I can post finished things!

I figured for once I could post something finished.  So here's the finished Davesprite obitsu that I did!

Inevitably there are a lot of things I would have done differently if I were to do it again, but overall I'm pretty happy!

Wiiings!

Well I went ahead and finished the feather wings that I had started before, since if I wanted to try again that meant buying more materials and I'm being honest I don't have moneys for that right now!

I used all 20 feathers to make them, so shockingly there's about ten feather's worth of feathers in each wing?  I really underestimated how many I needed, I think I could have used twice as many as I did.

So the easiest way I could think to attach them was to drill holes in the back of the body and just stick the wings on there.  Keep in mind that I made the wings with this plan in mind, so the base wire had two prongs of wire sticking out.  If I wanted to get fancy about it I would have bought some magnets, but I wasn't into it.

So I took the torso apart so that I was just working with the back plate.  The reason that I went with two holes for each wing is because if I did one, the wings would have a tendency to droop down.  With two holes it will keep them pointing straight out!

Holes drilled!  They're not 100% perfect, but they're going to be covered in feathers in a minute!

Yeah wings!

When choosing where to drill I was lucky that there wasn't any obstructions inside of the torso to block where I wanted to put the wires through.

Put it back together!

Pretty okay I think!  And since they're made out of wire and hot glue I'll be able to pose them pretty well too.

Skipping out on updates again!

Sorry, but I have another excuse!  My brand new computer is super broke :(  It crashed randomly, and just won't come back up, some of the hardware is broken but I don't have the expertise to figure out where.  I hope they will let me return it, it's less than thirty days old...

For now I'm working on my ancient tablet PC, it's functional, but far from perfect.  I miss my computer.

Anyways, I do have things to update with, more work on Davesprite!

I airbrushed him orange (which turns out is just one of the shades of yellow that I already have), and I made his tail!

If anyone wants to know more about how I made the tail I can go into it, but I didn't take any photos of the progress, whoops!

So now I have to decide what to do for his eyes?  There's just no good reference for his eyes!

Tiny orange wings

So I've started working on the wings for the Davesprite Obitsu!  Unfortunately... I don't like them x(

My biggest problem: I didn't buy enough feathers.  I bought twenty, thinking it would be enough, but in reality I just needed more even if I wasn't going to use the full feathers.

Now I'm thinking I might try some other material for the wings, or just buy some premade resin ones or something :(

Momentary lapse

Sorry I've been gone for so long, but my father's recovery from his heart surgery took longer than expected!  He's still obviously recovering, but he's home now so it's so much easier than having to go to the hospital every day!

Now that I'm back I'm working on another little Homestuck Obitsu, since I ordered two more from theJunkySpot.com

I'm going to be making a character called Davesprite (he'll come up under google if you want to look), who's got orange skin this time.  So that means I have to change the whole body color of this doll first!  Or, well, half of it.  He has a 'tail' kind of thing instead of legs, so I separated the body at the hip.  At first I was worried that I was going to have to break something to get it apart, but Obitsus are surprisingly easy to take apart!

All I had to do was pop the little balls on the top of the thighs off with some pliers, and the hips popped right off after!  Since there's such a nice arrangement inside with the joints, it will be perfect to attach elastic to for the tail!  Some kind of armature would be ideal for the tail so it could hold poses better, but I think strung elastic will work just fine.

Now I also have a random pair of hips and legs for... something else?

Next I took all the pieces that I could apart!  I could have taken the stomach piece off too, and probably will before airbrushing, but didn't for the photo.  I had to make sure to remove ALL of the joint pieces, since they're what I'm working on right now.

So here they all are!  Very small, but a huge nuisance.  Since any kind of surface paint that I put on kept chipping off, no matter how many layers or what type of sealant I used, the only other option I could think of was to dye them.  I decided to just go for it since if they didn't turn out well I would have to go back to finding a different surface treatment to cover them, and it would cover up a bad dye job if need be.

I didn't think of it until I had already tried it, but these joints actually come apart into two pieces if you're handy with two pairs of pliers.  I should have done this first since for some reason that I can't fathom they made each side out of a different type of vinyl, so each half takes the dye differently from the other.  What this meant is that one half took dye much quicker than the other.

It wasn't a difficult fix though, I just took them apart after, put the lighter pieces back in the dye bath and then put them back together.  They're not perfect, the dye went on slightly uneven (I used RIT fabric dye, but it was the powdered version and I had trouble getting the crystals entirely dissolved) but since they will be mostly hidden inside the joints I'm not that concerned.

The point is that dyeing the joints actually WORKED!  I'm so pumped, this means that I won't have to edit out huge white splotches in photos where there's chipping in the joints.  The rest of the body I can airbrush since there shouldn't be an issue with rubbing.