Repaint! Zephie the Air Dragon OOAK Monster High Doll

[Music] and young welcome to delightful air dragon time let's jump right into the concept art I had a couple leads I wanted to pursue early on when I think of air elated visuals airplanes birds feathers clouds wind instruments stuff like that comes to mind I sketched up one design heavily inspired by Brazil's current evolve but decided it was more carnival than air dragon I often wonder how far you can push the concept until it's not a dragon anymore at what point do the scales tip over into harpie or fairy territory and stop being a dragon well I think I found it in this character like what even is this I chose my favorite four designs out of these sketches and asked for your input design a was most popular so I took some of your critiques and expanded that idea into two more designs one with the four wings and one more inspired by a Chinese dragon it was a close race but the original came out on top then it was time to think about color I knew a pastel color scheme would be best cloud white bright sky blue actually I wanted her a short poofy hair to be white to look the most cloud like but I guess none of those color studies made it into the video number two one so that's the doll we're going to make and yeah I sketched up this character and had y'all vote on it before I revealed my new hair so what could I say I'm loving my poofy short hair right now so I hope you don't mind too much that it found its way into my concept art okay with the concept set let's pick out a doll monster High's Catrin dmu doll should be a great base she's a secondhand doll and you can see the vinyl is yellowing around her forehead this happens to all vinyl dolls over time but it's always most noticeable on lighter colored dolls will paint over it later let's get customizing as usual we begin by stripping the doll down to its most basic form off with her hair off with her face and off with her head you can see the default head is much too large for this project so to match the other dragons she needs a smaller head size which is achieved through the delicate process of head shrinking via acetone more detailed descriptions of how to do this can be found via links in the description box but the gist of it is fully submerge the head in a glass jar full of acetone I flipped the head upside down and jostle it around to make sure the liquid enters the head through the neck hole that's the sentence I never thought I'd have to say set your pickling head aside preferably by an open window and let it soak for 2 hours don't worry if you go over I am The Queen of the saying out of sight out of mind so inevitably I forgot about it went to the gym ate lunch and when I remembered her 6 hours had passed sorry Catrin hope you enjoyed your acetone bath the vinyl has absorbed the acetone and swollen up at this point which means it's in a very delicate State gently fish it out to avoid tearing after 24 hours of waiting the head will have shrunken down again as you can see compared to this Abbey head it's more or less return to the original size so I repeated the process once again and now it's finally shrunken down to the size I want onto the body for the body modifications I imagine the air dragon being the thinnest and most lightweight of the group so I keep that in mind as I decide what new joints to give her for example bending the knee inward let's that all sit back on its haunches and it looks more realistic and weightier I usually prefer this but for our lightweight air dragon I decided a simple digitigrade modification would suffice and we can keep her monster high knees as is [Music] I start by whacking off the shins then drill holes into the calves in preparation for the armature wire taking popsicle sticks I cut them down to size and drill holes through the rounded ends go slow with the drill and don't apply too much pressure or it cracks the wood for each leg I prepare two single sticks and one double thickness stick for our new joints she's getting popsicle stick talons as well so I prepare for claws per foot sanding down and rounding the edges of the wood is always a good idea I don't know about you but I'm really paranoid about splinters I prepare the foot for its new toes by drilling all the way through the foot making one hole per toe I learned my lesson with Meeks not to try anything fancy for the toe articulation so let's keep it simple this time I'm using much thinner jewelry wire to keep the size to a minimum each toe receives a loop of wire fed through the holes individually this is the first dragon to have an opposable thumb claw because I imagine she flies around and can snatch things off the ground like an eagle before fixing the legs with their new joints I take the time to carve v-shaped grooves extending from the holes we drilled earlier usually I apply my armature wire haphazardly because I'll be bulking it up with epoxy anyway but to keep this doll thin we need recesses the wire can fall back into this way when I feed the wire around and through the popsicle sticks it sits back into the plastic and takes up no space at all [Music] the last stick that needs a fixing is the one sticking out of the shins so I