No Longer Floundering: Three Generations of Nautical Monster Makeovers!

 This was going to be a post discussing just one doll, but I realized I had three sea characters, and each from one of MH's three generations, that were on my project list at the same time...so I figured I'd make it a post about all three, particularly since two of them wouldn't warrant posts of their own. 

Here's the first of them.

I've been on a little bit of a trend of examining debuting mascot characters of MH's specialty lines and revising them to bring out potential I saw in their factory forms. First, it was G1's Gooliope Jellington, mascot of the Freak du Chic circus line, and then it was G2's Treesa Thornwillow, mascot of the fairy-themed Garden Ghouls line. This character debuted between the other two, serving as the first of the two G2 specialty mascots-- Dayna Treasura Jones, mascot of the piratey Shriekwrecked line. 

Official artwork by Mattel.

Dayna, uniquely billed with a middle name, is the daughter of Davy Jones, the ill-defined but oft-feared threat of the seas in sailors' mythology. His most famous depiction is probably in the Pirates of the Caribbean series, where he's a half-sea-creature pirate with a crab claw for a left hand and a squidlike face with a tentacle beard. Here, though, Dayna is the walking embodiment of the quest for hidden pirate treasure, with a body and hair made of gold, constellation patterns over her body, and a transforming outfit that switches from a breezy treasure-map sailing dress to a rich gold-and-jewel covered dress beneath.

There are aspects of Dayna that are wonderful and creative, and aspects that are hallmarks of G2's biggest downgrades. I feel like much of the Shriekwrecked line seems to have been ported over mostly untouched from some unreleased G1 design concept.

The ostentation and polish here feels fully in line with G1.
(Stock photo of Shriekwrecked Rochelle).

While the faces were softened and some things may have been simplified, I completely believe Shriekwrecked was planned most of the way for a G1 release before the brand abruptly shifted gears and blindsided the team. 

But Dayna clearly got some restrictions slapped on her when the line was moved into the G2 brand. For one, Dayna's face and colors and theme seemed awfully tame for a daughter of Davy Jones. She's nothing more than a sunny golden girl with star details, which is hardly very monstrous. Her face has the milder G2 aesthetic a little too much, and her body has a molded plastic bodice for her "gold" outfit, plus a mechanical ring to slide the reversible skirt around that makes her feel designed more for young children. Nothing about her mechanic necessitates her skirt being attached on a spinning ring. It could have easily been a cloth piece you could take off all the way. And for that matter, a G1 Dayna would have had a fabric top for the gold dress hidden under the blue bodice. I liked the gimmick, but it's a little too "playtime" and not enough fanciness. Unlike Treesa, her gimmick comes at the expense of her overall design, whereas the aspects of Treesa's design I disagreed with weren't anchored to her play mechanics. Dayna is lacking for some edge, and arguably, even some grandeur...but my experiences with Gooliope and Treesa convinced me to give her another shot and try modifying her design to make her a little more monstrous and a little less kiddie.

Here's the Dayna that arrived to me. As with the majority of G2 dolls, she never had a stand. 

Starting at the top, Dayna has a brown headband-mounted hat very cleverly shaped like both a sailor's bicorn and a treasure chest! 

The blue feather is a very flexible vinyl insert to keep it from snapping off. The headband has holes at each end and in the center, and plastic tags were still stapled into each to keep it on Dayna's head. I cut the tags out and the headband fits okay, but is prone to falling forward or backward.

Dayna's hair is a pale golden blonde with a large amount of gold tinsel in it.

Monster High dolls have used tinsel since the first Cleo de Nile doll, and it continues to see use today. Tinsel notably behaves very differently from doll hair, and it's understandable why people like to remove it from some dolls altogether, but I think it adds too much to Dayna's design to eradicate it. The hair is center-parted and meant to be quite poofy in its waves, but the top is kept tight and tidy with two side locks of hair tied behind her head. This Dayna hasn't been handled for a while and her hair is very tangled and flat. I'll need to work on that. 

Dayna's face is fairly soft and sweet, but I was delighted to find this specific copy complete because her face is wonky in a way that gives her more of a sassy smirk.

