#jellyfishin tutorial

[jellyfishin]

New Mettaton doll (+ test to make a posable needlefelt doll with minimal wire skeleton)

Years ago, I had an active side blog called @mtt-doll-photo which was a doll photography blog for a needlefelt Mettaton doll.

There were a myriad of reasons why I stopped uploading to that side blog, but one of those reasons I stopped is that the doll took quite a beating and the internal skeleton kept getting broken after extensive use.

The initial skeleton was made of wire, which broke frequently in the pelvic and knee region a lot. I did try bendy straws at one point, and while it worked, it turned out excessive use (mostly compression) resulted in plastic deformation. After some time, I made the ultimate decision to "retire" that doll and make a new one, which is what you see above.

I decided for the second time around to make the Mettaton doll shorter (5 inches) for the sake of being travel size, and that I wanted to minimize the use of wires as much as possible. The design I came up with was akin to that of a simple ball-jointed doll, except it's with needlefelted body parts that are held together with sewing string.

What I like about this design is that any stress on the joints would result in string breaking instead of wire breaking, and so it's a lot easier to go in there and fix the joints with a needle and thread instead of cutting the body open and finagling with wires.

Of the only gripe I have with this design is the knees, which don't quite bend as well as I like, and I think they could have been better made by making the leg as three separate parts (thigh, knee, calf+foot) instead of two parts (thigh, knee+calf+foot). But it works sufficiently enough.

I did a test run of dragging him with me across my recent trip to Scandinavia, and he survived, so I'd like to think this approach will withstand much more beating and I will use this technique for any future needlefelt dolls going forwards.

[jellyfishin]

Turning two wooden beads into a chibi figure.

I posted this before on a forum, and figured it was worth re-posting my in-process photos here. Not quite a tutorial (even though I did tag it as such), but it does contain a lot of useful info that could be seen as a instructive step-by-step process.

First part was making a to-scale drawing of the chibi figure I wanted to create. I wasn't looking for complete perfection, but I needed some guidance on how the proportions would be like based on the two beads I was using. The proportion of the beads lent to a chibi that is 2.5 heads tall.

Second part was carving the base in order to get the desired chibi body, and then gluing the body onto the head. Due to the way end-grain does not stick together, I threaded a pipe-cleaner (doused in glue) into the bead holes to ensure the head won't separate from the body.

Third part was applying clay to the face. I used a crude air dry clay made out of toilet paper, flour, and glue, which was then sanded down to get the result below. Drawing the facial features helps to figure out where to sand where necessary.

More clay, more drawing features onto the figure, more sanding. At this point, most of the "clay" is just layered toilet paper and glue (so it's technically more like papier-mâché), which lends fairly well to drawing clothing and hair bangs.

When the final sculpting was finished, the whole thing was coated in a primer. My preference was for a white undercoat here (though any color primer would work here, depending on the sculpture in question).

I didn't take any pictures of the painting process (though I figure that might be something that's fairly straightforwards). Hopefully you guys found this helpful, or at least interesting.

[jellyfishin]

Needlefelt doll armature test

Hey guys, long time no post, at least on this blog. Been busy, but the ongoing pandemic has caused me to be stuck at home, and cabin fever has forced me to be creative. 

If you’ve been following me on my side blog @mtt-doll-photo​, you might have noted that, in December, I mentioned that poor Mettaton’s knees broke, and this put Mettaton into a bit of retirement from his modeling career. 

This actually wasn’t the first time the knees got busted. I had done some quick wire repairs when the first break occurred. But this isn’t a great solution for a needlefelt doll that gets a pretty significant amount of wire-bending abuse. 

So, this time around, instead of doing wire repairs, I wanted to find a more hardy solution, one that could better withstand constant bending. 

I kept wracking my brain for the past few months on what could work better than wire. But just a few days ago, I finally came up with an idea: BENDY STRAWS.

Specifically, the ones you find on most kiddie-sized juice packs. 

And they totally worked out! 