carefully drill a hole into this double thick piece and extends the hole down the plastic shin as well ready some more armature wire and set the pieces in place to reinforce the wire and make sure nothing shifts around mix up a two-part epoxy glue and work it into the crevices now before the epoxy fully sets it's a good idea to go ahead and screw the legs together so that the hinges are correctly aligned if it turns out you need more width on the hinges to match the length of your bolts and nuts as I did simply glue enough snippets of cardstock paper to the wood to bulk out the joint and as usual place the nuts on the outside and the bolt heads on the inside of the leg our character has a lot of skin showing so at this stage it's worth cleaning up the imperfections of the factory-produced doll body this is stuff like cutting off and sanding down the seam lines on the legs arms and torso and removing the labels like r1 r3 from the arms phase one complete the head is shrunk and the new structures are in place onto the sculpting phase using epoxy sculpt I extract equal parts from a and B mix them together and get to work lay down a snake around the bolts head to hide it from view and place a solid blob of epoxy over the exterior nut part of the leg then it's just a matter of building up and filling in space around the armature like I mentioned earlier I don't want to add a lot of material to this doll so I'm sticking to the minimum amount required to flush out her new toes and ankles I gave the most care and attention to and around the toes the jewelry wire is thin and hides well but it's also weak so I know I need to secure and protect it lest her toes snap off down the line build up thickness and walls between the toes on either side of the wire and remember to move the toes around to clear a path for articulation a couple artistic flourishes like tendons and I think the legs are good to go I mix up a fresh batch and begin sculpting her belly scales I lay down a slab from top to bottom for starters and roughly dry out the skills then I can use my tool to push and mold the epoxy around these shapes to form the illusion of overlapping scales about an hour after mixing the epoxy it's in a semi solid state which makes it ideal for details I use this window of opportunity to define the smaller scales on her neck after threading and knotting a couple armature wires inside the head like this I pushed them together and form a skeletal structure for her horns then we add material because her design is very simple compared to other projects I've done by which I mean she doesn't have any clothes or accessories I have to make and she doesn't even have much texture on the sculpted parts I managed to complete most of the sculpting in just the first pass I kept her simple so that she would seem free and aerodynamic if that makes sense her horns flow backwards and our smooth that's to not cause any drag during flight stuff like that you can see I intentionally left a single wire protruding from each horn after the horns hardened I cut them down to size and use my jewelry pliers to create a small loop at the tip these will be used to connect the streamers later on apart from sculpting onto the doll itself there are a couple separate pieces we need to create most notably her wings I draw out a template on paper first but for coiling snakes of epoxy on top to form the wing shapes don't forget you can use water and light pressure to smooth the surface as you sculpt in preparation for the wings her back needed a built-up plateau like structure for them to attach to had I screwed the wings directly into the recess of her back the thickness of the wings themselves would have entirely restricted their movement in other words they needed more space to fold back and forth I embed a wire armature for strength just so the epoxy has something to hold onto and mold the plateau shape at this point I also took a time to create hinges out of cat food can lids it was kind of fun making them myself but to be honest the can lids were too malleable and not suited for making strong hinges even though I reinforced the weak areas with epoxy glue I concluded they wouldn't hold up in the long run I ended up ordering a ton of tiny hinges online and scrapped my homemade ones once they arrived one more accessory we need to sculpt and that is her bells I really wanted to make the Bell so that the inner ringer actually moves around so here's what I came up with taking two short lengths of our trusty jewelry wire I dab on a dot of hot glue to one end I use pliers to make a loop on the other end then that loop intersects with a new wire loop and we get this these will be the ringers and then proceed to sculpt to the Bell shapes and let those harden we'll finish assembling these after the paint job once all the epoxy has hardened which for me took about a day and a half because cold weather slows down the curing process we can buff out all the lumps and bumps with sandpaper all the transitions from epoxy to plastic you need to be smooth and seamless which means a lot of sanding around those transitional areas it's a good thing these Monster High girls are flexible will this do you monetize me oh and I