made dolls; however, I kind of want to move in the direction of not having more than one or two orders I am printing at a time. Because I make larger dolls, they take a good amount of individual attention and effort, and even doing five of the large Werewolf Violet orders has taken quite a bit longer than I would have liked (they are all printed, and I only have one other paid off one I need to send out, but I still am a little disappointed in myself that they are taking me this long. I think it's mostly because I delayed them to make stock for NYC Doll Con, though, and I feel like delaying finishing those preorders was a bad business decision on my part).

But, anyway, I'm kind of wondering how I can do this while still being fair to those who want to purchase my work, as well as being able to accept layaways as well.

Basically I wonder whether I should open like, one or two "slots" every month or so for printing projects. These could potentially be for only certain sculpts of mine, or only one sculpt that I am accepting orders for. I dislike the idea of infinitely offering a particular sculpt, however, so I'm not planning on still offering like, Werewolf Violet a year from now.

I know that some artists who do commissions will have people fill out a form and then they'll pick a few of the projects they want to do. However, that doesn't really work for me because I'm offering a specific sculpt, so my work is going to be mostly the same with slight variations in color or smaller special requests that wouldn't affect which orders I accept or not. So it's basically first-come, first-serve? I just feel bad that it comes down to whoever can fill out the form the fastest. Is that just how it is? I definitely will give people a heads up on the time and make sure it's exactly that, but I'm wondering if that's the best way to take orders for dolls. If anyone has thoughts on this or knows of how other smaller doll artists do this, please let me know.

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hi! i wanted to ask if you have a store page or shop link?

Hello! I currently have a ko-fi; it has some prints and my remaining human Violet heads!

Visit BugMemory's Shop!

Support BugMemory and see exclusive content on Ko-Fi!

As an fyi for anyone who is wondering about full dolls, I don't typically put full dolls in the shop because I usually do preorders and can't afford to do "in stock" dolls between those and making stuff for conventions

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A comparison photo showing the sphinx prototype with my 68cm human Violet (on the 68cm Impldoll Idol body). She's the size of an actual irl cat! Like I said in the last post, I have some revisions to do, which will take some time, but I think I can make her great.

This is with a custom head for my personal copy, rather than the sphinx head that I will include by default.

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I strung my sphinx prototype yesterday! She needs many revisions, which I'm sad about because that means my printers will once again be occupied by her rather than by printing more of hers to later sell at Resin Rose, but, it is what it is.

I think she looks pretty good in photos, but I'm not gonna lie, posing her was very frustrating, as her front "shoulder" pieces don't want to stay in the torso right now (they are basically held together strung side-to-side and that needs to be changed to going upright into the head, I think, but I also have to change the sculpt for that). Her legs are otherwise perfect though which I'm happy with. There were several things on this doll that were uncharted territory engineering-wise (both for me and as far as I could tell in my research), so I'm making things up as I go and revisions aren't that surprising--just a bit disappointing.

The wing I test printed was good, but the part where it connects to the body had basically no mobility, so I'm going to revise that as well.

I'm going to see if I can combine literally every bottle of extra resin I don't use for her second prototype, because I really don't want to swing a couple hundred right now to get more.

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A comparison photo showing the sphinx prototype with my 68cm human Violet (on the 68cm Impldoll Idol body). She's the size of an actual irl cat! Like I said in the last post, I have some revisions to do, which will take some time, but I think I can make her great.

This is with a custom head for my personal copy, rather than the sphinx head that I will include by default.

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I was wondering what sculpting program you use to make your dolls? I’ve been looking to make my own for a while but I’m not sure what program to use?

Hello! I use Nomad Sculpt on an iPad Pro. I used to use it on my regular iPad, but since they have updated it over the years, I feel like it would crash more often because the program has been improved to have more stuff and a regular iPad doesn't handle it very well anymore.

If you already have a regular iPad, you could try downloading it and see if you like using it. It won't crash until you have many "pieces" at a higher resolution, and technically you could mitigate this for a while with decimation or even splitting it into multiple files (which I had to do for my first sculpt, Muriel, when I was sculpting with my regular iPad)

If you're open to using Nomad,--which I recommend because it seems easiest to learn out of the sculpting programs--I would recommend getting a used iPad Pro on Swappa, which tends to have better quality secondhand iPads

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A comparison photo showing the sphinx prototype with my 68cm human Violet (on the 68cm Impldoll Idol body). She's the size of an actual irl cat! Like I said in the last post, I have some revisions to do, which will take some time, but I think I can make her great.

This is with a custom head for my personal copy, rather than the sphinx head that I will include by default.

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I strung my sphinx prototype yesterday! She needs many revisions, which I'm sad about because that means my printers will once again be occupied by her rather than by printing more of hers to later sell at Resin Rose, but, it is what it is.

I think she looks pretty good in photos, but I'm not gonna lie, posing her was very frustrating, as her front "shoulder" pieces don't want to stay in the torso right now (they are basically held together strung side-to-side and that needs to be changed to going upright into the head, I think, but I also have to change the sculpt for that). Her legs are otherwise perfect though which I'm happy with. There were several things on this doll that were uncharted territory engineering-wise (both for me and as far as I could tell in my research), so I'm making things up as I go and revisions aren't that surprising--just a bit disappointing.

The wing I test printed was good, but the part where it connects to the body had basically no mobility, so I'm going to revise that as well.

I'm going to see if I can combine literally every bottle of extra resin I don't use for her second prototype, because I really don't want to swing a couple hundred right now to get more.

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I'm hoping to string my sphinx prototype today! The wing needs revisions (specifically, the "shoulder" part needs to be split into two pieces for better mobility), but the rest is okay enough that I can get a working prototype. I have a few minor revisions to do to certain pieces, but overall she's looking as expected. I have a sort of unusual stringing method for her and hope it works out the way I want. It might be more work for me to string because there are sharp angles and stuff but I hope it pays off in better functionality.

The head on here is the head for my personal copy, which is a human Violet head that I added the sphinx sculpt's ears to. I do have the sphinx head printed though and that one will probably be in the photos I end up posting/using. The Boris head I recently sculpted (which is an old dude), also fits this sculpt and I will probably offer it as an option, since I'm not offering it anywhere else.

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Would someone pay me to illustrate a sphinx-themed tarot deck

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Reunited

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Some screenshots of my finished sphinx bjd! I'm going to start the process of prototyping this tomorrow (and start my most hated process of doing supports and text labels on the different pieces). But, I'm excited to have this doll in irl form soon!