It's an expression she was illustrated with in her 2D art and it gives her more of a fitting personality for a treasure-hunt monster. I also enjoy a softer-faced character not being pigeonholed into being gentle and quiet. I also like the eyebrows being so thick and having texture. Dayna's eyes have minimal makeup and downplayed lashes per the G2 style, and her eyes are only unusually detailed with sparkling star and twinkle reflections. Her red lips are a nice look, and she has star-shaped freckles that match her eye reflections and serve a motif of constellations and sailors navigating to treasure with star maps.

Dayna has earrings that are slightly like traditional pirate hoops, but they dangle on beads rather than attaching right at the lobe. They look like carved gemstones, possibly bluish emeralds, and feature opaque parrots perched in the middle--a very fun glamorous pirate touch!

Dayna's dress has two sides, but as it starts, it's bright and represents the adventure of the treasure hunt.

She has a fully-strapless blue-and-white striped bodice with gold trim and black tulle, though the tulle on my copy has partially torn free and her arm was placed through the loop the torn tulle created. Dayna's skirt is a glossy satiny blue fabric with cutesy islands, pirate octopi, and dotted lines and X marks representing a treasure map itinerary. I think a matte cotton would have suited the look of this skirt better, and the designs are a little too juvenile for what I'd prefer, but it's okay.

Dayna's shoes are high-top antique pirate wedge boots with compasses on the ankles, latitude and longitude grids across the body, and red X marks on the heels. I like the shape of these a lot, but the color doesn't work at all with her other look and black would feel much more realistic. 

Dayna's transformation starts with her treasure-chest hat, which has folded plastic hinges to flip open, revealing a pile of golden coins within. 

Next is Dayna's dress. Undoing the velcro seam at the back unfolds the skirt.

This view shows that the front of the gold skirt is currently facing backward. 

With the skirt undone, you can grab the edges and flip the seam toward the front, tucking the blue bodice down and forward so it will be enclosed in the skirt when it's refastened. This uncovers the molded plastic bodice for the black dress, and also lets you see a strap attached to the rotating ring in her waist.

Flip the seams forward and tuck the bodice down...

And a peek at the ring and the attachment.

This is what the skirt looks like refastened now.

The last step is to spin the skirt by the waist ring attached to Dayna so the velcro seam ends up at the back again and the plastic belt buckle faces forward. 

Dayna's final secret is in her boots. Pulling the "X"-marked platforms on Dayna's shoes right off reveals smaller wedge platforms beneath composed of stacked gold coins!

It took me a while to realize it, but once I did, it really bothered me--the doll provides no means to store the outer heels of the shoes once they're removed, and this makes them into clutter that's very easy, I imagine, for kids to lose.

And here's her final treasure form!

I'm not stunned. The molded torso really feels cheap to me and the costume, despite being objectively shiny and big, feels just a little underbaked. This isn't the kind of showstopper I'm used to from MH.

The last thing to mention, which is out of order here because I forgot to photograph it before, is that Dayna's arms feature some molded detail of engraved constellations, but I don't adore the way it's done.

Her gloved hands are cool, though!

If they had been embossed and raised up from her skin, the constellation visual would read clearer to me. Sunken in like it is, though, it just makes her body look pitted and scarred, or like she's been chewed by a few too many sharks...and those aren't bad per se, but I seriously don't think that was the intention. For the intended idea, it's a bad execution, and the visual isn't delivered cleanly enough.

Okay, so how do I upgrade Dayna?

Well, Dayna's coloration kind of locked her into the idea of personified pirate treasure, and we've already had an abundance of fishy sea monsters in the brand already, so I decided to work with her existing concept and push her into a more cautionary, perilous frame by making her personify a more dangerous yearning for wealth. After all, Davy Jones is kind of the Devil of the sea, so making Dayna invoke the corruption and temptation by which pirates may meet their end seemed like an appropriate dark reframing of her theme. I was inspired by the creepy design of Jovani, the character in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess who traded his soul for riches, and found himself turned into an immobile statue of gold and jewels.

One piece I had ordered for Dayna came in. When looking far and wide for a pirate coat she could wear to make her presence more grand and potentially spooky, I found Cleo de Nile's Mad Science lab coat.

This means I've now found new uses for both lab coats in the Cleo/Ghoulia two-pack, following from DiDi!

