Repaint! Terra the Earth Dragon OOAK Art Doll Custom

[Music] and young welcome to delightful today we're making the earth dragon out of all the elements this is the one I'm most excited for let's jump into the concept art first and foremost I wanted to show you some of my inspiration I took a trip to Hawaii in February and was completely blown away and rejuvenated by the lush leafy foliage breathtaking mountains and rich environment undoubtedly I wanted to capture these visuals in feeling in my earth Dragon project so if you pick up on a tropical slightly Polynesian feel this is why from the get-go I knew I wanted the earth dragons designed to be complicated bursting at the seams with lush foliage and asymmetrical even during the first pass you can see I was very keen on the one Rock leg in one tree leg idea votes came in and it was almost exactly 5050 between these two I combined them together to form the ultimate mix of the two and came out with these second pass designs it was a close call yet again because many of you really likes the tree root rib cage and leafy wings design but to be one the race when it came time to draw up the color studies I used the eyedropper tool to select color directly from photos that inspired me [Music] I was liking this green one until I realized she looked like the Jolly Green Giant sister palette three one in the end and I'm glad it did as common term Mia Ellen pointed out three is the only design with a non human skin tone I hadn't even thought of that when I was coloring these and I agree completely that an inhuman color will lend itself to the dragon feeling the biggest point of controversy came from the lack of weeks without wings does she look dragon II enough or does she just look more akin to a nature goddess or a dinosaur on the other hand many people pointed out that there are plenty of wingless dragons in mythos and it makes sense that an earth dragon would be grounded I agreed with all points on both sides of the argument so even though 2b is the one to make I continued to mull it over as I made the doll which you'll see in the footage to come the best doll I have as a base is one JC masters from Mattel is a wild heart screw doll line she's got a much fuller body type with bigger joints as well so hopefully this will save me some time on the modification it's fortuitous that y'all voted for the earth dragon to follow the air dragon seeing as they're opposite elements I want them to look opposite to to complement each other obviously Zephie is thin lightweight and simple like her element whereas this dragon will be heavyset full and plentiful like Mother Nature if we consider this character a classic ancient personification of earth this body type is the perfect match any lover of art history knows that the fuller female figure has been idealized and painted time and time again and if you go way further back to the fertility figures of ancient civilizations they to sport a large strong physique so there's something timeless about this body type which makes it appropriate for this project while I was talking we prepared the bass doll for customizing like our other characters we want a smaller head which means it must be pickled for several hours in acetone the head swells up with acetone during the soak and once removed shrinks down further than the original size or at least it's supposed to even after three soaks JC's head size looked about the same I suspect it might have to do with my acetone it's the same stuff I used last time something tells me it's lost its effectiveness well no matter there's always multiple paths to a solution I'll make her a smaller head first say goodbye to everything but the neck hole sorry about it JC with a sketch in front of me for size reference I poke through the remaining vinyl and Weavin armature out of jewelry wire a hollow cage is what I'm going for so that the neck peg still has enough room inside the head once it's reattached let's dig into the body modifications you may have gotten used to it by now seeing as heavily modifying doll bodies is kind of a regular occurrence on this channel but even so this looks brutal man it's fun to laugh about the dark visuals of dog customizing but to all those concerned viewers out there you should know it feels more akin to a construction project okay so JC's hands and more importantly her wrist joints are really tiny and I want big chunky hands so I'm going to pull a doll motion here and steel the articulated joints from a different doll I believe these were once diamond dad's feet beautiful yikes with a little more fine-tuning with the dremel tool we can sand down and shape the plastic to fit its future shape look at that hot plastic that melted around the tool using more of that jewelry wire I drill holes into the doll and essentially sew her back together again the more solidly your doll is connected with wire alone the more sturdy your final outcome will be it's become somewhat of a personal goal of mine to see how little glue I can get away with to make up for the lack of a tree ribcage I hope to hollowed-out vine arm would suffice I almost cut the pieces too small to reconnect them so I had to get creative there was no room to drill through the wrist so I carved a groove around the diameter instead and connected it like so like our other dragon gals I'll be using popsicle sticks to create new leg joints and luckily popsicle sticks come in larger sizes the method is basically the same as all the others so I'm going to gloss over it this time you know what to do now we can get into the thick of this project the sculpting any doll with modified joints takes a while to create but hoo boy this Earth dragon is like 90% sculpted details so get used to seeing epoxy sculpt the first pass is to cover up and help secure the armature wire wiggle the joints around to ensure that