AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
I will admit, I've not done any kitbashing before. Usually I think of that more as a gunpla thing, because of the model kit nature of that. I've seen some good kitbash stuff in the SE++ gunpla thread, though!
Is anyone into kitbashing? Just recently got into the hobby myself. Same with painting figurines and dnd. Started a campaign with my friends two weekends ago, really enjoying this whole world so far.
I've never done kitbashing but if you're working on something I'd be jazzed to see it. I've always found kitbashing to be pretty darn rad.
In the BJD world where I collect, there isn't kitbashing per se, but plenty of people do custom mods to dolls and generate new parts via 3d printing, and I've definitely done my own modding and painting.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
Awesome!! Great to read both of your comments. I actually bought 6 boxes of old toys that I’m gonna be cuttting up and turning into new things this weekend. I’ll be sure to post whatever I make 😁 From what I’ve found online it’s called kitbashing even if it’s not really coming from a kit, but I’ve seen some of the gunpla kitbashes and those look awesome! Trying my hand mostly with old action figures and plastic toys like skeletons and soldiers and such but I’m excited to come up with some cool new creatures 💪
Is anyone into kitbashing? Just recently got into the hobby myself. Same with painting figurines and dnd. Started a campaign with my friends two weekends ago, really enjoying this whole world so far.
I've not done any kitbashing; the closest would be filing down the inside of Thrilling 30 Arcee's hands so she can hold her gol-danged weapon, and once when I repaired my classics starscream. (Which I then replaced with Earthrise Starscream like three years later. )
Part me of wants to design my own Transformer and try to make it, but they'd probably be such a unique design that'd be beyond my extremely meager skillset.
But don't let my inability stop you from posting about it! I'd love to see what you're making!
I just got an email from a vendor that I'm very excited about. A purchase I've forgotten about like 3 times.
Soooooo, are you going to keep us in suspense over what it is?!?
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
There are a few things I would like to buy right now, but I have to be careful at the moment because money is tight. After Christmas I should have a bit of extra cash (because I'll be working for that holiday pay), but for now I realllllly shouldn't buy anything.
Unfortunately I genuinely couldn't resist when Danny released some blue heads yesterday, because I wanted a blue head for Liara with nostrils.
See this is the current head I have for her:
This is the head I bought last night (for around $330. Only includes head, eyes, and wig, no body):
As an added bonus, that head has freckles! So I don't even really need to do any modding on it, aside from creating head tentacles. I mean it's not an exact match for Liara, but it's a pretty good anime-esque stylized model, I think!
Also, I've been doing a little bit of fabric dying lately. There's a pair of pants I tried to dye black, and I'm working on turning my white space marine uniform purple. This is a bit more involved that dying the resin, because I have to wash out the excess dye so there's no bleed on the vinyl, which means that once I'm done the color could be too light and I need to go through the dye process again - that happened with the black pants, which are actually graphite gray in color. The space marine uniform I just dyed yesterday, and I still have to go through a few more hand washings before I'm convinced it's not going to bleed. Even if it's light, though, I think I'll be OK with the color. Black is hard because it takes a lot of pigment to actually get anything approaching black. I'll share my final results once I'm done.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
After letting the pants air dry for a couple of days, I decided that just now I'm not really in the mood for dying them a second time. Maybe when it gets colder out. But for now, gray isn't a bad color, it looks good on Lucy.
The purple uniform is in the dryer, because I don't want to wait for two days of drying on it.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
Progress pic of my first creature kitbash 😁 putting together a timelapse video for it too 💪 waiting for it to glue then I’ll hit it with a prime to paint.
CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
Nice, I love seeing that stuff, it gets me inspired to start sculpting some head tentacles for Liara.
Rotate them pictures though, it's hard to look at them sideways.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
I just got notified by hasbro that a couple things are about to ship. First up is the next mpg trainbot, which is nice. However, I also got notice that the Megatron/HISS tank is on its way.
I am kind of iffy on that? Like... I know I pulled the trigger some time ago, but I am not sure if I care about it anymore.
Not a toy but, my Scott Pilgrim game Vinyl is confirmed to ship soon. I ordered it long before I found out LRG sucks eggs so I'll let it slide because I love anamanaguchi. To bring this back around to toys, there are some new Scott Pilgrim figures coming out soon and I do like how they came together... Maybe I'll just get one..
I just got notified by hasbro that a couple things are about to ship. First up is the next mpg trainbot, which is nice. However, I also got notice that the Megatron/HISS tank is on its way.
I am kind of iffy on that? Like... I know I pulled the trigger some time ago, but I am not sure if I care about it anymore.
I watched a review of the Megatron/HISS tank on TFW and it almost sold me on buying one. It wasn't nearly as bad in hand as some early reviews made it sound. The tank mode looked clean and there is a shield to cover Meg's face sticking out the back. I am not into GI Joe so can easily avoid this, but I would be tempted if I was into that and Transformers.
Also got my shipping soon notification for the next MPG Raiden train. Actually I didn't know what it was till I looked it up on the website.
Hasbro Pulse says both my Flamewar and my Alpha Trion/Orion Pax 2-pack are scheduled to ship next week. Weird how all this stuff is lining up.
HISS Megatron just seemed compromised by having to both be a accurate HISS tank as well as an accurate G1 megatron; had they allowed Megatron's design be dictated by the HISS tank, or even better made it a new character who didn't have to shoehorn in an animation design from 40 years ago, I think it would have turned out a lot better.
CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
edited October 2022
I got a special delivery today! Megumin!