I don’t know if this bendy straw armature will work for everyone, but decided to share my process on how I did Mettaton’s knee replacement surgery. (I’m gonna warn right now that this post will go into a bit of doll body horror. You may want to properly brace yourself. Anyway, onward).

Replacing the knees...

I though replacing the knees would be a simple process:

chop the leg in half at the knee

remove broken wire in calf, round the end of the wire in the thigh

cut the long ends of the straws to appropriate size

ram one end of the straw into the thighs and the other end into the calf

sew legs back together at knee joint

It ends up the process became a bit more complicated.

Upon cutting the legs at the knee, I saw that there were no wires sticking out of the thighs, and I had a hard time feeling the thigh wire out. This had me wondering if the armature break was more severe than I thought.  So I cut along the thigh to see the damage. 

The wire in his thigh was mangled.

I could have straightened up the wire here, but wire has a tendency to become harden when it is bent and straightened several times. And that’s not good for this type of doll. 

In knowing that the hip was also a point of stress, I decided that a hip replacement surgery was also necessary.

Replacing the hip...

I gutted out the wire at the hips and rounded the end of the wire that made up the spine. I then grabbed two more straws, and rammed the short end of the straws up into the torso until the bendy part reached where the hip was. This gave an added bonus of giving Mettaton a bit of a stronger spine. 

I forgot to take a photo here, but essentially I cut the long end of the hip straw to a reasonable length and overlapped the thigh straws to connect them together. A ladder stitch was then used to reconnect the leg parts again, as well as sew up the thigh where I made the cut. 

After some quick felting patchwork, it’s leggy bending time!

An unusual observation to note: because the bendy part of the straw is now under slight compression, they sort of want to stretch out, resulting in Mettaton becoming a bit more taller. 

[jellyfishin]

Doll hair experiment

A while back, I saw a couple of YouTube videos and a Tumblr post about how acrylic yarn can be used to make customized doll hair for plastic dolls (such as Barbies or Monster High dolls).

I’m also been looking into acrylic fiber, and it seems like yarn can be brushed out to get fiber for needle felting.

And then this crazy idea popped into my head: perhaps there’s a way to combine the two, such that you could make yarn hair for needle felted dolls?

I didn’t entertain the idea that much. Until now. I recently went to a community swap recently and managed to obtain a fist-sized ball of red acrylic yarn. And let’s just say a certain needle felted doll modeled after a certain red-headed fish lady has now become my first victim subject for this experiment.

Yeah, I was daring enough to try and redo Undyne’s hair with acrylic yarn.

So, I started off with making a long hair weft with yarn...

I measured a piece of yarn around Undyne’s original hairline and added 2 inches extra to get one long string.

I then cut out several smaller pieces of yarn 2x the length of hair I wanted and tied it to the longer yarn string, until I got my desired weft length.

Big mistake: I thought I could get away with just brushing the yarn out with a doll brush, but that wasn’t working. I had to detangle the yarn strands here by hand. The brushing worked better after manually detangling.

Speaking of which, I knew that brushing causes some fiber to be pulled out. But I had no idea how much leftover fiber I would get.

..... Yeah that’s a lot of fiber.....

Anyway, here’s what happened after I finished brushing.

The result was rather frizzy, and the strands retained some curl to them. Not that this was a bad thing - I could imagine making something like this in the future if I plan on ever making curly-haired or frizzy-haired characters - but, for my experiment, I needed the hair mostly straight. So I dunked the weft under some hot tap water and began brushing out the yarn some more, which got rid of most of the curl.

It looked pretty good at this point so far.

Now, typically, if making this for a plastic doll, the hair strands would be put through a straightening iron set at low heat to make it shiny; however, since I’m making this for a needlefelted doll, I just kept it as is at this point.

Now, for the moment of truth: Could I needle felt this weft?

I carefully pulled off the original hair from Undyne’s head. I prepared my needles to stab the weft onto the back of her head. And...