The gold trim, bandage pattern and hanging strap, and jewel print pattern all seemed to work well for a half-splendid half-disheveled cautionary treasure monster. The coat doesn't fit Dayna's G2 body great, but that's not going to matter since she's getting a G1 one. I also planned to stain it brown to balance her hat and dull her sunny vibe in the right way. Still, it looks pretty good on her unmodified. 

The first order of business for the custom work was to remove Dayna's skirt for her new body. The skirt is tied into her waist ring by that black strap and a few thin pieces of gold thread, which I cut, but it also is plugged into the waist ring by the belt buckle sandwiching the skirt between the buckle and a peg it plugs into. 

The peg and plug with the buckle. 

I intend to glue the buckle back over the hole since it adds something and the hole would be noticeable otherwise.

Here's the body without the skirt and head. It's obviously never meant to be seen without it...but what a shame for a character in a fashion doll line to be stuck in one outfit!

And here's the skirt cut off and fully unfolded. Nothing about its transformation mechanic is hindered by it being cut free.

I didn't have Dayna's new body yet (you probably can guess whose it is) but I started working on her head. I thought I would try taking Dayna's hair down so it looked more dramatic and more prone to looking a little disheveled as part of her cautionary reframing as an ominous promise of riches. She's the kind of ghoul who could go for a full-drama wild mane. I repainted her face while her hair was drying.

I repainted Dayna's irises over to turn them into emerald gemstones so she looked more creepy, following from the tone of the aforementioned Jovani. Emeralds worked with her earrings, the green popped great against her skin and lips, and connoted envy and the perils of greed well. Her eyelashes got tentacle-like extensions to allude to the most famous Davy Jones. 

I'm surprised and delighted the eye repaint turned out as clean and clear as it did! I'm always proud when I can mimic the look of a factory doll with my own paint.

I thought Dayna's boots could be repainted to a darker color to make them feel more piratey and serious. Black was the best choice to work with everything. I chose to spray-paint them upside-down on Tinker Toy rods with the heels on and tape inside the small holes to make sure the bodies got covered but paint didn't get too much inside the shoes where it would rub off, or into the gold coins. I then repainted red onto the X marks.

Here's Dayna's loose hair after combing and washing. Very dramatic.

Then Dayna's new body arrived. As it was literally the only available choice in this range, of course it's G1 Gilda Goldstag's.

Her hands were included, just taken off before this photo in undressing her!

Gilda was a background character whose design was very popular, leading to her getting a doll in the Student Disembodied Council five-pack. I never cared much for her look and I was disappointed by how she never received a diary or any promotions to speaking roles in the cartoons. Gilda's not a doll I personally feel that bad about relegating to a head.

Dayna's head is paler and more lustrous than Gilda's more pearly and orange body, but it's not a horrid discrepancy and I still prefer it to Dayna's original body. Dayna can't wear her original hands in these arms, but I don't mind that either.  The only thing I had to tweak was the fit of the head on the neck, which was too loose, surprisingly. A little hot glue inside the neck hole allowed me to create more friction and a tighter fit. I wonder why Dayna's body and head sculpts ended up making a wider fit for her head. All returning G2 characters used their G1 head sculpts, so their heads would all fit perfectly on G1 bodies.

Both halves of Dayna's skirt got some accents for texture. I used the same red-and-white "rope" twine I used on Gooliope for the blue half, knotted and hanging loose from the waist to match the nautical map pattern and suggest ship rigging for a journey, as well as perhaps, rope as a connotation of binding, strangulation, and death. Dayna's treasure might be a great gift and a life-changing boon...or it might be just enough metaphorical rope for a greedy sailor to hang himself with! 

The gold half of her dress got large green sequins glued over circular gemstones within the gold print pattern to further the emerald motif and make her skirt more colorful in its bejeweling without creating a visual overload that multiple colors could form. I also glued the buckle back where it had been before, just with the pin cut off so it didn't interfere with the new body.

I got Dayna a G1 body because I wanted her gold outfit not to rely on a molded bodice...but what do I use to cover her chest and complete the gold dress on a nude G1 body? 

What I eventually decided upon was Gloom Beach Cleo's mummy bikini. 

Mattel stock photo of Gloom Beach Cleo. 