I'm not sure I've mentioned it before, but Smart Dolls do not come in a box. I mean, obviously they're shipped so there's the shipping box, but inside that box isn't a retail-style container for you to keep as a collector. Instead the doll is in a canvas bag (that's nice to keep as a reusable shopping bag), the doll is wrapped in bubble-wrap and plastic to keep it protected during shipping, and there's a small box containing the doll wig, stand, and any other accessories you bought when you purchased the doll. Some people don't like this, but I really appreciate it. For one thing I'm not a big box collector, on smaller toys I usually just trash the box. I feel weird trashing the box for BJDs, so I'm very glad that I didn't receive a stack of Smart Doll boxes for the 11 dolls I got from them, because especially when I was living in a smaller house I would have had to either figure out a place to store them (impossible) or agonized over throwing them in the trash. The other reason I like it is because it's a little more environmentally conscious to not be making all those extra packaging materials.
The other dolls I've bought now, however, do have retail boxes. Both Shoushou doll and Dollfie. Here's a side by side photo of my new Megumin and the box that June came in:
The Shoushou box has a line down the middle because every time I use a box cutter to open the shipping box for these dolls, it breaks through to the doll box. Not much I can do about it now. Megumin's box is stupidly large, much taller than she is herself.
I'm not really sure why they made the box so tall. I thought at first it was because of the staff, but a) the staff was shipped in two pieces so it's shorter than Megumin and b) even if they had shipped in it one pieces it's not that tall. Having made a few purchase from Dollfie now, I'm afraid a lot of my experiences are negative, and one of the negatives is how much packing material they stuff in. The amount of material they put on the doll and the doll wig is normal, you need to protect those parts. But then when you get to the doll hands and clothes, where they not only have individual bags for each part, but they frequently have bags within bags, it's really annoying at the waste on display. I get that for some people the "unboxing experience" is part of what they like about dolls, but ffs - the way the extra hands were packed was one external bag for all hands, then each pair of hands had it's own bag, then one of the two individual hands within the pair had it's own bag. Why?!
Anyway, on to the doll herself.
I have been interested to see first hand how the classic Dollfie frame is different from the Smart Doll frame, and the first thing that stands out is that this frame is more bulky:
Dollfie:
Smart Doll:
I will say that Dollfie has a line of dolls called "Dollfie Dream Dynamite" where the frame is very similar to Smart Doll. I like that frame a lot better, I don't know why they don't just make all of their dolls with that frame.
About the figure itself, I'm not a fan of the way the bust has a "lower lip" between it and the torso, at least when I look at the doll in a swimsuit or body-baring clothes. On the other hand I can see why you would do the design this way when it comes to dressing the doll in a more covered way, in dresses and blouses + pants, shorts or skirts. The longer bust keeps you from getting an accidental weird break in the skin under something tailored. It is kind of weird for me to care when 95% of the time I put my dolls in full clothes top to bottom, rarely ever do swimsuits and only occasionally do bra tops or crop tops. But whatever, I collect these dolls partially because I think they're pretty and cute to look at, and the longline bust isn't cute, that's all there is to it.
I wasn't sure until I actually saw the face in person whether I would keep her red eyes or not, but once I did see her I was like yeah, I don't like red eyes, let's switch them out. This makes Megumin a little non-canon to the fictional world where she came from what whatevs, I'm pretty much never going to read or watch that media so I don't really care. I ended up giving her eyes with a purple to pink ombre effect (have you noticed a theme about the colors I like?) but before I could do that I had to get her default eyes out. This is another difference between Smart Doll and Dollfie; Smart Doll secures eyes in the head using easily-removable Blu-Tack, while Dollfie secures the eyes with a low-heat glue gun.
Should you wish to copy Dollfie's means of securing eyes, you can purchase a special glue gun and glue from them. They even sell a tool to help you remove the eyes (little more than a push stick with rubbery ends).
I knew that Dollfie uses a glue gun for the eyes way before I bought this doll so that wasn't a surprise. What I was surprised by is how difficult it was to remove those eyes. I had to watch a tutorial of someone removing the eyes before I could get it done, and even then it took a scraping tool for me to get most of the glue out. I didn't get all of it, there's some still stuck in there but I'm not going to risk damaging the head by continued scraping.
Once I got enough of it out, I just used some blu-tack that I already had on hand and secured the new eyes. I only just realized that I hadn't gotten a photo of the eyes once I secured them, so here's a photo I just took of them:
Her outfit is pretty cute and it has a lot of individual parts to it that I like. That said, it suffers from what I've seen in other Dollfie items, in that most parts were made on the cheap. The dress, socks and hat are fine even if the material is cheap. The boots really start to show the cheapness, with boot soles made of a very cheap and light plastic - Smart Doll has soles that feel like real rubber shoe bottoms & heels which I think are made from vinyl but they have a really good texture and weight. Hell, even when Smart Doll does faux leather they do it better than Dollfie does, again making the vinyl they're using for vegan leather have the correct texture and feel. The belt and choker are similarly very bad faux leather and just feel plasticy as hell almost paper thin. The staff is nice enough and the plushie cat is cute. Overall I do like the figure and will keep her dressed up in the gear she came in. But this is one of those cases when I have a real urge to learn a new skill (in this case, leather-working) so that I can re-imagine some of her accessories in a much more high quality way.
Edit: Forgot to mention, the wig is also cheap! I wanted to replace it with a Smart Doll wig, but it seems that Dollfie makes larger heads for their dolls than Smart Doll does, so the Smart Doll wigs don't fit.
Edit: Also I know I sound kind of salty and I am, but it's not Megumin's fault. I still do think she's a cute doll. Part of my annoyance comes from recent experiences with the larger BJD community. I might write a rant up about it later.
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"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
I'm pretty certain at this point that the dyes I tried on the Solar Marine uniform are just not working on this fabric. I even went so far as to send an email to Smart Doll to ask if they could tell me the fiber content, but I told them it's fine to ignore since I know they're busy. So I'm just going to have to keep trying different dyes until I've found the right one.