they stay articulated I forgot to do this on Niek so her legs can't swivel like this I also lay a fine film down over the heads armature actually you know what we should probably get the head back on her body before I sculpt it whoo that wasn't easy but that's why we needed to keep the flexible neck hole even though JC was a much closer match than any other doll what had on hand she still isn't quite as plump as I want her to be so I'm going to build up her tummy back and breasts until she matches my concept art I also lay down snakes of epoxy around the wires on her hollow vine arm and began blocking out rocky shapes on her left hand and forearm epoxy can be carved sanded and drilled into after it fully cures so it can be a subtractive as well as an additive sculpting material [Music] I was worried I built up too much material on her face so I sanded it back down to the wire after all this effort I'm gonna feel pretty stupid if her head ends up the same size as the original I draw on with marker a rough face to help myself line up her features before I start I've only sculpted a doll's face once before for the goatman he's supposed to be a monster so if I messed up and he looked ugly it wasn't a big deal it was a good thing actually but trying to sculpt a beautiful woman's face now that's a challenge I did lose some footage hints the sudden jump in progress I'm figuring out a new camera so please forgive me of course it deleted the most interesting part of the custom sculpting of faith I forgot to include armature wire for her horns so I simply drilled into the head and set some new wires in place securing the base with fresh epoxy twist the wires into bendy tree shapes and fill in the space for a tree bark texture I'm going to press this actual bark against the semi cured epoxy under horns like a stamp now to turn my attention to her legs and I'm sorry to report that this is where the majority of my new cameras footage got corrupted so allow me to show you this reenactment I love my epoxy as you well know but it takes a long time to mix and you have to wear baggy annoying gloves to be safe and it's heavy stuff so to quicken the process I whipped out the air dry clay to sculpt her legs rough up the plastic with a rasp to give it a surface texture this helps the clay grab hold I find that I use epoxy in a slow deliberate way but if I want to make something organic and gestural I need to work fast this clays squishier texture meant it was easy to push around so I could form the shapes quickly before I had time to overthink it which makes air dry clay the perfect medium in this situation a fingernail makes a great tool to form bark and I found a flat popsicle stick was useful for forming rocks okay back to the original video with the gestural air dry clay thrown on we can refine detail with epoxy after it's dry of course there's no reason you can't overlap the two these roots on her left leg are inspired by the banyan tree every time there's a floating root install an armature wire first and then the epoxy you can also use a drop of water to D sticky the epoxy otherwise it tries to grab onto your gloves and tools [Music] during my visit to the Polynesian Cultural Center we came across this cool statue in the tahiti area I couldn't find a plaque but it sure looks like some kind of maternal figure so whilst I don't know the exact meanings behind her decorative carvings hopefully by placing them on a similar leg area on my doll it's appropriate that looks pretty cool makes me wish I'd tried harder on her hip symbol yeah so instead of a lazy swirl I did some research according to the Polynesian tattoo handbook lizards represent regeneration transformation and survival through hardships as well as guardians who keep away disease given the current state of the world I think we could all use a little magical lizard protection so I chose this symbol [Music] after working on one side of the doll I could switch to the other side and basically always be working while a different part of her was curing or drying these inner parts of her leg were inspired by this bunion tree in particular I love how the roots are simultaneously super cool-looking in a bit creepy one thing I wanted where roots coming down from the upper part of her leg obviously those can't be stiff sculpted bits if we want the leg to move and extend so my solution to this was to use snippets of elastic drill a hole into the leg then set each end with epoxy glue who we've come a long way she no longer has creepy feet hands she's got a completely new head new legs she's literally been Reese Culp tintin toe there's one thing you're probably wondering about though where's her tail well I thought we'd step up our doll making game for this project my husband is a 3d character modeler and I asked him to digitally sculpt our earth dragons tail so high-tech then we can print it out on our new 3d printer now generally I try to make my videos in ways that are accessible to everyone showing materials and techniques that anyone could use I realize using an expensive 3d printer is a departure from this but I did show the low-budget air-dry clay method with Aurora and it's basically identical in structure just a whole bunch of nesting pot shapes in other words hopefully I've earned the right to use our newest tools with all the pieces printed out we can figure out how to place it on the body they'll be strung together and held in place with a piece of taut elastic so the anchor must be firmly attached to the body now I know this looks something akin to a medical procedure but that's where the hook needs to go using a paper clip I bend a U shape apply some more epoxy glue into the two holes and insert the wire with one more round of air-dry clay we can build up the back and make a rock-like concave structure that fits with the thickest segment of the tail