running off of pure mac n cheese

i like bugs, les mis, d&d, making dubiously functional clothing from scraps, worldbuilding, dollmaking, TMA, space and conlangs. All of these subjects are currently playing ping pong with my minuscule attention span

[eldritchseaslug]

Michael’s shirt and vest! (Sry for the shit photo)

I was originally going to make a separate post about the shirt, but then I had to take off the hands to get the vest on and now I can’t take it off so it’s a package now. The pose is a bit strange and I need to make some minor adjustments to the shirt and add a closure. I’m very proud of the vest, though. I didn’t have any quilt batting so I used two layers of thick fleece sandwiched between the actual fabric for the puffy look. It’s difficult to see on camera but trust me it’s there

He’s almost done now, all I need to make are the shoes, a scarf, and maybe a door and/or a map as accessories. He’s still bald because I’m on a trip and left his hair at home so once again enjoy bald Michael. Since I’m basically done with the doll for Helen, I think I might start working on Martin next

[eldritchseaslug]

just got reminded of the time my homophobic and transphobic aunt sent me a letter while I was away at an “all girls” (not really we were all queer) summer camp asking if there were any cute boys there…

I hadn’t come out to her yet because of said transphobia so one of my cabin mates convinced me to write back saying “me, bitch” with no return address and to this day my aunt has no clue what it means or who it was from. so that’s how I first came out to my aunt a year before I officially did lol

[eldritchseaslug]

Everything for Helen is sculpted!

The clay lost a bit of colour while baking so I went back in with paint and fixed it. It isn’t too far off, so I hope it won’t be too noticeable when it inevitably begins to chip. I think she might end up being a bit taller than Michael, which wasn’t the goal but I’m not too concerned about it.

[sublimememorypixel]

Check out the Les mis text chat :D community on Discord - hang out with 14 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.

Hello again! The server has been built up and it’s very fun! If you like role playing or even if you’re new to it come join! We are a welcoming community and would love to see more people join!

All available characters

Jean Valjean - taken

Javert - taken

Fantine

M Thénardier- taken

Mme Thénardier

Marius

Enjolras - taken

Grantaire - taken

Lesgles - taken

Cosette -taken

Eponine -taken

Gavroche - taken

Little Cosette

Little Eponine

Combeferre- taken

Courfeyrac- taken

Jean prouvaire

Feuilly

Bahorel

Joly

[eldritchseaslug]

Michael has pants and Helen has hands (and a torso)

I didn’t have time to fix Micheal’s hair so enjoy bald Michael. I’m not making a sketch for Helen just because I’m basically just resculpting Michael with some minor adjustments

[eldritchseaslug]

I tried casting with mica pigments and they worked! I didn’t want any kind of metallic sheen that mica usually gives, and using a resin that cured to white helped a lot with that. These are the joints I cast for Jester, Nott, Caleb, Essek and Mollymauk from cr campaign 2. I’m using Alumilite resin for these, so I’m not sure if it works with other polyurethane resins, but it did for this one.

[eldritchseaslug]

I’ve actually begun to plan which bjds I’m going to make, and since I’m getting into casting I have almost all of the parts cast for all of the characters I want to do. So, in order, it’s:

Helen Distortion (tma)

Martin Blackwood (tma)

Jonathan Sims (tma)

Gerard Keay (tma) (I must complete doorkeay)

Grantaire (Les mis)

Enjolras (Les mis)

Jean Prouvaire (Les mis)

Montparnasse (Les mis)

But I have also recently rediscovered critical role through the mighty nein tv series and I want to use up some of my more odd coloured clays, so I’m thinking of doing Jester or Mollymauk or Essek or Nott or Caleb. The thing is, I don’t have any green, blue or purple resin dyes, and I’m using polyurethane resin. I’m wondering if pigment powders will work? I’m going to do some small tests and see how it goes.

[eldritchseaslug]

He’s done!

Well, the doll part of him is. I was gonna do a separate post for his face and hair but something weird happened with the photos so I’m just doing it all in one. He’s about 25 cm tall and he holds poses so much better than Nikola does. I am very happy with how he turned out.