So far I tried:
Lanaset dye - the dye never "strikes" which is what would keep it from bleeding out. This is supposed to work for all natural fibers.
Synthetic RIT dye - Seems to easily rinse out in water.
Dharma iDye for poly fabrics - supposed to be good for polyester and nylon. It also rinses almost completely out of the garment.
Next to try:
- Rit dyes for natural fabrics. I just ordered these
- Acid dye. I have some of this already so I might try it tonight
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
I never knew there were so many dyes. Thanks for sharing this information (although I'll never remember it).
Well the main thing to remember, if you ever feel nd yourself trying to dye something, is that there are different dyes for natural fibers and synthetic fibers. That's the main divide. Lanaset dye is a particularly complex dye but I choose it because it's supposed to make an extremely good bond with natural fibers. I still *kinda* think this fiber is mostly natural, but I probably got something wrong in the process. I'm doing the acid dye bath now and I made more careful measurements this time so I was using the right any of dye and citric acid. We'll see if it works this time.
Edit: actually I just added a little more citric acid because more acid is said to help the dye "exhaust." I also would be helped here if I used a cooking thermometer and a ph meter. I don't own a cooking thermometer; I do own a ph meter but lost track of it after we moved. Which may mean I'm setting myself up for another failure.
Fabric is WAY harder to dye than resin figures.
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"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
OK the dye bath tonight failed again but NOW I KNOW WHY. Ahava clued me in, acid dyes won't work on cotton. My ADHD brain read the applicable fibers for these dyes over and over and somehow completely glided over the fact that cotton is not on the list. Every. single. time.
So anyway I have some RIT dyes on order, once I get those I should be able to get the job done. Just mad at myself for the wasted time. But at least I learned more about dying in the process.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
Here's my rant about the overall doll community aka all fandoms suck
I've made no secret of the fact that Smart Doll is my favorite doll brand. Several things first attracted me to these dolls: 1) the clothes for the dolls look legitimately like human clothes sized down, rather than like doll clothes - the fabrics look at feel like "real" fabrics, they have working pockets, etc. 2) I like the face designs 3) I like that Smart Doll keeps darker skin tones in stock by default. Literally every other doll maker either doesn't sell any color darker than "paper white", or if they do sell a darker color it costs more and comes in limited quantities. As time went on, I found other reasons to like Smart Doll, which I've mentioned here. Danny Choo, the designer and CEO of Smart Doll, seems to genuinely care for his employees, and simply won't allow clients to bully them in ANY way. He has released tons of designs that celebrate non-standard beauty. He's always coming up with new things to release and new ideas to put out in the world. And he makes himself way more accessible than most other doll brand CEOs, in that he has a twitter and an Instagram, and he's usually the one who replies to support emails - which I think is another way he is kind to his employees, as anyone who has ever worked with the public knows, being the face of support is usually one of the ugliest and most demoralizing jobs in the company. Also, he uses technology to try to undermine scalpers who would buy his rarer dolls only to sell them for double price on Ebay.
Now even saying all this, I know he's a human being and not a saint. He's sometimes acted on social media in ways that I think are not great. But I can't really judge him too hard for that kind of thing, because back when I was regularly on Twitter I had my bad days, too, and probably went too far in arguing with some dumb shit about politics or video games. Twitter is the lesson from War Games we never learned: The only winning move is not to play.
I should maybe mention his ethnicity and country of origin, because people tend to think these are relevant in discussing the "dark" side of Danny Choo: He's of Chinese descent and he was born in the UK, yet he named his company Culture Japan and often posts about Japanese culture and how he incorporates that culture into the dolls he makes. This is seen by some as, essentially, a weeb went to Japan and started pretending he was/is a Japanese person as an adult. He's also the son of Jimmy Choo, the famous shoe designer, and there is an accusation floating around that he was only able to start his business because of money from his rich daddy. Neither of these claims has any particular evidence except information that everybody knows - that Danny Choo is a British expatriate of Chinese descent and the son of Jimmy Choo.
All that preface is just to say that Danny Choo is a somewhat controversial figure in the doll community. A list of some of his "crimes" may be found here. I do agree that he can be passive aggressive in his site descriptions, but also because he's basically the only English-speaking large doll brand that regularly communicates on social media, I have zero doubt that people are relentlessly shitty to him so if he wants to be a little passive aggressive, that's fine? Some items here I cannot corroborate, despite having been a fan of the dolls since 2016 or so; I don't know if he badmouthed Dollfie, or made efforts to keep people from hybridizing Smart Doll & Dollfie. Since I've been following his social media I haven't seen that and this post doesn't have links. One of the events listed in that post I can corroborate and even agree that it was badly done on Danny's part: that is that someone asked for a refund or exchange on a wig that seemed to not be able to sit on their doll's head correctly, and Danny told her she was wrong and wrote a five page explainer as to how to correctly use a Smart Doll wig. I saw the photos of this girl's wig and it seemed like the wig actually had a flaw. I even said as much on his Instagram, that I was disappointed with how he handled that situation.
The thing is, the number one biggest complaint people have about Danny is that he bans people if he feels they are being rude to him or to his staff. This, I think, is where the major rage towards him comes from, because the people who are banned self-report that they weren't rude but rather just asked a question or said they didn't like something Danny had made. Some people even said they were just in a Facebook group that Danny didn't like (the group had a banner comparing Danny to Hitler or some shit, which - what the actual fuck. There are FOR REAL fascists in the world right now you dumb doll fans, a creative you don't like isn't Hitler just because you're mad, ffs.) and being in that group got them banned for life. The thing is, I really, really tend to doubt these stories, because like I said, Danny has my Instagram reply to his post saying that while I usually get where he's coming from, this time I think he's wrong. I didn't get banned from the store for that, so maybe Danny doesn't have the hair trigger these people are talking about, and instead they just don't really understand how rude they are? That's the direction I'm leaning on this, because none of the public evidence is conclusive.
