Far, Far Out: A Custom Create-a-Monster!

 

One Create-a-Monster custom project abruptly led to another.

I was inspired by parts from the Insect CAM set I'd ordered to make a character based on The Fly (1958), and I thought that character could use the red wig and earless head of the CAM Werewolf doll. So I ordered a Werewolf and Dragon set.

The Werewolf and Dragon as they arrived to me. The characters were dressed
in the "opposite" clothing--the dark clothes were made to match the
Werewolf more.

The dolls were in good condition, and I started undressing the Werewolf, since she was going to be my body for the Fly girl.

I'd already ordered parts for the Fly doll, but looking at this character struck me with an idea. An intrusive, disruptive, brilliant idea that completely upended my plans and made me order a second doll for the Fly project. What did I see looking at the base earless silver Werewolf body?

This is a freaking perfect grey alien doll.

The greys are a classic sci-fi pop icon-- little oval-headed space creatures with big slanted black eyes and no noses. Sometimes they're green, but the character design is the same.

A Google search assortment of the iconography.

Now, Monster High has tackled space aliens before, with quite a bit of the greys involved.

Official Monster High artwork of Astranova.

Astranova was a pretty neat design. She had a huge head and eyes, a short stature, blue starry skin (that changed inexplicably to pink on a later release of her playset), hands with only three long fingers, and a faceted, polygonal body.

However, I never liked Astranova enough to get her. Her theme is very eighties glam-rock, her color scheme doesn't totally work for me, and her doll had a magnet inside an unremovable helmet as part of her playset (the doll would levitate under an electromagnet in the comet at the top). As a whole, MH's alien felt like a missed opportunity for a classic sixties sci-fi tribute. So there was plenty of room for one.

I planned out my vision for this character very quickly. While I struggled with ideas on how to dress her, I quickly found my direction.

A fun trope in the alien sphere is the idea of aliens in disguise walking among humans. Not in the earnest and unhealthy "we're living in a conspiracy" way, but in the comedic "these guys are trying their hardest to blend in and it's cartoonishly obvious" way.

For example, the Pokémon Beheeyem- an alien evolved to look like a man in a trench coat.

Official Ken Sugimori artwork of Beheeyem.

So the sixties theme and the covert-alien theme both guided my choices. And key to achieving that wardrobe was I Love Fashion Scarah.

Mattel stock photo of I Love Fashion Scarah Screams.

Scarah was an Irish banshee ghoul whose fashion sense had absolutely nothing to do with her monster type 99 percent of the time. Literally only one of her clothing pieces out of five dolls had anything that referenced the banshee--a dress with pop-art screaming faces printed on it. I never had that Scarah, but I love that dress. 

Despite this lack of monster theming, Scarah had a consistent fashion sense, with a sixties mod style in white, green and pink tones. This particular doll, her first mass-market release after her SDCC-exclusive signature doll, wasn't ever my favorite design, but her assortment of clothing pieces was exceptionally appealing. The doll came with pieces that were striking and generic alike, and somehow all of them felt useful for many characters. That may not be good for defining a distinctive character, but it's a great fashion pack.

And a wardrobe with green and white tones, sixties mod theming, Willy Wonka space sunglasses, and a trench coat was absolutely made for a grey alien ghoul going undercover in style.

I knew the doll also needed a hat, and I found that too. G3 Draculaura's dolls notably failed to include the wide-brimmed Lydia Deetz-esque hat she wears in the G3 animated series.

G3 Draculaura as seen in the 
Monster High TV series.

Responding to this, a market rose up on Etsy to 3D print the hat for collectors. The actual MH Lydia Deetz being a Skullector doll made taking her hat very impractical (and a bit unfair), after all. I figured the exaggerated width of the hat and its shape would be perfect once painted white. It would be like a high-fashion take on a spy hat, and would resemble a UFO on her head!

This is the listing I bought my hat from.

Alright, so now that we know she's a trench coat ghoul from the sixties and outer space, let's get her a name and profile!

