DIFFUSION (Finale): Bark with Bite!

Here's the Clawvenus project!

[If you haven't, please read the intro post here to understand what this DIFFUSION series is about. It saves me an intro on each post.]

Here's the copy of Clawvenus I received. The shoes, belt, and purse were not included.

Clawvenus are the fusion of werewolf fashionista Clawdeen Wolf and eco-punk carnivorous plant ghoul Venus McFlytrap. The two monsters come together based on their spiky fashion accents and toothy nature as monsters.

Mattel stock photo of signature Clawdeen.

Mattel stock photo of signature Venus.

These stock photos will help less than in the other articles, since Clawvenus and Lagoonafire are the two fusions who draw comparatively little from the style accents of their characters' signature dolls.

Clawvenus fascinate me among the fusion group because I saw them as the most unattractive and disjointed fusion in the group, but they were also the doll that inspired this whole "diffusion" project since they were the first monster in the group I was able to reinterpret as a standalone creature type...all the way back in my first-collection era!

Clawvenus's hair uses Clawdeen's common purple and lime tones, with pink flocking representing Venus' signature hair-shave effects, done at the front of their hairline.

The lime sections are three separate rooted patches at the front and sides of her head, and are each formed into twists that meet and wrap around the purple section, which is rooted across the back of the head and tied in a ponytail.

The hair fiber doesn't feel super soft or tidy.

Clawdeen's primary hair color on most dolls is actually a walnut brown tone, but I think her common secondary colors of spooky purple and lime made more objective sense with Venus's hair, seeing as Venus usually had light olive or medium green in with her pink. In execution, however, I can't help thinking that brown, green, and pink or brown, purple, and pink would have been less ugly color combos.

Clawvenus have a skin tone that blends Venus' pale green and Clawdeen's Black-toned brown skin and fur. The resulting color is perhaps most politely described as "sludge", but I think it works fine when taken as a young plant, and I think the color will be less unpleasant when not set against the hot pink. 

Clawvenus' head mold is based on Clawdeen's, but with the wolf ears being leafy like Venus's. Their faceup reads well as a mix of Clawdeen and Venus, with their eyes being wider and green in Venus's style, plus having Venus's two-directional flytrap fangs. I like their purple leafy eyelashes a lot, even though this feature isn't from either component character. I want to keep this element untouched. 

On the sides of their eyes, they have a pink leopard-print design. This looks a little weird to me as an attempt to mix the two characters' makeup styles. Neither the leopard or leaves are really reflective of the characters separate, but the leopard is by far the less attractive element in the fusion.

The ears of Clawvenus are each pierced, and both earrings are Clawdeen golden. Clawdeen always has golden jewelry as a subtle and deliberate aversion of silver accents, since silver is something no werewolf would ever want to wear! I've always loved that attention to detail, and that Clawdeen's favor for gold has a clear but always unspoken reason. The earring on their left is a coil shape like Venus' vines, and the one on their right is a spiked ring like Clawdeen would wear.

Clawvenus are wearing a dramatic fur vest in purple, pink, and lime stripes to reflect a spiky flytrap and Clawdeen's fur clothing theme. The vest is something Clawdeen would normally wear (and later would with similar pieces in the Fierce Rockers line and on her G3 signature doll), but it may also be tied to the denim vest signature Venus wore. 

R.I.P Kermit.

This is the best piece of the Clawvenus doll and I'm almost disappointed the character I'm making them into doesn't work with the vest.

Underneath, they have a one-piece dress with a mesh neck section that fades from purple and black leopard to a green flytrap design. I like the effect of the patterns and colors blurring into each other to emphasize the fusion theme, but this doll can't wear this piece if it's going to be a standalone character.

Clawvenus have two bracelets which mirror their earrings.

On their left, they have a golden coiled studded belt wrap. This stylistically matches Clawdeen's belt motif that seems to be a takeoff on dog collars, but it physically resembles the coils of Venus' arm vine wraps.

This belt bracelet works just as well on Cleolei due to the punk and pet-collar tones of it, and so this piece isn't going to waste--it went easily to the Cleolei project which I've already posted.

On the other arm, they have a thick spiky cuff.

Also note their hands. They fuse a clawed shape with Venus' bark texture. I like how creepily long the fingers are, since they feel like branches, though the more common claw shape I think of for Clawdeen has wider-spread fingers that aren't as long. 

Clawvenus' body otherwise has no sculpted monster detail, since neither component character had a textured body sculpt in G1. Venus not being an all-over detailed character was one of the biggest lapses in potential in G1, and even her G2 body's few curling vines felt very feeble to me. I feel like if Mattel decided Cleolei could receive sculpted body detail from neither component character, then Clawvenus could have, too.

Clawvenus have the fewest unique body sculpts in the fusion group. Cleolei have a unique torso, tail, and limbs but reused hands, Lagoonafire have unique lower limbs and hands, but appear to reuse regular Jinafire's upper limbs, torso, and tail, and Dracubecca are composed entirely of unique sculpts which change Robecca's body to have heart-shaped rivets, add wing sockets, and remove Robecca's leg gears.