Now we get to the reason why I was mad at Dollfie the other day. See one of the things that post mentions - they even put it in the post title! - is that Danny just uses the "Wabi-Sabi" philosophy to "sell substandard product." People can get away with saying stuff like that because in the doll world, hardly anyone can afford to buy multiple items from multiple different doll shops - the expense is too high. So most people will default to their favorite brand and their favorite Etsy shop for clothes, or even hand-make their own clothes, and never be able to make a real consumer comparison between the quality of one brand to another. The thing is I have now been able to purchase multiple items from Dollfie, the one everyone adores as the king of the doll industry, and their quality is atrocious. Smart Doll stuff is always, somewhat obviously, hand made and the quality is amazing. I can't say definitively that no other doll store is this high quality, but I can definitely say that Dollfie isn't as high quality. The one time I have a faulty Smart Doll item (an article of clothing) Danny not only replaced it at no cost, he also sent me a couple of other discontinued items for free. Whoever this demon dude who bans people for no reason is, I've never spoken to him at Smart Doll.
And you know, for all I know Danny did complain about the quality of Dollfie items. He started out as a fan of Dollfie who just wanted to work for them making doll designs, and they turned him down. When you're a fan of something, you complain about the parts of it you'd like to see improved. People don't see that of this guy because he has his own doll shop now so any criticism of other products is him "setting up a rivalry" instead of, ya know, talking as a fan? There are a lot of artists out there who got their start because they wanted to see something out in the world that wasn't currently being made, and the only way they knew how to get it was to figure out how to make it themselves.
I think this whole controversy boils down to 2 things. One, that social media is toxic as fuck and everyone should stay away from it. Two, that doll collectors are extremely demanding and also don't think that they're demanding, so if anyone refuses them it's the crime of the century. The second point is why I don't hang out in doll fandom spaces.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
Oddly your summary is similar to any fandom of "stuff" to buy and collect. Actually, I can say the demanding part is any collector hobby. I came from the anime artwork community and that place was just as toxic, and this was before social media. I would hate to see how it is now.
Yeah, I frequently get exasperated by some of the entitled attitudes and overly dramatic reactions I see in the Transformers fandom. I wish I could just shake them all and go "You know you guys are having this vicious argument about CHILDREN'S PLAYTHINGS, right?" And I know they're being tools because I used to be just like them (as near twenty years of posting on this forum can attest.), so instead of getting mad and trying ot chastise them, or getting down into the muck with them, I just talk about how behaviors I've had in the past and how I realized they're toxic and why I stopped doing them.
I don't think I've reached anyone, but it's done wonders for my sanity, turning annoyance in an opportunity for self-reflection.
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
I also just realized something about "Danny is aggressively against people making Dollfie/Smart Doll hybrids" - if that were really true, all he would need to do is redesign his doll heads so that they don't fit on Dollfie bodies no matter what. It would be a trivially easy change to make, if that was something he cared about at all.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
Don’t have much to add to the conversation as honestly I’m very new in all these communities, but hey here’s some minis I painted today for our halloween mini campaign.
No worries man, I am literally the only one in this thread who collects gigantic posable dolls. I just wanted to go on a rant about my fandom.
Yep, ranting to someone helps. Especially if it is PA folk. There is a reason I'm still on this forum and post so much here. There really is nowhere else like here.
No worries man, I am literally the only one in this thread who collects gigantic posable dolls. I just wanted to go on a rant about my fandom.
It's funny, I look at the photos you post and I'm always super impressed with the quality of the dolls and the work you put into them. And then once in awhile you post a picture where there is something else in the photo to give them scale and it reminds me just how large the dolls are. Until those occasional reminders, I picture something about half the height.
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
No worries man, I am literally the only one in this thread who collects gigantic posable dolls. I just wanted to go on a rant about my fandom.
It's funny, I look at the photos you post and I'm always super impressed with the quality of the dolls and the work you put into them. And then once in awhile you post a picture where there is something else in the photo to give them scale and it reminds me just how large the dolls are. Until those occasional reminders, I picture something about half the height.
Heh, I have a similar mental problem when looking at Dollzone's Trinity doll line. These dolls are 110 cm (43 inches) - just over 3 and a half feet tall; my dolls are 2 ft. When I look at the pictures my brain mentally resizes them to 2 ft, I have to work really hard to make my brain size them back to 3.5 ft.
(also, 3.5 feet of resin has got to be fucking heavy as shit)
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"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
Yeah, I frequently get exasperated by some of the entitled attitudes and overly dramatic reactions I see in the Transformers fandom. I wish I could just shake them all and go "You know you guys are having this vicious argument about CHILDREN'S PLAYTHINGS, right?" And I know they're being tools because I used to be just like them (as near twenty years of posting on this forum can attest.), so instead of getting mad and trying ot chastise them, or getting down into the muck with them, I just talk about how behaviors I've had in the past and how I realized they're toxic and why I stopped doing them.
I don't think I've reached anyone, but it's done wonders for my sanity, turning annoyance in an opportunity for self-reflection.
I started sinking deeper into the 3rd party Transformers world during the pandemic, and so spend a lot of time reading the TFW2005 3P forums. Good gravy, has it brought into stark relief how incredible the PA forums are, thanks in part to the very intentional moderation but also (I think it's fair to say) to the willingness of the posters to improve themselves, and be more empathetic and kinder.