I always thought it was amusing how the bathing suit's mummy-wrap design turned a two-piece into a one-piece. The colors worked for Dayna along the same metaphorical binding theme, corresponded with the Cleo coat, and I thought it would complete the black dress in a more fun informal piratey way. I'd found that the blue bodice was a little loose on the G1 body, anyway, so fabric underneath it would help. Plus, the bikini strap showing underneath would make her costume look more layered and pirate-eclectic, and hint at the theme of a hidden second layer more clearly. Lastly, I could use it to have Dayna in a full-on bathing suit without the skirt and coat because a ghoul's gotta be able to enjoy a swim once in a while. In shark-free territory, of course.

Here's Dayna testing out her stained coat and more detailed dress, modeling the new body. I won't put her shoes on her until the Cleo bikini is in place, since I want to reduce my interaction with her now spray-painted shoes as much as I can so they don't lose too much of the paint.

Then, the bikini arrived. 

I tried valiantly to get it on just like you see in Cleo's stock photo, but I couldn't get my head around putting it on so the bandages lined up just like in the stock photo. I didn't know where or when to slide the body between the connecting bandages before putting the bottom on the legs, and trying to pull the suit through itself to maybe reorient the straps correctly just made me even more confused and the suit more tangled. I decided to give up and snip the bandage accents and turn the suit into a two-piece. Dayna only truly needed the top portion, anyway, and I didn't think the gold dress look would be at all harmed by the lack of a strap across her belly.

And with that done, here's a dramatic comparison between Dayna's two forms pre- and post-makeover.

Doesn't the new Dayna feel so so much more Monster High? The loose hair, necklace I added, eye repaint, and coat age her up a bit and make her feel really darn plausible now as a G1 character design. The coat also makes her outfit feel way more complete and brings in some drama. The new top for her gold dress feels much more breezy and piratey while matching the tone, and the texture on both sides of the dress adds meaningful polish and detail and makes the transformation feel that much more like a magic trick. This Dayna has lots more G1-esque flair and personality now, and no longer feels too soft to me. 

One last thing I wanted was to devise some storage for her false heels to give them a place to go when in her gold mode. The moment I realized that was a problem, I knew I needed to solve it.

I decided what would make most sense for the latter was taking advantage of the two layers of the gold skirt and creating a hidden pocket under the jeweled fabric layer. For the pocket scrap, I cut a piece of a Thronecoming Blondie Lockes dress (the sheer yellow layer patterned with golden bows) and sealed the top edge with glue. Then I sewed it onto the black fabric around the sides and bottom to create a pocket. I'm not much of a sewer, but I thought sewing would disrupt the fabric less and make for a more nice-feeling pocket if it were sewn rather than glued. Because the yellow and gold were showing through the top layer of the gold skirt too much, I then dabbed black paint over the pocket to darken it and keep it disguised. Here's how the pocket works now, with both removed heels tucked in.

And the pocket is well hidden under the skirt's top layer.

The pocket works great too since it'll still fold with the rest of the dress to transform it and since it's only in use when Dayna's all gold, it'll always be empty when the gold layer is hidden! I'm very pleased with getting this little practical feature in and making it completely unobtrusive...but I think this was something that probably should have been done on the doll officially.

Maybe miss Jones in her new form isn't one of my all-time aesthetic favorites, but I do really genuinely love her now, and it's all the subtleties that make her sparkle and shine brighter now. My made-over Dayna feels more in spirit with Monster High's trademark attitude, grandiosity, and visual style, and I think I did her justice. Pirates aren't one of my special interests, but this is definitely one I can get behind. 

Here's the three mascots now together.

Then, I wanted to satisfy my curiosity about G3 signature Lagoona Blue--the source of the necklace Dayna gained.

I've never been a Lagoona collector. G1's Lagoona design had desaturated colors that came out just a bit too dreary for me, and I didn't like how they did her forearms and hands with solid paint over translucent for her fins and hand webs. The limb paint, like all skintone effects in G1, was super fragile to abrasions and was always conspicuously matte next to the rest of her body too. I was also never blown away with Lagoona's styling. Don't know if I'll ever do a RESTYLE ICONS on her, though. 

