Bunny Gif

So top down game art was so difficult that after I did a semi good job on the character walk for the boyfriend I decided to make this before bedtime! Enjoy! hhaahahaa

 

Jurassic World Inspired Indominus Rex

It's been a while since I updated my blog, been drafting a lot but not had time to properly structure one to post. This is just a quick post, planning to prepare a better photoshoot of this little guy but just couldn't resist to share NOW! Basically me and my partner went and watched an 11pm screening the very night of Jurassic World came out last Thursday! And we totally loved it!!! I guess part of the reason for how much we loved it was because of how nostalgic it is for both of us having seen it when we were kids. It totally remind me of the kid inside of my old self right now. Made me realised how cool my dad was to have taken the whole family to see the best movies back in the days.  : ) I think I was very lucky to be old enough to watch it in 1993 and remember what I saw and felt after we came out of the cinema naturally thinking there would be a dinosaur around the corner!  ha ha!

For a long time I am either working on some new patterns to take me closer to having an etsy shop or making something for a friend. But the whole toy making hobby began just because I love toys and always thought it would be cool to make them. Not really a reason behind it. So I decided to make something for me for a change! And just started making the Idominus Rex from the film, have to say still a bigger fan of Raptors and T-Rex but he turns out better than I envisioned!! So here is my late night test shoot.

P.S I already made a dinosaur for a friend before and he's here!

 

 

 

Custom doll : Laura Jayne

Hello! So here is a second doll ordered by a friend for his girlfriend as a birthday present. A doll that I feel that's possibly the best thing I have ever made! Here she is in a silly gif that I didn't get all the right angles! But it looks kinda cool, not as good as one of my favourite crafter Nekranea though.

Weeeeee~~~

Brief
So I was given three photos from Adam, for the dress he wanted Laura Jayne to be wearing, the hair she should have and obviously a close up of what she looks like. So I made a cute pencil sketch concept to get Adam's to approve it first. The challenge for making any a doll for Laura is to be able to capture the essence of her even though I haven't met her yet at the point of designing. I have made many toys of friends before but I tend to exaggerate what stands out about them to make the toy remind me of that person more. So it is only Adam who would know if the design works or not! Luckily he was pretty happy with it, I certainly feel happy with it myself!

Hair

One of the key feature was her tidy neat fringe with the dip-dyed hair. It was perhaps one of the biggest headache I had. It required a bit more experimenting than I have time for. So in the end I went for felting two colours together instead of going through bleaching or dying any fibres. I think it worked quite well and the overall result is of 99% satisfaction for my standard! I am leaving 1% for improvement - always!!!! I think I must have done three bunches of these strands of hair of what you see in this image below or maybe I lost count! The actual fringe was  about 2 layers of work and then lots of sculpting around the front to make it sort of curved in nicely.

HAIRRRR~!

Face

For every doll or toy I made, the face is always something I enjoy making the most, I guess it's like when you bring life and personality to it. I also think if everything else is good but the face is bad, it ruins the whole thing. Through studying the photos I noticed Laura has brown eyes with some golden sparkles in them. I was really insisted in searching for this pair of perfect beads that are brown with golden glitter in them. I also wanted to add this necklace she was wearing in the picture because small details really make a doll extra special. Apart from these little things, I also tried out if having giving her proper lips would work however in the end I felt a basic smile works best for her. 

Some of my practicing lips.

Wasn't keen on this!

Much more sweet!

Which shades to pick hmm~!

The dress
Then there was the polka dot dress! It didn't occur to me that polka dot fabric wasn't easy to find! I think I visited about six different craft/fabric store to hunt down this lovely indian hand printed fabric. I did rush at first and purchased this cheaper version here but I felt the dots were too large for a tiny little doll. However it was good to use as a test dress. 

Rubbish looking dress here

And look how happy she is with the final dress!

I just love this cute necklace I made with a gold plated chain and of course the perfect beads for her eyes!

Packaging
The fun part but easily time consuming also!

1) Get the right box. 
2) Pick the correct colours to match the theme.
3) Get the right paper to print the relevant things. 
4) Decision - decorate the box or not?

Although time consuming yet it is such an key stage to present the doll in the best possble way. However I seem to be always running out of time and last time I messed up one box so this time I was careful to only stick the picture on the inside just incase I change my mind about it. Haha!

So here she is ready to go - isn't it perfect!

She is so adorable that it wasn't easy to let her go!!

Cool box from paperchase!

#002 Bum Tag!!

Finally I hope Laura enjoy her as much as I enjoyed making her and hope she had a very special Birthday!

And... here is a bonus underwear shot which I find quite funny:P haha!

Custom Knitted Doll - Joan

Happy New Year! May I use my first blog post in 2015 to introduce my first custom personalised doll for a friend's wife! It was a christmas present. So I kind of rushed everything a little bit towards the end but overall I am 99% happy with the result! The lucky lady Joan was thrilled how many likes she got on facebook over her very own doll. So I am happy that she is happy:)

Here is a little illustration I did for her.

I based this whole doll on this one I posted about here. Which has a crocheted body with a hand sewn dress. But this time I wanted the hair to be sculpted with merino wool so I could get the hair to look even more realistic than last time. I also wanted to finally try shrink plastic on the glasses.

A lot of the time if you are just making something for yourself you can go back and forth on projects because you don't have a deadline however when you do have one, you start to realise how some stages actually does take a lot longer than you think. However since it is such a special gift, I really wanted to nail things like hair colour and skin tone. In the end I tried three different shades for the skin, baked six pairs of failed glasses, crocheted an extra pair of legs and had to do the dress entirely by hand! The machine was too heavy handed on the intricate materials I had to use.

However despite the challenges I had, she was beautifully blossomed - how cheesy is this sentence!

Here is a close up of her with her cool glasses.

My proud sculpted hair with a cute ribbon.

I love random laying down shots.

Bum shot!! This is just show the cute signature of course!

Here she is ready to go~ she looks happy!

Bye Joan Lini! You will be missed!

Hopefully the next doll would come along soon!!! :) Wish you a happy and healthy 2015!!!