I have been Extremely Online since like '98, I've read my fair share of forums, and the first forum I have ever blocked people on has been TFW. At a certain point I even stopped hesitating, and now just block people after one offense. I used to worry about blocking people because "but what if they say something interesting/meaningful and I miss it?", but after a bit of time paying attention, I realized that the people I would want to block literally never have anything interesting or meaningful to say. They run the gamut from racist/sexist/every-flavor-of-ist to just plain ol' belittling and mean for no reason. I don't want to be reductive, but the vast majority of the public on that forum seems to be men in their 40s-50s, and, uh... well, knowing how America socializes its men, I am not surprised that the default mode of interaction on there is "moderate aggression and dismissive cruelty".
I don't want to make myself out to be an angel or anything, I'm certainly not immune to the same socialization forces that act upon those dudes (although I was an immigrant kid in the 90s rather than an American-born kid in the 80s, so I dunno what differences that adds), and I certainly had some views in the past and acted in ways that now embarrass me. But, like, I'm 38 now and some of those dudes mention that they're in their 40 or older; if I am where I am now, I feel like it's reasonable for me to expect older, grown-ass men to be in at least the same neighborhood.
I'm not even asking for much. Basically, I just want people to recognize that preferring one toy over another does not make them morally superior, and other people not liking that toy as much does not make those people morally inferior. I know that this is unfortunately a much broader issue, seen all over discussions of film, TV, books, music, etc etc etc, but man, the amount of vitriol in some of those TFW discussions really bums me out.
Undead Scottsman, you're a better person than I am; I used to try and be a calming voice of reason when some of those conversations went completely off the rails, but I have since just completely stopped engaging. No one's mind on there is going to get changed, or even given pause, and the mod team is so hands-off that it's effectively absent.
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
Oooof. Must resist...
Today, I got a notice that Amazon was running a sale on Legacy Metroplex (the latest titan) for closer to traditional prices of $150. I saw it and was like "Well, better price, but still no room - especially with the other big ticket items I have coming in.
Then, just now, DNA Designs announced an upgrade kit for him. New hands (of course), shoulder fillers, a new ratchet piece to make the sparkdrinker work much better and be bigger... and the minicon that Hasbro skipped on. It's... a really nice package, even if they didn't "fix" anything with the sparkdrinker or his missing cybertron key. It's also expensive, as anything with a fully assembled bot from them is.
It is harder and harder to resist temptation on that.
Forever Zefirocloaked in the midnight glory of an event horizonRegistered Userregular
Yeah the Transformers fandom can be exhausting, between cartoon accuracy vs toy accuracy, official vs 3p, etc
Like if a toy doesn’t look just like cartoon, frame 573, episode 36, where you can see the stripe on the left toe, then it’s a shit toy, the designer should probably die
And then this one guy in a Marvel Legends group is complaining about Blue Marvel being an OP trash “woke” hero…
Thank you all for not being absolute trash humans
XBL - Foreverender | 3DS FC - 1418 6696 1012 | Steam ID | LoL
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I've never done kitbashing but if you're working on something I'd be jazzed to see it. I've always found kitbashing to be pretty darn rad.
In the BJD world where I collect, there isn't kitbashing per se, but plenty of people do custom mods to dolls and generate new parts via 3d printing, and I've definitely done my own modding and painting.
I've not done any kitbashing; the closest would be filing down the inside of Thrilling 30 Arcee's hands so she can hold her gol-danged weapon, and once when I repaired my classics starscream. (Which I then replaced with Earthrise Starscream like three years later.
Part me of wants to design my own Transformer and try to make it, but they'd probably be such a unique design that'd be beyond my extremely meager skillset.
But don't let my inability stop you from posting about it! I'd love to see what you're making!
Unfortunately I genuinely couldn't resist when Danny released some blue heads yesterday, because I wanted a blue head for Liara with nostrils.
See this is the current head I have for her:
This is the head I bought last night (for around $330. Only includes head, eyes, and wig, no body):
As an added bonus, that head has freckles! So I don't even really need to do any modding on it, aside from creating head tentacles. I mean it's not an exact match for Liara, but it's a pretty good anime-esque stylized model, I think!
Also, I've been doing a little bit of fabric dying lately. There's a pair of pants I tried to dye black, and I'm working on turning my white space marine uniform purple. This is a bit more involved that dying the resin, because I have to wash out the excess dye so there's no bleed on the vinyl, which means that once I'm done the color could be too light and I need to go through the dye process again - that happened with the black pants, which are actually graphite gray in color. The space marine uniform I just dyed yesterday, and I still have to go through a few more hand washings before I'm convinced it's not going to bleed. Even if it's light, though, I think I'll be OK with the color. Black is hard because it takes a lot of pigment to actually get anything approaching black. I'll share my final results once I'm done.
The purple uniform is in the dryer, because I don't want to wait for two days of drying on it.
Rotate them pictures though, it's hard to look at them sideways.
I am kind of iffy on that? Like... I know I pulled the trigger some time ago, but I am not sure if I care about it anymore.
I watched a review of the Megatron/HISS tank on TFW and it almost sold me on buying one. It wasn't nearly as bad in hand as some early reviews made it sound. The tank mode looked clean and there is a shield to cover Meg's face sticking out the back. I am not into GI Joe so can easily avoid this, but I would be tempted if I was into that and Transformers.
Also got my shipping soon notification for the next MPG Raiden train. Actually I didn't know what it was till I looked it up on the website.
Steam: betsuni7
HISS Megatron just seemed compromised by having to both be a accurate HISS tank as well as an accurate G1 megatron; had they allowed Megatron's design be dictated by the HISS tank, or even better made it a new character who didn't have to shoehorn in an animation design from 40 years ago, I think it would have turned out a lot better.