Marcia Greyman

Monster Parentage: [CLASSIFIED]
Killer Style: I call it "terra incognito" or "covert chic". I like to keep a high profile on the town, but a low profile about…other things.
Freaky Flaw: Where I’m from, we’re a little more touchy-feely than people tend to be used to, so I tend to get called a personal space invader.
Favorite Activity: People-watching. There's so much you can learn…about life…just by looking around at the way people behave when they think they're unobserved.
Biggest Pet Peeve: People asking me intrusive personal questions like "what planet are you even from?"
Favorite School Subject: Drama class. Acting has opened up my mind to so many facets of experience I've been blind to. It's truly affected me and made me more sensitive.
Least Favorite School Subject: Astronomy. I'm not the majority, but as someone who could easily teach the class, I get nothing from it.

Favorite Food: Having formative memories of steaks and tall glasses of milk, there's no better meal I could think of.
Pet: None at the moment. I don't understand animals very well.

Best Friends: Astranova, Scarah Screams

My read on her character is that she has yet to realize how absolutely unproblematic her nature is within a community of monsters, so she's maintaining a façade of human normalcy that's completely unnecessary where she is.

I planned early for Marcia to be wearing black gloves, at least with the coat, so I gave her the one Insect CAM hand I had while I waited for another Insect doll I had coming to give her another.  Then I wiped her face paint off. It left a couple of stains I couldn't remove, but they're not too distracting.

The first things I got down were her lips and her eyes. I wanted her lips to feel unusually shaped and like retro graphic design, and I thought her eyes would be a shiny alien black, kind of inverted from Scarah's solid white. The lower lip paint doesn't fill the sculpt and some lighting makes that more distracting, but I think they're fine and the shape of the lipstick is the way I want it.

I then added starry dots to her eyes and gave her swooped white eyshadow with a neon green line in it. The proportions of the makeup got a little out of control and I had to keep building it out to make it consistent. 

Here's the first faceup attempt:

I wasn't pleased with this. The black eyes left the eyes looking less cartooned, and inconsistent with real MH dolls, as did the gloss effect, and the acrylic paint application was too thick and textured in the makeup. I sanded and wiped the eyes off as much as I could and started again.

This time, I decided to have her eyes be dark green. To fully pay tribute to both the grey and green versions of the classic alien, I wanted the green colors to be somewhat inherent to her biological coloration, and not just applied through makeup and clothing. The eyes being green would also make it easy to outline them with a pen and make them more consistent with MH dolls. I took care to water the paint down a bit and paint in successive layers as well, so the paint would look far less textured and more flat and cartoony and in line with the official dolls.

The lips were good. They stayed.
(Tinker Toys make great anchor rods for painting doll heads...
and great drying stands for  parts as well.)

The eyes got outlined in black pen for the right look, and I gave her single upper-eye lashes with sci-fi dots on the ends, and lower mid-eye lashes mirroring them for a weird alien style touch. The white makeup above remained, but with no green, and her eyes still got starry dots.

Black art pens offer ideal control for making the eye outline, but the problem is the felt tips stop working after drawing on any non-paper surface for too long, and then you have to waste time scratching them on paper until they run again.

I've been really torn about whether the lower lashes were right or not, but I'll leave them on for now. They're weird, but they work fine on the doll for now.

I still wasn't satisfied with the faceup, so I went back to add dark grey above the white eyeshadow and under the lower lash line, and flared it toward the upper lashes. I wanted to give the makeup more dimension and feel even closer to the official MH aesthetic.

Rule #1 of MH makeup: 
when in doubt, go one step further.

Obviously, this character will not be wigged. The classic alien is bald. I know it's looking like I can only create bald characters, but it just happened that two I made needed to be hairless. 

The hat arrived before I added the grey to her makeup, but it's tidier to talk about it now rather than during the faceup process.

The piece is 3D-printed plastic with an inherent ridged texture from its production, but no sculpted texture on the top. 

On the underside, the hat is sculpted with a spider web pattern.