should have mentioned this earlier but I've been wearing a mask for most of this project I even wear goggles when I'm standing the epoxy safety first nice and smooth EPOXI sculpting phase complete now we can move all our parts outside to the airbrush station I'll be using vallejo's brand surface primer in blanco if you've ever experienced working with an airbrush yourself I probably don't need to tell you how much of a hassle they are I clean it i disassemble and reconstruct it I do a test spray with water first but no matter how much care and attention I'd give this thing it never behaves I wrestled with the darn thing for two hours barely getting it to spray anything at all and freezing my fingers off in the cold winter air eventually enough was enough and I said to heck with it it's not worth this level of frustration I'm just gonna paint it myself you're gonna be like this airbrush fine I don't need you a paintbrush and gesso is just as good and a whole lot less stressful sure maybe you can see paint brush strokes and it's not velvety smooth but I should have done this from the start and saved myself half a day of work at any rate she's fully white now and the EPOXI modifications have blended in seamlessly with the plastic face because the doll was white to begin with we needn't worry about paint chipping off the joints and revealing an inappropriate color underneath so that's nice the brush strokes are there and if that really bothers you you can always sand down fully dry gesso and make it smooth again now the decorating begins I had a lot of fun with this part because I've really been in a painting mood lately with my palette and colors mixed up off to the side I paint on a gradient of sky blue to mint green on her belly scales I also apply sky blue to her talons nails and horns just as with aurora I mixed up shadow colors and highlight colors to bring out the sculpting and clearly define the edges of the scales I paint a darker color directly beneath the scale then go back and paint on a lighter color on the top of the scales edge this really makes the paint job feel polished and sharp one of my favorite parts of this design is the very subtle swirly lines all over the white areas of her body as you probably guessed these lines are supposed to represent wind flow blowing and swirling around as a pattern on her skin I mostly made it up as I went but I did keep in mind the anatomy of her legs generally if your design flows with the natural curves of the muscles it comes out great so you can see I put a big swirl on her hip which somewhat flows down the thighs and into a swirl at her knees everything has been painted so mix up a varnish plus water solution and give each piece two coats of the stuff three on the parts you know are more likely to get hit or damaged like the toes and horns once that dries you can see the body looks very glossy and I'd like to tone that down a bit but I'm going to spray the doll with semi-gloss mr. super clear this time that's right not the usual matte spray why I'm hoping to give her body its satin like finish in order to match this fabric which I intend to use for her tail I've never tried this finished before how will it look on the face what kind of texture will it give the body exactly what does semi-gloss really mean yeah it looks exactly as shiny as before before you start a face up on a painted doll like this I highly recommend reuniting the head to the body before you begin because we shrunk the head the neck peg is now too large so whittle it down to size especially if it's a shrunken head cramming a custom head back on over a neck peg is one of the most tense parts of doll customizing okay not too bad face up time it became apparent right away that the pencils refused to draw on a semi-gloss surface I lifted the colors off the pencils and applied it with a thin paintbrush instead I managed to get the rough sketch of the eyes onto the face but fairly quickly I decided to make the switch to acrylic paints instead much like all the other shapes in her design her lash line is also rounded I want to tell design aspects of this character to be rounded or curved no sharp edges one nice thing about her being gesso white is that I can touch up mistakes on her face using paint right out of the jar I don't have to remix a specific color she'll have pink hair so she gets pink eyebrow blobs I think I actually got him pretty symmetrical this time well it's just the spray of the clothes after the faceoff for no other reason besides hey I think this will look cool I gave her white pupils I was pondering at this point if perhaps this character's design was too simple so for a little flare I ad libbed a lilac cheek stripe below both eyes I was worried I wouldn't be able to turn katrin's downturn lip mold into a smile but I think I got away with it let's set her aside for now and finish up the other parts starting with the wings I cut out the shape of the wing on scrap paper to form a template now what exactly should the wings be made out of felt it's stiff enough to keep a shape but flexible enough not to break when the doll inevitably falls off a table or something it's perfect I cut out two shapes and spice them up with