I'm not sure I've mentioned it before, but Smart Dolls do not come in a box. I mean, obviously they're shipped so there's the shipping box, but inside that box isn't a retail-style container for you to keep as a collector. Instead the doll is in a canvas bag (that's nice to keep as a reusable shopping bag), the doll is wrapped in bubble-wrap and plastic to keep it protected during shipping, and there's a small box containing the doll wig, stand, and any other accessories you bought when you purchased the doll. Some people don't like this, but I really appreciate it. For one thing I'm not a big box collector, on smaller toys I usually just trash the box. I feel weird trashing the box for BJDs, so I'm very glad that I didn't receive a stack of Smart Doll boxes for the 11 dolls I got from them, because especially when I was living in a smaller house I would have had to either figure out a place to store them (impossible) or agonized over throwing them in the trash. The other reason I like it is because it's a little more environmentally conscious to not be making all those extra packaging materials.
The other dolls I've bought now, however, do have retail boxes. Both Shoushou doll and Dollfie. Here's a side by side photo of my new Megumin and the box that June came in:
The Shoushou box has a line down the middle because every time I use a box cutter to open the shipping box for these dolls, it breaks through to the doll box. Not much I can do about it now. Megumin's box is stupidly large, much taller than she is herself.
I'm not really sure why they made the box so tall. I thought at first it was because of the staff, but a) the staff was shipped in two pieces so it's shorter than Megumin and b) even if they had shipped in it one pieces it's not that tall. Having made a few purchase from Dollfie now, I'm afraid a lot of my experiences are negative, and one of the negatives is how much packing material they stuff in. The amount of material they put on the doll and the doll wig is normal, you need to protect those parts. But then when you get to the doll hands and clothes, where they not only have individual bags for each part, but they frequently have bags within bags, it's really annoying at the waste on display. I get that for some people the "unboxing experience" is part of what they like about dolls, but ffs - the way the extra hands were packed was one external bag for all hands, then each pair of hands had it's own bag, then one of the two individual hands within the pair had it's own bag. Why?!
Anyway, on to the doll herself.
I have been interested to see first hand how the classic Dollfie frame is different from the Smart Doll frame, and the first thing that stands out is that this frame is more bulky:
Dollfie:
Smart Doll:
I will say that Dollfie has a line of dolls called "Dollfie Dream Dynamite" where the frame is very similar to Smart Doll. I like that frame a lot better, I don't know why they don't just make all of their dolls with that frame.
About the figure itself, I'm not a fan of the way the bust has a "lower lip" between it and the torso, at least when I look at the doll in a swimsuit or body-baring clothes. On the other hand I can see why you would do the design this way when it comes to dressing the doll in a more covered way, in dresses and blouses + pants, shorts or skirts. The longer bust keeps you from getting an accidental weird break in the skin under something tailored. It is kind of weird for me to care when 95% of the time I put my dolls in full clothes top to bottom, rarely ever do swimsuits and only occasionally do bra tops or crop tops. But whatever, I collect these dolls partially because I think they're pretty and cute to look at, and the longline bust isn't cute, that's all there is to it.
I wasn't sure until I actually saw the face in person whether I would keep her red eyes or not, but once I did see her I was like yeah, I don't like red eyes, let's switch them out. This makes Megumin a little non-canon to the fictional world where she came from what whatevs, I'm pretty much never going to read or watch that media so I don't really care. I ended up giving her eyes with a purple to pink ombre effect (have you noticed a theme about the colors I like?) but before I could do that I had to get her default eyes out. This is another difference between Smart Doll and Dollfie; Smart Doll secures eyes in the head using easily-removable Blu-Tack, while Dollfie secures the eyes with a low-heat glue gun.
Should you wish to copy Dollfie's means of securing eyes, you can purchase a special glue gun and glue from them. They even sell a tool to help you remove the eyes (little more than a push stick with rubbery ends).
I knew that Dollfie uses a glue gun for the eyes way before I bought this doll so that wasn't a surprise. What I was surprised by is how difficult it was to remove those eyes. I had to watch a tutorial of someone removing the eyes before I could get it done, and even then it took a scraping tool for me to get most of the glue out. I didn't get all of it, there's some still stuck in there but I'm not going to risk damaging the head by continued scraping.
Once I got enough of it out, I just used some blu-tack that I already had on hand and secured the new eyes. I only just realized that I hadn't gotten a photo of the eyes once I secured them, so here's a photo I just took of them:
Her outfit is pretty cute and it has a lot of individual parts to it that I like. That said, it suffers from what I've seen in other Dollfie items, in that most parts were made on the cheap. The dress, socks and hat are fine even if the material is cheap. The boots really start to show the cheapness, with boot soles made of a very cheap and light plastic - Smart Doll has soles that feel like real rubber shoe bottoms & heels which I think are made from vinyl but they have a really good texture and weight. Hell, even when Smart Doll does faux leather they do it better than Dollfie does, again making the vinyl they're using for vegan leather have the correct texture and feel. The belt and choker are similarly very bad faux leather and just feel plasticy as hell almost paper thin. The staff is nice enough and the plushie cat is cute. Overall I do like the figure and will keep her dressed up in the gear she came in. But this is one of those cases when I have a real urge to learn a new skill (in this case, leather-working) so that I can re-imagine some of her accessories in a much more high quality way.
Edit: Forgot to mention, the wig is also cheap! I wanted to replace it with a Smart Doll wig, but it seems that Dollfie makes larger heads for their dolls than Smart Doll does, so the Smart Doll wigs don't fit.
Edit: Also I know I sound kind of salty and I am, but it's not Megumin's fault. I still do think she's a cute doll. Part of my annoyance comes from recent experiences with the larger BJD community. I might write a rant up about it later.