The Clawvenus doll would have come with an ugly chunky gold belt, a tiny wrist bag, and unexciting shoes, but none of those pieces were necessary to me for my project--indeed, I only really needed the base doll body for this one!

For what this character had to turn into, I actually had the idea long ago--this was the first character I thought of "diffusing" back in the original era of my doll collecting when I thought of a pun that could summarize this doll's fused concept--a dogwood tree!

Haunted or animate trees are a pretty classic spooky Halloween staple, and often appear as threats in other genres, like fairy tales. 

A Google Images assortment of this kind of imagery.

They've also been portrayed as sad fates, like the nymph Daphne of Greek myth, or the soul trees in Dante's Inferno or Over the Garden Wall. 

MH did tackle the tree-monster archetype in G2 with its giant doll Treesa Thornwillow, a huge mythical dryad (a bit smaller than the Gooliope-scale dolls) whose doll had a mechanical mechanism to extend her torso, unfold her green branch wings, and make her grow taller.

Mattel stock photo of Treesa in her tree doll stand base.

Treesa's mechanical novelties were cool, but I never liked her character design. It looked bland and sweet, much more like a basic-tier Ever After High doll, down to her body being like a more branched version of Cedar Wood's grained wooden sculpts. Treesa was not a classic spooky tree. She was a dryad pushed into the least scary incarnation of Monster High. So I thought Clawvenus could give me the scary tree monster I wanted. Doesn't mean I'll never get Treesa.  But if I do, it might be to make over as a display curio unrelated to MH. 

For clothing, I tried to think of MH or EAH pieces with tree patterns, and I finally found Spring Unsprung Cedar Wood from EAH, who has a woodgrain-patterned dress in purple--perfect. 

I absolutely adore this line's gorgeous dress and/or coat pieces,
and two more of them may be featuring on future projects ;)

The dress has sleeves that cover the upper arms and a voluminous high-low skirt with a floral sheer layer underneath that lowers the hemline and makes the dress fancier.

Given the wide sweet eyes of Clawvenus, I thought it'd work fine to make them into a more delicate fancy character. Living trees are as entwined in mythology and fairy tales as they are in horror, after all.

I started looking for belt pieces, and came across the elaborate pink coral harness belt used on Posea Reef. I thought I could easily transform it into brown branches, so I got a copy.

I also got some leg vines from a Venus doll so those could be turned into more branches.

One of the leg vines.

I started the work by taking the doll's hair down. 

The three green twists hanging loose felt wild and framed her head in an interesting way. They made her hair look more branched, sparse, and leafy as they splayed out and down. This felt like a spooky-tree hairstyle, so I decided to tie each twist down at the base to keep them in that shape. Then, I split the purple rear of the hair into three separate ponytails to mirror the front of the head and keep that branchy tree cascade shape. The middle back ponytail got two ties to keep its volume controlled and separate the sections more.

I used up all but one of my spare elastic bands from doll packaging on this one, but it was worth it. This is a crazy monstrous hairstyle that effectively pushes this non-tree doll into a tree doll! Now I'm wondering if Treesa could be helped with a look like this!

I also can't allow myself to boil-wash this doll now because the twisting gave it a much crazier tree-ier shape. Some few dolls just need their hair out of control, and I think this is definitely one of them.

For the face-up, I started by adding the paint I wanted before moving to take off the parts I didn't. I knew a spooky tree face needed to evoke the idea of hollow holes in the bark forming the features, so I painted the sclerae black and added asymmetrical extensions to the eye shapes to make the eyes look more like irregular tree holes. I then painted over her lips with black and tried to give her a jagged-looking smile to fit the look more.

For shoes, I decided to take Cedar's and cut them down so the tall straps and flowers were removed and they became platform sandals with wooden bases. It fit the character well.

Cedar's shoes, "trunk"ated.

Since this alteration, the ankle strap of her left shoe broke off on one side, making the shoe very loose and liable to slide off her foot. Oh, well.

The coral belt repainted brown pretty nicely, but the piece just didn't fasten properly around the thick dress, so I decided to cut a part of it off so the belt could stretch across a different way. In this form, the belt now concentrated the branches asymmetrically along her left hip, and that looked fine to me! There's a reason Posea Reef wasn't a doll who needed a stand, though, since this piece is in the way of the clip. I make it work.

I added a couple of black paint sections on her limbs to add hollows to her body, and planned to add some woodgrain painting as well in certain spots. I also cut a notch into her left forearm to imply a run-in with a woodcutter or vandal!

This leg hole shape kept rubbing off, so I need to fix this one.

An axe scar.

One leg vine got painted brown to go on the leg opposite the branches of her belt.

The pink absolutely had to go, so I started with the hair...or just the flocking.

I've never seen a flocked doll hairdo with the flocking removed, since normally, that's a feature you want to care for and preserve. But in this case, I needed the pink out and I thought the doll would work without it, so I did the no-no and poured boiling water on and scraped it off.