However, I don’t really know what to do for his outfit? I’ve got some general vibes and I’ve picked out some fabrics:

I’ve seen lots of fan-art with him in these bell-bottom like pants? And I know I want to incorporate some kind of jacket into the design since he went into the distortion in a pretty cold place. I’m thinking I’ll use the flower fabric for the pants but I genuinely have no idea what to do for the rest of him. I will gladly take suggestions I think I’ll also start sculpting Helen as well, since I'm still in the mindset of sculpting long and gangly creatures.

[eldritchseaslug]

His head is sculpted! I’m gonna need someone to trust the process for me because he’s looking a little rough rn. This is before sanding though so hopefully after sanding it’ll be better?

I think I also might start working on a Helen doll as well

[eldritchseaslug]

All the parts except for the head are casted/sculpted! I’m just going to do a bit of sanding before test stringing him to see if I need to make any changes. He’s also going to be VERY tall compared to Nikola, which I’m honestly not too angry about.

[eldritchseaslug]

so Michael has arms now. I fear I may have made them just a little bit too long… I really like the wrist joints though so I might just have to shorten the forearms somehow? I’ll need to sculpt the legs to check the proportions

[eldritchseaslug]

Progress on the Michael doll. The joints were all cast in resin. They were meant to all be yellow, but the elbows didn’t cast properly so I replaced them with some spares. I’m also trying out a new kind of joint for the shoulders, since I had a lot of trouble sculpting the upper arms last time. The hands were VERY fun to make. I showed them to a friend and he asked if I was making Edward scissorhands, which really isn’t all that far off.

I also switched over to polymer clay which was a very good decision. I used Apoxie clay for Nikola and the parts would always stick together during sculpting, but polymer clay doesn’t have that problem. The clay I’m using is translucent Sculpey Premo along with some scraps of a much cheaper and stickier polymer clay in order to colour it. The really cheap polymer clays can get very sticky, though, so the cost of the better clay was definitely worth it in my opinion.

[eldritchseaslug]

since I finished the sculpting of my Nikola doll, i think my next bjd sculpting project will be a Michael (distortion) doll.

still trying to go for the general not-quite-human theme here so that I can hide any of my mistakes behind the fact that it’s not really supposed to look all that human. I’ve seen a lot dolls from Doll Chateau that have extra joints and in general look pretty off putting so I think I’ll try to go for something like that here. I now kind of want to sculpt all of the rest of the avatars, going from the least human-shaped to the most human-shaped. I’ll definitely make a Helen to go with Michael, but knowing how prone I am to burnout, that’s probably as far as I’ll get in the list of avatars

[eldritchseaslug]

tried out some dyes for my bjd casting project. now I really don’t understand why doll companies don’t offer a larger range of colours. the darkest colours were honestly the easiest to work with. I was using alumilite dyes to colour the resin and those dyes are really weird. the most potent dye was yellow, which was very suprising.

I used syringes to fill the molds. I swear that I remember buying craft syringes at some point for a casting project, but I can’t find them, so now I no longer have a food safe marinade syringe.

[eldritchseaslug]

so my two part molds have now become one-part molds. i fully forgot to buy mold release while buying the other materials. the molds are still usable, though, I just cut some slits down the sides so I can get the casts out of them. the other photo is my first cast, which I chose to try doing without using syringes and it didn’t go well. I only managed to get actual casts of the hip joints and everything else didn’t fill the molds properly. I’ll try again after using syringes and see how it goes

[eldritchseaslug]

I’m trying my hand at resin casting. these are the first halves of the two-part silicon molds. I have enough silicon and resin to probably cast the whole doll, however I unfortunately decided to do this only after I sueded the doll. so these are just the joints. this also means I can sculpt other dolls with different body shapes though, so that’s going to be nice. Im trying my best without a pressure pot, which isn’t ideal since the silicone I had on hand had a six minute working time and a ten minute cure time. so this might not even work out.

[eldritchseaslug]

some enjoltaire sketches for a vaguely arcane-inspired au I’m writing. I’m not Ai I just can’t be bothered to draw hands rn

the fic is here if anyone wants to read it. not sure if I’ll continue, I’ve hit the literal worst writers block of my entire life and my motivation is in hell smoking weed with satan