Group picture of everything I made today plus a timelapse video:
https://youtube.com/shorts/9Jf7HDuTkkc?feature=share
So far I tried:
Lanaset dye - the dye never "strikes" which is what would keep it from bleeding out. This is supposed to work for all natural fibers.
Synthetic RIT dye - Seems to easily rinse out in water.
Dharma iDye for poly fabrics - supposed to be good for polyester and nylon. It also rinses almost completely out of the garment.
Next to try:
- Rit dyes for natural fabrics. I just ordered these
- Acid dye. I have some of this already so I might try it tonight
Steam: betsuni7
Well the main thing to remember, if you ever feel nd yourself trying to dye something, is that there are different dyes for natural fibers and synthetic fibers. That's the main divide. Lanaset dye is a particularly complex dye but I choose it because it's supposed to make an extremely good bond with natural fibers. I still *kinda* think this fiber is mostly natural, but I probably got something wrong in the process. I'm doing the acid dye bath now and I made more careful measurements this time so I was using the right any of dye and citric acid. We'll see if it works this time.
Edit: actually I just added a little more citric acid because more acid is said to help the dye "exhaust." I also would be helped here if I used a cooking thermometer and a ph meter. I don't own a cooking thermometer; I do own a ph meter but lost track of it after we moved. Which may mean I'm setting myself up for another failure.
Fabric is WAY harder to dye than resin figures.
So anyway I have some RIT dyes on order, once I get those I should be able to get the job done. Just mad at myself for the wasted time. But at least I learned more about dying in the process.
Hasbro: We got him boys! Reissue that shit immediately!
https://www.bigbadtoystore.com/Product/VariationDetails/133865
https://www.entertainmentearth.com/product/transformers-war-for-cybertron-commander-jetfire-figure/hse4824
Now you can debate on getting this or the MP.
Steam: betsuni7
Already put my preorder in.
And I'm mostly done with MP.
I've made no secret of the fact that Smart Doll is my favorite doll brand. Several things first attracted me to these dolls: 1) the clothes for the dolls look legitimately like human clothes sized down, rather than like doll clothes - the fabrics look at feel like "real" fabrics, they have working pockets, etc. 2) I like the face designs 3) I like that Smart Doll keeps darker skin tones in stock by default. Literally every other doll maker either doesn't sell any color darker than "paper white", or if they do sell a darker color it costs more and comes in limited quantities. As time went on, I found other reasons to like Smart Doll, which I've mentioned here. Danny Choo, the designer and CEO of Smart Doll, seems to genuinely care for his employees, and simply won't allow clients to bully them in ANY way. He has released tons of designs that celebrate non-standard beauty. He's always coming up with new things to release and new ideas to put out in the world. And he makes himself way more accessible than most other doll brand CEOs, in that he has a twitter and an Instagram, and he's usually the one who replies to support emails - which I think is another way he is kind to his employees, as anyone who has ever worked with the public knows, being the face of support is usually one of the ugliest and most demoralizing jobs in the company. Also, he uses technology to try to undermine scalpers who would buy his rarer dolls only to sell them for double price on Ebay.
Now even saying all this, I know he's a human being and not a saint. He's sometimes acted on social media in ways that I think are not great. But I can't really judge him too hard for that kind of thing, because back when I was regularly on Twitter I had my bad days, too, and probably went too far in arguing with some dumb shit about politics or video games. Twitter is the lesson from War Games we never learned: The only winning move is not to play.
I should maybe mention his ethnicity and country of origin, because people tend to think these are relevant in discussing the "dark" side of Danny Choo: He's of Chinese descent and he was born in the UK, yet he named his company Culture Japan and often posts about Japanese culture and how he incorporates that culture into the dolls he makes. This is seen by some as, essentially, a weeb went to Japan and started pretending he was/is a Japanese person as an adult. He's also the son of Jimmy Choo, the famous shoe designer, and there is an accusation floating around that he was only able to start his business because of money from his rich daddy. Neither of these claims has any particular evidence except information that everybody knows - that Danny Choo is a British expatriate of Chinese descent and the son of Jimmy Choo.
All that preface is just to say that Danny Choo is a somewhat controversial figure in the doll community. A list of some of his "crimes" may be found here. I do agree that he can be passive aggressive in his site descriptions, but also because he's basically the only English-speaking large doll brand that regularly communicates on social media, I have zero doubt that people are relentlessly shitty to him so if he wants to be a little passive aggressive, that's fine? Some items here I cannot corroborate, despite having been a fan of the dolls since 2016 or so; I don't know if he badmouthed Dollfie, or made efforts to keep people from hybridizing Smart Doll & Dollfie. Since I've been following his social media I haven't seen that and this post doesn't have links. One of the events listed in that post I can corroborate and even agree that it was badly done on Danny's part: that is that someone asked for a refund or exchange on a wig that seemed to not be able to sit on their doll's head correctly, and Danny told her she was wrong and wrote a five page explainer as to how to correctly use a Smart Doll wig. I saw the photos of this girl's wig and it seemed like the wig actually had a flaw. I even said as much on his Instagram, that I was disappointed with how he handled that situation.
The thing is, the number one biggest complaint people have about Danny is that he bans people if he feels they are being rude to him or to his staff. This, I think, is where the major rage towards him comes from, because the people who are banned self-report that they weren't rude but rather just asked a question or said they didn't like something Danny had made. Some people even said they were just in a Facebook group that Danny didn't like (the group had a banner comparing Danny to Hitler or some shit, which - what the actual fuck. There are FOR REAL fascists in the world right now you dumb doll fans, a creative you don't like isn't Hitler just because you're mad, ffs.) and being in that group got them banned for life. The thing is, I really, really tend to doubt these stories, because like I said, Danny has my Instagram reply to his post saying that while I usually get where he's coming from, this time I think he's wrong. I didn't get banned from the store for that, so maybe Danny doesn't have the hair trigger these people are talking about, and instead they just don't really understand how rude they are? That's the direction I'm leaning on this, because none of the public evidence is conclusive.