sculpting complete phase two painting let's begin with a coat of primer to even out the surface I'm using Vallejo brand primer in gray apparently there was some wet green paint on the palette that's fine I guess next are the darkest shadow colors I lay down a dark brown on the tree bits black on the rocky bits and green on the leafy bits making sure to work the color into the crevices [Music] here's a tip for keeping your acrylics wet on the pallet lay down two paper towels wet them with water and place a sheet of tracing paper on top the porousness of the tracing paper lets the moisture through and will keep your paints wet for hours I figure I'd get the most challenging parts out of the way first which means tackling the face in the concept art I was going for a mossy rock in dappled light look for her skin inspired by the photo to the left this wasn't just a fancy bit of lighting for the concept art I actually plan on painting it like this I planned on having the face in dappled light as well but there was already so much happening with the roots and the moss leaves that I decided a single color would make it easier to see so let's pretend her face is in full sunlight still concerned about the critiques mentioned at the start of the video I sketched up in more detailed view of her face I wondered if we could somehow up the dragon factor in ways other than having wings like bold pointed eyeliner classic slit eyes scale like leaves and not one but two fangs as her face up developed I began to gain more confidence in her facial structure during the epoxy phase it was hard to tell if I'd done a good job sculpting her or not I consider myself a better painter than I am a sculptor that said I think where my sculpting chops were only adequate her paint job brought her up to a level I was pleased with plus her asymmetrical design means I only had to paint one eye so I made it easy for myself in that regard I was aiming for an authoritative expression reserved calm but capable and a bit Stern not sure if I pulled that off I think I got close it's crazy how the subtlest of brushstrokes can shift the expression how do you feel about the magical socket eye it's meant to look kind of scary echoing how nature can be beautiful but also dangerous moving down from the face to her chest and shoulders time for that dappled lighting I think most artists agree that painting a scene in dappled light is a challenging subject wish me luck I begin by dabbing on a light D saturated yellow-green the rock and sunlight color across her left shoulder and upper chest because we're treating this like a painting I'm keeping in mind the imaginary light source sunlight filtering through trees from the dolls upper-left direction using mid-tone Gray's I blurred the edges of the light patches naturally I have several photos of dappled light across rocks that I'm referencing off screen to help guide me next I mix up a light lime-green to act as our highlight color for her leaf parts I line up the light patches with the others on her skin so that it looks like a continuation of the light this was really important to sell the illusion I also went in with shadow colors to help outline and define the vines on her chest so how did I do does it look convincing or does it just look like a strange pattern on her skin I consider that the hardest part so I'm glad is behind me now it's a simple matter of defining the rest of her details with shadows and highlights her belly scales were inspired by the woven palm leaves from Samoan culture she's got a magical green swirl on her right palm which I'm going to fill in with glow-in-the-dark paint to keep the rough bark texture on her leg I employed the dry brushing technique I quickly realized that using only Brown made the log look very fake so I worked in some greens and reds as well I mixed a fair amount of blue into Hiraki colors to imitate the cool wet stones one might find close to a waterfall with the basic lights and darks in place I dab on light mint green and sky-blue colors in circular rings to imitate lichen I mentioned earlier that the earth dragon is the project I've been most excited to make if it's not obvious already I'm a total tree hugger and love being outside in the woods if I could spend all day every day out in a forest I would we're all having to spend a lot of time indoors lately so working on this project put my mind in a good place physically my body may be stuck in an apartment building but mentally I was exploring the outdoors that was a lot of painting usually I cover the doll in a solid color to protect the paint from chipping use a varnish there is no shortage of pointy protruding parts on this doll that are prime targets for damage so I cut these susceptible areas three to four times make sure the varnish dries between each new layer cut down a sliver of craft foam paint on rings of color and use a generous amount of glue to stick them to her log leg aren't they adorable you gotta love a good shelf mushroom now to string her tail together in the past I've strung a loop of elastic through but the holes on the last pieces came out pretty small so I'm going to have to make this work with a single length of elastic honestly I could have planned this better I tie an embroidery thread to the tip of the tail then sew that to the end of the elastic not ideal but this keeps it skinny enough to feed through the other segments pull tight and Mark your elastic then fold over and sew the other end into a loop shape I made a closed loop at the base but what I should have made is an open hook shape i fashioned a hook out of another paperclip which attaches to the base finish assembling the segments slip the elastic over the hook and voila articulated dragon tail with sculpting and painting complete it's time to add the fun leafy flourishes but first we need to make them lay down