REVISIT: Tinny Tinkerpins

 Sometimes you can call "done" on a project too early. 

That can be unavoidable. Often you only realize the flaws in something you create after you've sat with the product for some time and had the opportunity to think about it and decide it isn't working. And part one of my DIFFUSION series, where I turned Dracubecca into a singular tin toy robot character, left me underwhelmed. Here's Tinny as I left her at the end of that post.

I was proud of the character concept, and I loved the faceup, color palette, skates, and key, but this wasn't doing it for me, largely because I felt I hadn't succeeded quite as much in distancing this character from the original doll and the characters who formed its design. And that says something when you consider Maupet in the same series of posts--a character I created with zero repainting of the source doll! I think I was primarily unsatisfied with her hairdo. I'd liked her face with hair poofing out in round waves around her head, but that was a style I couldn't make work in static upright form, so I put her in a loose bouffant bun-ponytail thing. However, as time went on, this felt underwhelming. I still saw too much of the Draculaura from the base doll, and the hair was messy. I tried letting it down and cutting it into a short wavy bob, but that didn't look good, and neither did a short straight bob, so I had to give up. Until I remembered one last hope at saving this doll: I needed a sculpted wig that was made to look like humanoid hair.

MH has actually provided three, maybe four of these. Two were in the Color Me Creepy sub-line of Create-a-Monster, used in the Werewolf and Sea Monster add-on solo packs (the latter wig was reused in a different color in the Monster Maker CAM sub-line). 

Mattel stock photo of the CMC Werewolf pack.

Mattel stock photo of the CMC Sea Monster pack.

The other normal sculpted wig was the twin buns with bangs used on the Scared Silly Inner Monster Mood Pack. 

Mattel stock photo of the Scared Silly Mood Pack.

And I think you could also count the purple tornado ponytail from the Inner Monster deluxe pack, associated foremost with the emotion persona Eek Excited:

That wig has molded starbursts decorating it and the cyclone twist of the ponytail is exaggerated, but I'd buy it as human hair, and might just have to try that wig on a character project that's been giving me trouble.

For Tinny, the choice was easy. The Werewolf Color Me Creepy wig was what I needed. It had the right kind of fifties-retro helmet-bob swoopy quality for a tin robot character. 

Already, the wig being sculpted benefited the design concept of a tin toy and retro robot, and the shape of the hair helped the aesthetic even more. Also, for a character I chose to define by a need for precision, linked to her nature as a clockwork automaton, a hairstyle in an artificially perfect shape and made of solid material was even more resonant. 

Sidebar: I think there's something so compellingly dystopian about the classic 1950s aesthetic, since hair is swooped and dresses are starched into shapes that are so whimsical, but in a way that conveys a deep anxious panic about messing up the perfection of the look. Maybe that's why the idealized fifties are so often parodied and deconstructed in social commentary, since that fragile candy-coated veneer trying to gloss over the flaws is kind of the legacy of the entire decade--a cute happy aesthetic, that, if looked past, turns out to have covered a lot of social injustice. 

I was completely ready to repaint the wig if I thought that would be called for, but the default pink with a blue streak looked promising to me, since it seemed like it would match the Dracubecca dress pretty well, and the colors would distance the doll's look from the Draculaura face shape while being close enough to the skin to feel more artificial, as if the same metal (more or less) was used for the hair. Even if I decided it needed to be black, I thought the shape would work much better and give Tinny more distinct traits. 

Tinny got a haircut and a root removal so she was completely bald and ready for the wig. Here's the wig upon arrival.

And fortunately, it doesn't look like any repainting will be necessary, since the colors correspond perfectly to the Dracubecca dress! Here's Tinny with the wig and no eyewear.

Her pieces are little lopsided in this photo, but this is promising!

The wig has two holes in the top for the Werewolf (or Sea Monster) Color Me Creepy ears to stick into, but they're not too large or distracting when the wig is earless.

And in these photos, Tinny's being modeled with an Inner Monster saddle stand, which I discovered works super easily and beautifully for displaying her. There's no pole getting in the way of her thick skirt belt and her protruding wind-up key, and the height of her skates matches really well with the height of the stand cradle, so she slips onto the stand in a second, and perfectly. A downside of this stand (besides the fragility of the pole's clear plastic and the fixed height of the cradle) is that it's not as easy to move the doll and stand together. Grabbing Tinny just lifts her off, whereas if she was clipped into a waist-grip stand, I could pick up just the doll to move her and the stand at the same time. But I'm very interested now in ordering at least a second one of these stands because it turned out to be a great solution for Tinny. Right now, she's only loaning it. 

Then I put the glasses on:

The wig gets in the way, so the specs are pushed further down her nose now, but they still fit on her. 

And then I added the goggles on top, and this was really the moment I fell in love with Tinny's design. Finally. 

The wig is perfect on her, matching her colors and giving her an artificial look and retro style that matches the concept beautifully. In that photo above, Tinny looks like a sweet, friendly, and all-out fun ghoul, and I don't get distracted by the fact that she used to be half-Draculaura at all anymore. The design is so complex and bounces your eyes all around it, and it works exactly like a retro toy that way. The only casualty of this wig is that it prevents Tinny from wearing her earring, but I'll happily sacrifice it. 

This wig also helps a lot with making the goggles an attractive display option. The arms are kept in place under the wig and the goggles look more like they're supposed to be on her with this hair, if that makes any sense.

I also tried out the CAM Insect dress with the mesh neck section and sleeves cut off for a sleeker, more casual modern look. It'd be better on her if she had black hair, or else some other accessories would need to be added to her stock to finish this look well, but I'll keep it in consideration for her as a B-look.

And here's the final display of Tinny--with a stand that works, and a look that works now, too!

I think she's more satisfying as a transformation now, and the DIFFUSION crew looks better with her in it this way!

Amazing.

So now that's Tinny finished! She went from the brink of leaving my collection to being firmly cemented back into it, just from a simple change of hair! I'm glad to have her upgraded in such a nice way.