about the return of commissions

i'm making this post because i've gotten a bunch of inquiries about the status of my commissions & a possible waiting list.

i've done a lot of comms this year, and individually, they have all been fun projects. i've gotten to work with refreshing character designs, and my clients have been lovely and very understanding of whatever small delays and troubles have happened.

however, as a collective thing, commissions have really driven home the fact that i'm disabled. i knew i couldn't do regular work, but thought i might be able to handle working from home, and at a thing i love. turns out i can't. this is good to know, since i'm applying for legal disability status anyway, but still not super fun to find out.

this doesn't mean i'm closing commissions forever. i am, however, going to scale down and move to some kind of a slot system, with few slots available.

now that my comm queue is finally empty, i will have a break. i'll reasses the situation in early 2025, and might do one/some of the following things:

a custom commission for @honig-bienchen! my final commission project for the year, and one of the most fun. i've been wanting to make a dragonborn doll for a while, but had not gotten around to it, and this character design was incredibly cute & a joy to work with.

an iridescent weirdo. this was a very stream-of-consciousness type of sculpt; i wanted to make something that was very deep in my comfort zone, and just fun. also i wanted it to work well in this lovely multicolor printer filament that i haven't gotten to use in a long time.

some wips of my newest project!

this one will have hair, maybe a cape of some sort, and possibly mechanical wings, but i'm not quite sure how i'll approach any of those things, so i'm posting her as she currently is. i've really enjoyed doing projects that involve both making the base sculpt and a fair bit of post-printing customization, and painting & adding details to this doll was mega fun to spend my weekend on. the sculpt itself just kind of happened; couldn't exactly tell you why she is a steampunk violin demon girl, except that it was what i found fun in the moment.

thank you!

i can't give very good tips for learning, since sculpting is not something i've ever actively studied, but something that i've always been doing and gradually gotten better at. crafting has been my hyperfixation since i was a toddler, so my skills have developed organically by doing all kinds of projects.

i started sculpting digitally a bit over a year ago now. my partner had just taken a course in 3d modeling, so they relayed some basic information about blender's functions, like modifiers and the edit mode, to me. i think i watched one youtube tutorial about the sculpt mode, and then just started fucking around and finding out. i found it quite beginner-friendly, and would encourage people to go experiment, with or without a guide. i've also answered some doll-specific questions in the asks tag, and am happy to answer more.

some commissions i shipped off this week! or the council of judgment.

the moth was not enough to satisfy my desire to glue lace onto dolls, so here's my next endeavor.

i've been wanting to sculpt more mushrooms for a long time, but there was always something else demanding attention. seeing a lot of shrooms outside finally inspired me to make this ink cap, and start a couple of others that might eventually see the light of day. printing the cap without breaking the ink droplets is basically impossible, but at the moment i'm paying less attention to my designs being reprintable and more on having fun. as i told my partner, "can't wait to get the head out of the printer so i can BREAK IT."

i don't make a lot of dolls of my own ocs because the venn diagram of my doll aesthetic and my oc aestetic has a tiny overlap. but sometimes there's a character, or at least an au version of a character, that i find dollifiable. such as this edgelord.

this is a bit of a prototype, because i want to make him more monstrous in both body and face. i also used the ffxiv version of ifrit as a vibe reference, but i feel like i put a dash too much ifrit in some spots and want to pull back from that. still, i've grown fond of this demon bishounen iteration of my character.

i'm keeping the original, but i can make a similar one as a commission when i open them up again. i used the last scraps of a lace ribbon for the details, so i can't make an exact copy, but the same vibe is achievable.

little vampire moth, asking only for a single drop~

i loved working on this doll. i left the base sculpt pretty simple and figured that when i found something to decorate the wing holes with, the rest of the design would flow from there. didn't expect to end up with lace and blood as the theme, but it was nice to do something out of my usual wheelhouse.

a custom commission for @cre0sote! i had a lot of fun making this one, and i'll definitely experiment with different kinds of art dolls in the future. also i swear she has a right side, i was just in a bit of a hurry with the photos so she ended up only facing left.

yea absolutely. the only 3d printed parts are the face plates/ears/paws, and the inner workings are very low-tech.

first, the armature. i don't have any pictures on hand, but it's a long piece of sturdy metal wire, bent into the basic skeleton of the creature & twisted on itself so all parts have double wire. i reinforce the shoulders & hips with thinner wire and hot glue so the crossing points don't move around when the doll is posed. there's a small stone wire-glued to the hip area, working as a counterbalance for the long neck and the faceplate.

next up, the mummy bongade stage. i wrap the skeleton in strips of quilt batting, with hot glue at the tips of the legs & tail to keep it in place. after that, i reinforce it with string, and refine the shape by tightening or loosening the string.

after this, attach the fur with a combination of sewing and gluing. i use a lot of second hand fabrics that may have irregular shapes, and also freehand the skeletons, so both the fur material and the creatures themselves differ in shape. for that reason, i don't have any patterns.

lastly, i add on the 3d printed parts. i leave loops of metal wire visible at the neck and feet, and the prints have large holes to fill with hot glue, so When They Are On They Are On, and won't come off. after that, tidying up and trimming and all the stuff one might expect.

thank you!

i'm of two minds about selling stls, but not doing it at the moment. on the one hand it would be easy, avoid the issue of shipping costs, and let people with resin printers get smoother, more professional dolls.

on the other hand, i want to keep control of my art, and not have it misused and repinted on etsy 18 times over. also, especially my older files have some quirks that are fine when i print and post-process the dolls myself, but would need to be fixed before selling the files. i am planning to get around to this regargless, but it will take some time.

additionally, i'm not sure how well my files would work on resin printers. PLA has a little flexibility and isn't as brittle as resin, so i print all the wrist/ankle/other bars as a part of the limbs. in at least some resins, these would snap, so the files would need an alternative version that has holes for metal bars instead. there might also be other edits i haven't thought about, what with the different weights of resin and filament.

definitive answer is.. maybe some day, but it's not super likely. i might end up selling some files through tumblr dms instead of an stl marketplace platform. my dolls don't necessarily have the kind of mass appeal where they would be a likely target for art theft, but i'd rather be careful than file copyright claims later.

a commission/birthday present for a friend! this one started out as a commission, but ended up taking stupidly long to finish due to various reasons and shenanigans and became a gift. he's very sweet, very soft with flocked ears, and absolutely goddamn enormous. my dolls tend to be in the 30cm ballpark, so this 70cm boy is a BEAST in comparison. my friend wanted him to match some of his partner's bjds in size, and it was cool and satisfying to make a doll this size, but also not have to think about where to keep it long term. a win-win for me.

this is a joint effort with @posnakkel, who made all the clothes while i handled the doll itself.

there are a bunch of sweet things in my inbox, stuff that i've been meaning to respond to, and then haven't, because i never know how to format a "thank you".

maybe it doesn't have to be hard. so thank you. feels nice to be appreciated. and to the anon that got their tits blown off, my deep apologies and/or you're welcome for the surprise mastectomy.

now THIS is what i love to hear! i hope you have good times with your craft & glad to have helped to get it started.

an additional bug for the collection!

i had printed this and was halfway through painting before i realized i'm not really buzzing with excitement about the color scheme. a black/red/grey version might have more of the vibe i'm looking for, and i will see about printing one later. for now, a first version sneak peek.

[photo credit: @posnakkel]