a paint job of views and whites I adhere the epoxy parts to the felt using a generous amount of glue once that's fully dry I screw the hinges into the epoxy I should mention here that I drilled a small hole into the wings first also I'm only using one of the holes on the hinge so that the wing can swing back and forth and be articulated it's true that the hinge is in an ideal shape for what I'm trying to make here but what can you do let's make her tail I fudged up the fabric tail method so badly with Meeks that I felt the need to redeem myself using my heavy duty wire I measure out the length of the tail I want double the length of wire and twist it back on itself you can tell from how dirty my hands are that this wire comes with some sort of coating which obviously I don't need for a project like this this blackening effect felt especially dangerous for a white doll so I decided to take the time and hide the wire also the satin fabric is semi-transparent and I wouldn't want the dark black wire to be visible on the finish tail so hopefully this hides it next I draw a rough pattern for the tail and cut to pieces from the white satin the tail needs fluffy pink and blue fur going down the spine so pink and blue fur we must create I made a plentiful amount of wefts using Mo's Iquitos acrylic yarn weft making technique brush straighten cut and glue until you have enough I made a couple multicolored weft so that the colour shift appears more natural on the tail do you think that's enough peel off your wife's cut them down to size and they're ready to use arrange the wefts down the tail you can overlap and double them up for a thicker fur in order to sew this I flip all the wefts upside down and sandwich them between the two tail pieces ideally you want to sew all the way around the tail leaving a gap and turning it right-side out for a finished product but with all this fur sticking out I didn't think I could manage that so I only sewed down the spine of the tail of fixing the fur west to the satin I sewed down the spine three times just to be sure turn it right-side out and now we can sew the other side creating a finished edge from the right side of the fabric isn't easy but it is possible thanks to the latter stitch to make the process easier I fold over and pin the seam allowance down on each side then start working my way down if you take your time and try to keep the stitches even the end result looks fairly clean [Music] the tail sack is done so let's insert the bone and bulk it up with fluff because the satin is semi-transparent I'm only using white fluff to stuff the tail this time the tip of the tail isn't as pointed as I'd like oops but I think we can hide this awkward area with a little more fluff to finish out the tail using those same wefts we can give our air dragon hair working from base to crown I lay down one weft at a time [Music] [Music] to form the parts take your densest whiffs and lay one down facing the wrong way like so push it down real good and once dry it can be turned over for a beautiful finished edge repeat for the other side fill in the gaps and voila a nice presentable part trim up the hair and create curls using a heated chopstick easier said than done I know hexton makes it look easy especially on short hairstyles I find them the hardest to style but with enough patience and perseverance I managed a decent outcome so poofy remember the bells feed the ringer through the hole and there we go pretty charming right it does make a sound but of course it's not quite right I have fixed the bells to the horns using a ribbon that's glued in place because it kept trying to slide up off the horn if it was just tied on after trimming and heat sealing the ends of the ribbons I linked them to her horns via those loops we made earlier I love the way they dangle plug the tail into a hole in her back and set it with more epoxy glue screw her legs back on screw her wings on like this and she's done [Music] say hello to Zephie the air dragon I nearly forgot about her little Fang but thankfully remembered to slap one on right before we took her out for a photo shoot [Music] [Music] she would have looked great against a backdrop of snow or flying in the sky with puffy clouds but unfortunately weather doesn't behave on demand so I had a difficult time finding a good place to photograph her so when real life fails there's only one thing to turn to Photoshop I realized these are pretty cheesy but I had to have at least some photos of her in the sky right the dragon duo has become a trio I must say I do love how the three contrasts each other we have black/white and rainbow the earth dragon is next so make sure to head over to Instagram if you'd like to be a part of the creative process in designing that thank you so much for watching and caring about the dragon series it's something I'm really enjoying so I'm jazzed that you guys are into it too and I promise the earth Dragon Walt hath my new haircut stay artsy and young

Channel: Dollightful

Views: 2,961,127

Rating: 4.9704537 out of 5

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Id: 96ikvQTfLPk

Length: 27min 14sec (1634 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 22 2020