Saber Project, #2 Faceup and wig

Finally an update on my Saber project~! I can't believe that it's over 2 months from the first post about this project D: Even though we already got the MSC, wig and eye making supplies a while ago, we've been busy working on other stuff and there hasn't been much progress on this project, until Saber got her faceup done this weekend!

Previous part:
#1 Getting started

First of all, I got the Saber wig that I ordered from Taobao. It was very cheap and all, so I didn't have high expectations, but it's actually a pretty nice wig. The fiber quality is maybe not the best (a bit dry and seems to get frizzy easily), but the style is spot-on and with a little bit of styling it's perfect in my eyes. The color is also prettier (less yellow) in person than in the sales photos. The bangs were really long and completely covered her face, so I had to cut them quite a bit ^^;

I delegated Sarg to do the faceup, since I trust her skills more than mine X'D She has much steadier hands and also more experience of painting eyelashes etc. lines with acrylics (as I usually do them using watercolor pencils), so I just acted as the director and kept telling her what I want and showed example pictures. I love the result! ♥ This was the first DD faceup for Sarg, but I think she did great job :3

We wanted to use pastels as little as possible, to prevent the possibility of staining, so 90% of the faceup is made using acrylics. There's only a bit of light pink pastel on Saber's cheeks and lips. Since the color is really light, there's not much of it and we carefully sealed the head beforehand, we hope that the pastel color won't get stuck on the vinyl permanently. Using dark pastels was a no-no for us.

Work in progress~ Sarg has started adding some lighter shade on the right side to make the lines appear softer!

Here are some test photos of the finished faceup! Please don't mind the crappy self-made eyes, they are just temporary ^^; I kinda gave up on trying to design my own eyes in Photoshop, I just don't have the patience nor skills for that...

Next step will be getting proper eyes (I already have a few options to look into) and starting to plan the first outfit ^^

Saber Project, #1 Getting started

One thing that I mentioned in my goals for this year is making one of my all time favorite characters, Saber from Fate/stay night, as a custom Dollfie Dream ^^ This'll be a long-term project that might take a lot of time before being completed, but it'll be another fun thing to work on whenever I have the time and inspiration for it~ I thought it might be fun to show the progress and share my thoughts about this project every now and then :)

Obviously, Volks has released a Saber DD in pretty much all different versions, but the second-hand prices are insane and I just can't bring myself to pay that much, knowing that the original price has been a lot less. Also, none of the sculpts look like the perfect Saber in my vision. Volks' Saber sculpts don't have any special characteristic features and to me look a lot like some standard heads (DDH-07 and DDH-09), so I figured I'd try to create my own version :)

I bought a DDH-09 head that I could mod and customize to my liking without the fear of ruining a very expensive head that'd be hard to replace. I chose this head over the other option I had in mind (DDH-07) because after looking at various owner pictures, I felt like the 09 head would be more suitable for what I'm after. It has rounder face shape, but still doesn't look too immature. Volks' own Saber heads look a bit too baby-faced to me ^^;

(please ignore the random eyes here...)

I received the head some time ago, but I can't say much about it at this point... I'm still so new to DDs that I find it hard to imagine how the blank head will look with a faceup, it pretty much looks like an alien to me XD I need to wait for some MSC to arrive before Saber can get her faceup and I'm also still a bit unsure whether I'll try faceupping her myself or if I'll let Sarg do it for me... I guess we'll see about that after the MSC gets here :3

For now I only have Susumi's Dollfie Dream Sister body, but once I get Kasumi (DD Takane Shijou) home I'll also have a Dollfie Dream base body III, which is a bit taller than DDS, and Saber will be borrowing that for a while.

Finding the wig was easy, I just had to browse through Taobao and there was this wig precisely styled to look like Saber's hair! This same wig will work for almost all of her outfits, only Saber Lily has a different hair style and that one is available at the same Taobao store as well (in case I end up needing it as well).

I looked for suitable eyes as well, but didn't find ones that I'd be 100% happy with, so I decided to try out making my own eyes. I even looked at how to make urethane eyes, but thought that it might be a bit too challenging and handling all the chemicals scares me so I decided to take the safer route and go with acrylic eyes :) I ordered some eye bases from Ebay and once they get here, I can get started. Or actually, I can start designing the eyes on Photoshop earlier. I ordered the eye bases both in 22mm and 24mm, just to make sure that the eyes will fit perfectly and I can use the extras for making eyes for my other DD girls! DDH-09 head seems to have quite large, so I'm guessing that 24mm would work best for her. I only have a few pairs of 22mm eyes at home and they seem a bit too small.

I still haven't decided for sure, which of the dresses I'd like to make first. Saber Extra (red) and Lily (white) are my all time favorites, but lately I've been loving that gorgeous Alter dress as well... I guess it'll take a while before I can decide ^^;

There won't be any progress until I get all the stuff (MSC, eye bases, wig) home, but hopefully that won't take too long! I'm so excited and can't wait to be able to work on my Saber~ ♥