a protective surface and cover several scraps of green cotton fabric with glue this glue dries semi flexible and clear and we'll stop the fabric from fraying taking paper patterns of the leaves I pin them to the fabric and cut them out you can get away with cutting two layers at a time to speed things along aren't these cute and the dried glue creates a realistic Sheen just like real leaves have let's take them a step further by painting on subtle gradients and vein details I couldn't tell you the names of all these but they are based on real plants back to our doll will be adorning her with moss plants and flowers Moss likes to grow on top of rocks where it can get enough sunlight so let's put moss on all the upward facing surfaces of her leg and tail something about moss makes a scene more magical mysterious feeling I love the way it looks with the carved symbols she also gets mossy sideburns which will transition into her dreadlocks when it comes to foliage start low and work your way up so that you can cover up the ugly parts in the stems of each fabric leaf I start at the crotch with a couple grass strips paint tends to chip off around articulated joints so if you can cover up these problem areas with plants or fur or clothes more power to you the anthurium flowers received wire stems which are glued to the inside of a groove then covered with other plants to make sure it stays in place she also gets two coconuts at her hip just to add to the variety of plants and textures for the foliage of her horns I cut out these amorphous blob shapes which I also painted apply glue then fold over and wrap the leaves around the branch if I had the gardening ability it would have been really fun to make parts of this doll out of actual living plants kind of like a chia pet our champ had still a thing I glue on several individual scale like leaves to her horns and attach her leaf ears and to top it all off I created miniature plumerias out of orange paper and glued them to her horns it is spring after all lastly her hair making doll sized dreadlocks was a new experience for me after some research it seemed that something called wool roving or perhaps felting would likely be the best option the problem is I don't have materials to do either of those techniques what I do have is acrylic yarn already in the correct colors I decided I might as well give it a shot and see if I can make do with what I had on hand first I separated and tore up the acrylic yarn using a pet brush then I twisted and spun the fibers out into long tubes briefly submerge the dred into a boiling pot of soapy water and you can see it's more inclined to clump together now even though the materials are wrong these are all techniques I saw from wool roving dreadlock tutorials will they maintain their shape after they dry who can say well yes actually but they're not as tightly packed or as dense as the examples I saw online still not bad for a synthetic fiber I'll have to give them a little extra help by dunking them into a watery glue mixture unfortunately this stiffens the dreadlocks but they will hold their shape now to finish the ends I heat up a chop stick with my straightening iron loop the stringy part around the tip and set the style working from the base of the neck to the crown of the head I glue on one dreadlock after the other longest ones on bottom and shortest ones on top her staff was created from a real stick another cloth monstera leaf and a couple decorative clay and embroidery thread parts to allow the doll to hold the staff I divided this stick drilled some holes and set a bolt in place now it can simply screw apart and together when needed and with that she's all finished or is she aha did you think I forgot about the wings way back during the sculpting phase I embedded two magnets into her back at the time I wasn't sure what wings to give her if any but this bought me some time to figure it out I settled on two wing like palm fronds that snapped magnetically into place so she can simply grow a set of plant wings when she needs them many of you suggested vestigial wings and these are small enough to check that box I'd say so what do you think not a bad compromise right and with that she finally is finished I spent ages researching earth related names Gaia seems like a great fit but it's pretty overused so let's name her Terra I can confidently say that Terra is my favorite custom that I've created to date I changed so much about her that she truly feels like my own artwork there's room for improvement of course for example I'd like to practice more facial sculpting but even so I'm quite proud of this project the elastic used on her legs stiffened up with the acrylic paint and lost all of its stretch I'd hoped that by watering down the paint I could just dye it but oh well [Music] [Music] the painted lighting effect is lost when she's put into actual sunlight as you might imagine however for the most part this doll will be displayed indoors [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you so much for watching I know this doll took ages and you had to wait a long time but hopefully you enjoyed the video the sea dragon is up next so follow my socials and keep an eye out if you'd like to be involved in the concept art subscribe to receive alerts for when I upload a new video and I'll catch you next time stay artsy and yo [Music] [Music] what you do in Pentos

Channel: Dollightful

Views: 3,257,717

Keywords: dragon, doll, custom, ooak, art doll, repaint, face up, bjd, plus sized, barbie, mattel, wild hearts crew, jacy masters, body modification, sculpting, craft, character, earth, nature, goddess, mother nature, polynesian, hawaiian, forest, jungle, design, magnetic, wings, plant, terra, gaia, 인형, 만들기, 지구, 용

Id: dXBv4alYIHQ

Length: 33min 49sec (2029 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 11 2020