The web is a little messy since this is 3D printing, but it
looks clean enough. Just a consequence of being made 
independently through independent means.

The hat fits most securely when tilted back on an MH doll's head. It looks good on Draculaura, even though I'm probably a rare buyer who didn't want the hat for her.

The hat's not as secure or tight worn flat like this, but
it can work fine on the shelf.

The hat painted white looks stunning on Marcia's head. It feels avant-garde and stylish, and successfully like a flying saucer on her head. This photo is of an unfinished doll, and I think it looks iconic and gorgeous.

Now why am I thinking about jean jackets looking at this 
photo?

The monochromatic shelves and wall are proving
a fantastic backdrop for this doll!

I also got her a camera as an accessory for her retro spy-observer vibe. I thought of it because I previously owned one from Frights, Camera, Action! Operetta.

Kala Mer'ri directs Operetta's pose for a photo.

I wanted to reclaim this exact piece since its greyscale colors would fit perfectly with Marcia, but the available offering for MH cameras was an alternate version of the piece with the flashbulb part being watermelon pink. It arrived the same day as the hat.

The piece is nicely coffin-shaped and the bulb
is charmingly askew. The MH letters appear under
the dial on the left.

This piece was not paired with any particular doll--it was from the doll-less Premiere Party playset, also part of the F,C,A! doll line.

Since I needed to change the color of the flashbulb anyway, I took the liberty of adding paint accents to some of the details as well. 

The bulb section is back-to-front symmetrical, but 
I only painted the front like glass.

I don't have a better place to mention it, but the Werewolf and Dragon CAM dolls have better neck mobility than my Blob CAM, Oozie McGoo. It seems to me that the later-released CAM dolls had much more friction in their neck pegs, and the neck pegs not moving reduced the range of motion of the heads. The earlier-released CAM bodies I've handled had looser neck pegs and superior articulation for the heads popped onto them.

Next, Scarah arrived. And I hit a snag, because I realized her shades were never part of the order. (She's also missing her bracelets, white belt, and white necklace, which weren't pieces I needed but hadn't noticed were absent.) I'm very glad I got a Scarah with all her shoes and cloth pieces, let's be clear, but the final showstopper look for Marcia was held up as I ordered the glasses separately. It seriously sucked that the shades weren't very accessible on the aftermarket, but I'm stubborn. I seriously need to scrutinize the photos with a fine-toothed comb, because this is the third time I feel like I could have caught details and been more self-informed before buying. 

I could still play around, though.

This Scarah had yellowed a bit on her forehead, and I could fix it someday if I wanted to, but without the best parts of her wardrobe, this doll isn't really worth keeping around as a Scarah Screams doll. Maybe a repaint candidate, or else I'll have to get a new outfit for her and treat her yellowing. I could try to get the Student Disembodied stock for her, with the screaming banshee dress. If that turns up anywhere.

Scarah's trench coat is white vinyl fabric, and works better with the halter dress than I'd expected, since it covers the shoulder gaps completely. The two pieces don't look at odds with each other like I'd worried they would.

Marcia wouldn't really work with the other base clothing pieces from this doll, so the dress and trench working together is a big relief.

The fabric is pliable and adds to the retro and sci-fi vibe, but on an objective level, the coat would probably be better as a matte fabric, since vinyl fabric doesn't age well, either stiffening and wrinkling or cracking and peeling off. I've had plush toys with vinyl elements turn bad, and the Scarah coat is fine, but still shows spots of aging poorly. 

The coat has tiny belt loops for the belt to fit through, but the ribbon on the belt is a little too slick and thin, and doesn't stay tightened even when threaded back through the left loop after going through the buckle. The ribbon looks a little worn and pinched in spots, and might be more elastic than it should be.

Part of the reason this belt won't stay tightened is how thin and slick the ribbon is, but another issue may be with how the belt is constructed. Coffin Bean Twyla also has a more realistic belt with a ribbon strap and Skullette buckle, but see if you can spot the difference:

Did you catch it? Twyla and Scarah have different belt buckles. Twyla's buckle has a vertical bar in the middle that the strap is secured around, allowing it to wrap around the torso and then (theoretically) thread through both sides of the buckle by wrapping around the bar. But even just sticking out of one side, it stays tightened.