To my chagrin, the scalp under the flocking was painted pink, either as a guide mark or to make the head look less ugly if flocking scraped off. This was more paint I'd need to remove.

But here's the effect of all those changes so far!

At some point, I became aware of how similar this doll felt to the MH Gloom and Bloom floral-fancy line...and it wasn't lost on me that perhaps I was reinventing Amanita Nightshade, the first MH doll I got and one who I'd very much like to reobtain. 

Mattel stock photo of Amanita with tidier
hair than I ever liked to display her
with.

The appeal of the fancy dress and wild crazy plant hair, paired with the leafy makeup, drew definite parallels in my mind.

I also wiped off the pink leopard spotting on the eye makeup. I wasn't sad to see it go.

But as I started wiping the pink paint off the doll's scalp, I messed up and made a false swipe with the paper towel that ended up wiping off a bit of her right eye paint. Very fortunately, it left enough pale printing there for me to be able to cleanly trace and fill in the wiped parts with my paints and pen. I believed I could salvage the look and repair the faceup, but I was very annoyed and upset with myself for damaging the face after my determination to preserve the leafy eyes!

<ARGGH.>

At this stage, I declared a stopping point for a while. I needed to get more nail polish remover to finish removing the paint on her scalp, and I certainly didn't want to add any more paint to her now until I was certain the paint removal was done tidily and with proper care!

But hey, even incomplete and mildly destroyed, doesn't she look cool?

Now, I think we know enough of the character's vibe to get her profile.

Dendrea Barker

Monster Parentage: A haunted dogwood tree
Killer Style: I like to be fancy and arboreal, but also wild and loose. Some would say I look mad, but nature is the most beautiful madness of all.
Freaky Flaw: I tend to be too breezy or too rigid, depending on the situation. Sometimes people think I'm adrift and other times they think I'm stubborn, and there's no explaining that I'm just being a tree.
Favorite Activity: Talking to travelers and strangers in the forest, both monster and fairy-tale alike. I know it can be frightening in the woods, and I like to keep people from feeling lonely and lost.
Biggest Pet Peeve: As a dogwood tree, I can't stand cats. They always want to climb or scratch or curl up in a hollow and I just don't trust them, besides.
Favorite School Subject: English class. Poetry is the best way for me to express my nature as a being of Nature.
Least Favorite School Subject: Woodshop. It just makes me uncomfortable.

Favorite Food: Berries and mushrooms that scatter the forest floor.

Pet: Hoo-Goes-There is not my pet--I would never claim an animal!...but he's very determined to be my constant companion all the same, and I admit I consider him a dear friend.

Best Friends: Venus McFlytrap, Cedar Wood

Alright. I couldn't keep her looking like that for too long. I still couldn't fully wipe her scalp, but I had to take her back down and fix her face. And, with the acknowledgment that the factory design was still visible enough to follow and I would have not been able to get such good repair results if the errant wipe had been more destructive...I still feel like some kind of wizard genius.

That sound you're hearing is me, sighing in relief with the force of a hurricane.

Yes, this picture is post-damage. 

This is maybe my proudest doll-painting accomplishment. I think doing a new faceup is one thing. Painting in the lines to covertly modify a faceup is another thing. But repairing the original intricate factory paint felt far more daunting to me, and yet-! 

It's not absolutely perfect (the lower lashes aren't great and some black smudges are still above the eye), but it is absolutely successful. I'm so sorry, Dendrea. This never should have happened to you...but I got you back where I wanted you!

I also stained the floral layer of the Cedar dress lime green so her hair color would be more coordinated into the design and the dress would look a bit spookier.

Eventually, I had a supply of nail polish remover to let me remove the rest of the pink scalp paint. 

Then I just brought in a Playmobil owl to be her pet, and she was complete!

I really enjoyed this project. I think Dendrea feels the most thoroughly transformed of the fusions. Her hairstyle, face changed, and outfit really changed her vibe completely into a more spooky pretty-madness fairytale haunted ghost tree ghoul! I hadn't intended to turn her into an extra for Gloom and Bloom, but that helps her authenticity and gives her a fun identity for the monster type. I think this went from an intriguingly hideous design to a beautifully weird one in the process of turning two characters into a third.

And here's the entire DIFFUSION crew assembled.

At the end of this project, I think I come away most impressed with Dendrea, despite the frustrations that cropped up. While I think I made the most of the base dolls with Tinny and Maupet, Dendrea is the one who feels the most exciting and removed from her source. The other two have strengths, but Dendrea feels the most fulfilling to me in how thoroughly transformed she was. I had fun with this larger project, but I'm also happy it's over in a way. I don't know if I want to do another self-contained series like this, but I do have another themed idea that might run for a while...it's just one I can do whenever with no set parameters.

Thanks for reading this DIFFUSION series...and just a warning:

[UPDATE: Go here for the post-script final update where I tweaked and improved Tinny to close the book on this series for good.]