... it didn’t work. T-T

Well, okay that’s kind of a lie. The acrylic weft did felt into the head, but the connection was really weak and could be dislodged easily even with gentle handling. :(

My guess is that the weft was pretty bulky from the start, and it’s overall design made it difficult for fiber to penetrate into the head. I could see the possibility of felting on loose hair strands instead of a long weft. Or, maybe tying yarn onto sewing string so the weft isn’t too bulky and the fiber could dig deeper more easily.

There was also the possibility that dunking the weft under hot water caused some of the acrylic fibers to straighten, making the fibers less rough and less likely to felt.

I also have to consider the fact that Undyne is made of polyester that has been felted over a foam core. So there is also the possibility that the acrylic fiber isn’t sticking too well into the foam core. Maybe the yarn hair requires a felted core in order to stick properly.

So, yeah. Kind of a fail. But not completely.

I was getting pretty impatient at this point, though. Making the weft was a very time-consuming process (that’s why my pics are taken over a laptop, I was watching YouTube videos the entire time). I didn’t feel like cutting the hair from the weft to felt into the head. I proceeded to sew the weft on to the head instead.

That hair was super unmanageable, though. Particularly the hair fringe.

A common trick used for treating Barbie doll hair that has gone frizzy is to dunk the hair into boiling water. I did the same thing here. I pulled the hair into a ponytail and dunked the ponytail and hair fringe into near-boiling water (basically just heated some water in the microwave) and began to style the hair with a doll comb while it was still hot.

Undyne’s hair looks way better now. :)

[jellyfishin]

Needle felting with felt sheets

So for anyone who saw my reblog post regarding a certain Undyne doll, you’ll know that my needlefelting methodology is very unconventional for big projects, working primarily with felt sheets and packing foam. That explanation of my methodology was very brief, though.

This is kind of more an extension to that reblog post, going into more detail. This isn’t really a tutorial - it’s more “what I did” instead of “how I did it” - but you can see how I used this method in my current project.

1. First part was making the wire frame. Normally I go for soft jewelry wire for my posable stuff, but this time I’m working on something smaller, so I opted for craft pipe cleaners. (FYI: I’m working on a character that has a T. rex body with buck teeth and head frills.)

2. Next part was adding spongy packing foam to the wire frame via sewing needle and thread (you can see the black thread sweeping a bit over the leg there). I didn’t bother putting foam on the limbs, because it would make them too bulky.

I’ve seen videos where people felt over a melamine foam base to make squishies. However, I find those have a tendency to act a bit too “crumbly” when I try to sew it. The packing foam I’m using seems to be better here since they have a bit more “give” when pulled during the sewing process.

3. Now for adding felt sheets onto the foam core. Pretty basic method: apply the felt sheet over the area, and felt onto the foam. I ended up having to snip out the foam at the tail end, though. The foam was densely packed there and the needle would not go through it.

Below is how it looks like after I finished applying the yellow felt sheet over it. That tail is looking too skinny at the end, but that’s an easy fix: I just add more yellow sheets on top of it to bulk it up.

4. Went to work on building the face and head. This took the longest time to do. Eyelashes were sewn on with black thread. The upper lip was made by cutting out a small strip of felt sheet, folding it over to create a rounded-looking crease, and then felting the crease strip in the desired area.

6. Now for the legs. Pretty much just a case of wrapping felt sheets and slowly building up the leg.

7. And here it is nearly completed. Just gotta add the claw hands now.

[jellyfishin]

Digimon Okuwamon Keychain Re-paint

For years in my possession was an old Digimon keychain (in the shape of Okuwamon, a Kuwagamon derivative) that I salvaged from a street vendor's trash bin. It was not the greatest-looking thing, and I've been meaning to remove the mold flashing and re-paint it, which I did so just recently.

I did the repaint as I would approach painting a D&D miniature (albeit using generic acrylic paint as that's all I have on hand). The figure, by the way, was some kind of soft pliable black plastic (solid, though), and this made it hard to paint since you can't file a pliable plastic surface down to fix flashing or make surfaces smooth.

Needless to say, it's not my best re-paint job (and the figure came out darker than I wanted as I forgot to take into consideration the final black wash). But I like it better than the original paint regardless.