Scarah, on the other hand, has a buckle with no center bar. The belt is instead looped around one side of the Skullette, and so the strap has no resistance when threading through the wide-open hole.

Maybe I should have expected this--looking closer at the stock photo of ILF Scarah shows that her belt is threaded into the coat, but not tying it closed, as if even the photographers couldn't make it work. Perhaps Mattel realized the belt didn't actually function for closing the coat but released it anyway...or they never intended for it to close the coat at all for some kind of modern statement of "loose belt on trench coat" even though, c'mon. Get real. Who's gonna leave the belt loose as a fashion statement? 

Either way, don't realease a useless belt, Mattel!

Because the belt was important to me, I decided to cut off the janky ribbon it had and replace it. I got some thin green plastic party ribbon from the wrapping station in the basement, and that worked pretty well. The color is close, and the ribbon is a bit wider and has a bit of texture, so it has more friction when threaded through the buckle and belt loops.

It's still not that firm, but this new ribbon makes the belt tie properly closed!

A doll body I was working on at the same time
demonstrates.

It's just not a proper undercover trench without a belt!

Scarah's green dress is a shiny, sparkly, iridescent halter piece that feels very chic and I saw it not-inaccurately described by the Flying Purple Monkfish blog as "saucy". The neck and the lower back are each velcro attachments, like any collared halter dress from the brand.

I'd also completely forgotten this Scarah weirdly recycled a Mad Science Lagoona necklace shaped like a molecular structure, with Scarah's being cast in black. So, Mattel. Was or was this not designed to be a perfect retro alien doll clothing assortment??? Because I feel like these pieces are making more sense on my original character than they did on the doll they were made for!

While I was disappointed by not yet having the complete spy look for Marcia, I can't complain too much, because I absolutely adore this minimal cocktail ensemble on her--green platforms, molecule necklace, her original grey hands, and the green dress.

If I wasn't so stubborn, I could fold and accept this look
as the complete doll, because it's fantastic!

The green shoes, white boots, black hands, grey hands, coat, and necklace are all in Marcia's pool of doll stock, but the other Scarah pieces won't be. She doesn't need the silver heels and the other elements don't go with her.

At last, the glasses arrived!

yesyesyesyesyes-

They're actually translucent rather than opaque, and the white paint isn't super thick. The glasses still look great, though, and after bending the arms in a little so they'd grab onto the head, Marcia was complete!

Greetings, human.

The glasses were so worth it.

Iiiii weeeeeearrrr mmyyy suuuungllaasseess
aaat niiiight-

My plan [nine from outer space] was instantly rewarded when the glasses gave me exactly the kind of shady sci-fi fashion spy I wanted from her. She looks stylish and mysterious and menacing and chic in the perfect ways for a retro alien undercover. The glasses being so huge makes the look more fun, and the size nicely hides her weird alien makeup.

I don't necessarily regret getting the camera, but I was frustrated by it. The way MH arms and wrists are articulated and the way the camera goes onto the fingers makes it hard to create a believable photo-taking pose with it, and the fact that neither pair of hands provides much friction inside the loop doesn't help. The fabric of the coat doesn't help either, since it's thick and stiff enough to push the elbow joints back when they're bent too far. I still got some decent photos of Marcia using it.

I had to cheat the perspective to make it look like the camera was in 
front of her eye!

So that's my custom alien doll! It was pretty rapidly planned, but also, I think, very successful. I got a good faceup and found the perfect pieces to make the character exactly what she needed to be, and in a way I could see as an official G1 doll. I'm particularly pleased with how the ILF Scarah set gave me two attractive and compelling display looks for the doll, as well. I hadn't expected the spy look to not be the only way I'd consider displaying her! 

This project was a lot of fun and very rewarding, and I think the doll is simply out of this world.