After the success I had sculpting a doll head for Rune, I decided to expand and pursue making sculpts for some of my other characters who didn’t seem to suit any ball-jointed doll sculpts currently on the market. First on the list was Tahl. Not for any particular reason, just because I like him, and masculine features are easier for me to capture artistically, so I figured it would be a good learning experience.
But instead of the methods I used to create Rune, switching between 3D and traditional sculpting, I decided to do all my sculpting digitally in Blender and then just print a complete head to sand and finish. I figured this would be a lot easier for me, physically, and would be faster since I could just leave the sculpt open on my PC and stop by my desk for five minutes here and there to work on it.
The biggest challenge I faced was not knowing how to use Blender. Sure, I’d used it for the initial sculpt of Rune’s face, and I used it to make his sword previously, but that was something like four years ago and I hadn’t really touched it since then. Everything I’d learned? Yep, that info was gone. Dropped out of my head like a baby bird shoved out of the nest. That roost was empty.
Fortunately, I was able to re-learn a couple basics just by clicking around, and that got me started; all I needed to start were a joined ovoid and cylinder to use in sculpt mode, both of which had been subdivided into a bajillion faces.
Okay, the finished sculpt has something like 200,000 faces, but that still seems like a lot–and it wouldn’t have been doable if I hadn’t had my brother-in-law help me build this new computer I got last year.
After a few days of tinkering, and one miniature print to figure out what wasn’t working, I had something I rather liked.
Of course, I knew he ultimately wouldn’t look exactly like what I had on the screen. That was something I learned while working on Rune; he could be perfect on the monitor and then super wonky when actually printed. But overall, I was content with his look.
I was able to do a lot with the head that intimidated me previously, when I worked on Rune. I hollowed the head and the headcap, made recesses for magnets, a slot for the elastic’s S-hook to pass through and a cradle for it to sit in, and beautifully rounded eye wells. At this point, I knew there would be a few more tweaks I’d have to make, but I was ready to test what I’d done.
So I printed…
And it took hours…
And eventually…
…he was done.
The print didn’t turn out perfectly, since it was a stormy day, and a couple power flickers messed with the heat of the nozzle, which meant a few extra-rough lines. The tree supports for his ears also didn’t adhere to the print bed well, so the tops of his ears turned out poorly. There were some user issues, too, such as me being a little too eager to start the print, and forgetting to rotate it so the Z seam would be on the back of the head. As a result, he’s got a pretty clear seam line running straight down the middle of his face.
But on the whole… it’s not bad.
There are plenty of things I see to change–making his magnet recesses bigger and deeper, adding a little more definition to the inside of his ears, and smoothing out the back of his neck because I feel like as pretty as the ridges there are, they’re also very likely to chip or crack off a cast doll, so they should probably go.
I also plan to add a maker’s mark and sculpt name inside, since in my haste, I completely forgot to include those! I haven’t figured out a naming convention for my sculpts yet–if I’ll name them after the characters or if I’ll call them something else–but I do know I’ll use my double crescent moon for the maker’s mark, so that should be fun to implement.
For now, this project is shelved, and I’ll get back to it after I knock a few other things off my plate. I probably didn’t need to give myself something else to work on at all, but it was something fun to work on when my shoulder was aching too badly to let me do anything else, and now I’ve got a good head start for when I’m ready to pick him up again.
Maybe I’ll pursue professional casting this time?