Now we get to the reason why I was mad at Dollfie the other day. See one of the things that post mentions - they even put it in the post title! - is that Danny just uses the "Wabi-Sabi" philosophy to "sell substandard product." People can get away with saying stuff like that because in the doll world, hardly anyone can afford to buy multiple items from multiple different doll shops - the expense is too high. So most people will default to their favorite brand and their favorite Etsy shop for clothes, or even hand-make their own clothes, and never be able to make a real consumer comparison between the quality of one brand to another. The thing is I have now been able to purchase multiple items from Dollfie, the one everyone adores as the king of the doll industry, and their quality is atrocious. Smart Doll stuff is always, somewhat obviously, hand made and the quality is amazing. I can't say definitively that no other doll store is this high quality, but I can definitely say that Dollfie isn't as high quality. The one time I have a faulty Smart Doll item (an article of clothing) Danny not only replaced it at no cost, he also sent me a couple of other discontinued items for free. Whoever this demon dude who bans people for no reason is, I've never spoken to him at Smart Doll.
And you know, for all I know Danny did complain about the quality of Dollfie items. He started out as a fan of Dollfie who just wanted to work for them making doll designs, and they turned him down. When you're a fan of something, you complain about the parts of it you'd like to see improved. People don't see that of this guy because he has his own doll shop now so any criticism of other products is him "setting up a rivalry" instead of, ya know, talking as a fan? There are a lot of artists out there who got their start because they wanted to see something out in the world that wasn't currently being made, and the only way they knew how to get it was to figure out how to make it themselves.
I think this whole controversy boils down to 2 things. One, that social media is toxic as fuck and everyone should stay away from it. Two, that doll collectors are extremely demanding and also don't think that they're demanding, so if anyone refuses them it's the crime of the century. The second point is why I don't hang out in doll fandom spaces.
Steam: betsuni7
I don't think I've reached anyone, but it's done wonders for my sanity, turning annoyance in an opportunity for self-reflection.
Yep, ranting to someone helps. Especially if it is PA folk. There is a reason I'm still on this forum and post so much here. There really is nowhere else like here.
Steam: betsuni7
It's funny, I look at the photos you post and I'm always super impressed with the quality of the dolls and the work you put into them. And then once in awhile you post a picture where there is something else in the photo to give them scale and it reminds me just how large the dolls are. Until those occasional reminders, I picture something about half the height.
Heh, I have a similar mental problem when looking at Dollzone's Trinity doll line. These dolls are 110 cm (43 inches) - just over 3 and a half feet tall; my dolls are 2 ft. When I look at the pictures my brain mentally resizes them to 2 ft, I have to work really hard to make my brain size them back to 3.5 ft.
(also, 3.5 feet of resin has got to be fucking heavy as shit)
I have been Extremely Online since like '98, I've read my fair share of forums, and the first forum I have ever blocked people on has been TFW. At a certain point I even stopped hesitating, and now just block people after one offense. I used to worry about blocking people because "but what if they say something interesting/meaningful and I miss it?", but after a bit of time paying attention, I realized that the people I would want to block literally never have anything interesting or meaningful to say. They run the gamut from racist/sexist/every-flavor-of-ist to just plain ol' belittling and mean for no reason. I don't want to be reductive, but the vast majority of the public on that forum seems to be men in their 40s-50s, and, uh... well, knowing how America socializes its men, I am not surprised that the default mode of interaction on there is "moderate aggression and dismissive cruelty".
I don't want to make myself out to be an angel or anything, I'm certainly not immune to the same socialization forces that act upon those dudes (although I was an immigrant kid in the 90s rather than an American-born kid in the 80s, so I dunno what differences that adds), and I certainly had some views in the past and acted in ways that now embarrass me. But, like, I'm 38 now and some of those dudes mention that they're in their 40 or older; if I am where I am now, I feel like it's reasonable for me to expect older, grown-ass men to be in at least the same neighborhood.
I'm not even asking for much. Basically, I just want people to recognize that preferring one toy over another does not make them morally superior, and other people not liking that toy as much does not make those people morally inferior. I know that this is unfortunately a much broader issue, seen all over discussions of film, TV, books, music, etc etc etc, but man, the amount of vitriol in some of those TFW discussions really bums me out.
Undead Scottsman, you're a better person than I am; I used to try and be a calming voice of reason when some of those conversations went completely off the rails, but I have since just completely stopped engaging. No one's mind on there is going to get changed, or even given pause, and the mod team is so hands-off that it's effectively absent.
Today, I got a notice that Amazon was running a sale on Legacy Metroplex (the latest titan) for closer to traditional prices of $150. I saw it and was like "Well, better price, but still no room - especially with the other big ticket items I have coming in.
Then, just now, DNA Designs announced an upgrade kit for him. New hands (of course), shoulder fillers, a new ratchet piece to make the sparkdrinker work much better and be bigger... and the minicon that Hasbro skipped on. It's... a really nice package, even if they didn't "fix" anything with the sparkdrinker or his missing cybertron key. It's also expensive, as anything with a fully assembled bot from them is.
It is harder and harder to resist temptation on that.
Like if a toy doesn’t look just like cartoon, frame 573, episode 36, where you can see the stripe on the left toe, then it’s a shit toy, the designer should probably die
And then this one guy in a Marvel Legends group is complaining about Blue Marvel being an OP trash “woke” hero…
Thank you all for not being absolute trash humans
XBL - Foreverender | 3DS FC - 1418 6696 1012 | Steam ID | LoL