Interesting is that the figure has some fine details, such as a muscle definition in the legs, teeth in the back of the jaw, and details on the underside of the gossamer wings (which you can see in the photo below). Unfortunately, with the way the model was designed, a lot of these interesting details get obscured upon assembly (probably in favor of keeping the pincer claws close to the body and less out-of-the way).

There were no markings on the keychain to indicate if this is an official keychain sanctioned by Bandai (holder of the Digimon franchise as of current) or if it's a bootleg. Regardless of which, I thought it was interesting that the figure in question was of Okuwamon even though this particular Digimon species is never in the position of main antagonist (they almost always a first-encounter or grunt enemy in the Digimon franchise).

[jellyfishin]

Easy way to make patterns for doll clothes

For those who might be familiar with my @mtt-doll-photo​ blog, you might know I go out of my way to make unique clothing for my felt dolls. I thought I’d talk about how I make the sewing patterns for them. 

The method is essentially the Saran wrap tutorial for making custom-fit sewing patterns, and if you watch AkameruKawaii (YouTube), you’ll notice she also uses this same technique. The method is a bit crude, but it’s very quick and effective, especially if you have a doll that’s a custom size and unique shape. 

Step 1: Wrap doll in plastic food wrap. 

If you’re making pants, make sure to cover the crotch area. If you’re making clothes with sleeves, make sure to get the armpits. 

Some advice - if you’re making clothing for a cloth doll (or felt doll, in my case), wrap loosely. You don’t want to clothes to be so tight on the doll that you risk pilling on the doll later. 

Step 2: Cover in masking tape. 

Technically, any tape that you can write and drape loosely will work here, but masking tape (also known as painter’s tape) works the best. 

If you’re making clothing with sleeves, make sure the dolls arms are stretched out. 

If you’re making pants, make sure the legs are in standing position (that is, legs pointed down). 

Step 3: Draw out pattern.

Bit of a bad angle here, but there are lines going out from the armpit to the cuff, lines going out from the armpit to the bottom hem of the shirt, as well as lines going out from the crotch to the pant hem. 

Overall, you want to draw the pattern in such a way that the pieces will lay flat when they are cut out later. 

Step 4: Cut out pattern

Pretty self explanatory. Labeling left/right and front/back parts is a good idea so you can easily reference the pieces later.

Just remember to add an appropriate seam allowance around the pattern when using them. 

[jellyfishin]

My stovetop steam setup for baking polymer clay

For those involved in the polymer clay community, you’ve probably come across some inventive or crazy ways of trying to bake the stuff. For me, my method involves steam produced over a stovetop. 

Basically, I heat the water until it’s boiling, place my polymer pieces on top of a glazed tile, and then place the glazed tile on the rack.

I don’t have a clear baking time ratio with this method, though I have found that the following works for me (using Sculpey UltraLight):

a minute or less for items that are no more than 2mm thick. I found it easier to count to 10 seconds, then shut off the heat and walk away for a minute for very thin pieces

15-20 minutes for items that are closer to 0.5in thick. 

Except for one oddball case, I haven’t encountered any sort of scorching with this method. I’ve used this method primarily for chibi charms and miniatures, so don’t have a good gauge on what baking times would be like for super big pieces. 

Some cons to baking this method:

A downside to this method I found is the effect that “wet” steam can have on the polymer clay piece (by “wet” steam, I mean steam that is saturated enough that condensate pools up on the piece during the baking process). It kind of sometimes made the polyclay slightly... mushy? 

I think it’s because the water was getting into crevices of the pieces and affecting the way the PVC bonds as the plasticizers evaporate. Mind you, I primarily use Sculpey UltraLight, which is a very soft polyclay. I’m not sure how a more dense polyclay (such as regular Sculpey or Fimo) would react, and that’s something I would have to try.

Baking the pieces at the point where the water just starts boiling (as opposed to when it’s already boiling) seems to be the best way to avoid that for really small sculptures, but I imagine avoiding wet steam would be harder for larger sculptures that require a longer baking time.