G3 Lagoona was interesting to me for being the most radically altered character design. She's nowhere similar to the Black Lagoon monster, instead being a pink tropical ghoul with translucent gradient legs. But her doll didn't live up to her canon character design. 

G3 sig Lagoona as produced by the factory.

G3 sig Lagoona in the cartoon. 

Lagoona's doll had some prominent and disappointing differences from her 2D art and animated design, all of which I thought harmed her look. These are the differences I took most issue with:

* Her doll's hair is a wide wavy ponytail, while cartoon Lagoona has straight hair that looks much better. 

* Lagoona's dolls have very prominent asymmetrical teal scales printed on the forehead, which don't look that good and aren't in the cartoon.

* Cartoon Lagoona has sharp piranha fangs which give her a lot of personality, and painting them on the doll would have looked great.

* Cartoon Lagoona's hoodie is all one fabric type and has a yellow ombre to pink, then blue from the top down that really puts her look together. Doll Lagoona's hoodie is three fabrics with no yellow.

*Cartoon Lagoona has blue simple shorts, while doll Lagoona has finned pastel tie-dye shorts. 

Lagoona got tweaked over multiple sessions as I noticed more areas where I could make her design more accurate.

In my first session, I boiled Lagoona's ponytail straight, but with the framing locks of hair, I cut them shorter and forgot they were canonically behind her ears, so that was a mistake. I wiped off her forehead scales and I painted a row of four downward piranha fangs onto her mouth like how Clawdeen, Draculaura, Venus, and Honey's teeth have been done.  I also painted the top of her hoodie to give it the yellow ombre, but left the hood untouched, unsure if that would be easily recolored. 

Then, I decided to paint her shorts blue. 

Then I caught up on the last meaningful details I'd missed. I cut her shorts shorter, painted them a little lighter, added the teal ombre to the bottom of her hoodie, and painted her hood yellow and trimmed her ponytail. Here's the final look posed to emulate the 3D render. 

Because I cut her side locks way too short, I have to tuck them behind her ears and hope they stay there, but this looks a lot better to me. The yellow is a huge absence that hurts the doll's look to me, the hair texture wasn't right (and still, I wish the fiber was glossier and stayed slimmer in shape), and the forehead scales are just ugly on the doll and don't need to be there. 

I appreciate that Lagoona's leg fins are still removable, but the translucent fade doesn't make visual sense to me and is achieved with another fragile skintone spray that's super easily damaged with abrasions. Mattel needs to figure out a hardier way to achieve this visual. But whatever. I proved Lagoona is capable of matching her show form more, and that's what that was--an exercise to explore whether the doll could be modified to a more show-accurate form.

The last doll here has been waiting for quite a while to be resolved--the Create-a-Monster Sea Monster.

I acquired this doll back when working on Maudie, as I ordered a Vampire/Sea Monster pack for the wig. 

The Sea Monster herself struck me as interesting enough to keep around and rework. I liked her unique skintone and tentacled arms, and I thought she'd be a good new owner of the Witch/Cat Create-a-Monster purple bob wig that didn't seem to suit anybody. I thought it would lead to an ironic beachy look for the dark-toned deep-sea ghoul. I enjoyed the idea of a deep deep sea creature who grows to love life on the sunny surface waters.

Theta Bermuda

Monster Parentage: Thetis

Killer Style: Beachy keen is the way I go. I’m always ready for the sun or a swim.

Freaky Flaw: Mom says I’m a little too flighty and focused on prioritizing fun in the sun. I just don't think she gets it!

Favorite Activity: Fanging out in the summer and playing in the sand, on the rocks, and in the waves.

Biggest Pet Peeve: I’m not immune to sunburn-- and I really feel like I should be, right?

Favorite School Subject: History. I love learning more about the world I didn’t grow up in.

Least Favorite School Subject: English class. I’m more about seeing fun in the real world, not in stories that happened to others.

Favorite Food: Barbecued shrimp.

Pet: I'd love to befriend some lonely hermit crab or seagull, but they're not creatures I could take back home. 

Best Friends: Kala Mer'ri, Peri Serpentine

My first ideas with Theta after giving her the wig were to give her some CAM dragon wings to match her skirt and lips and to look like the wing-like fins on the head of a Dumbo octopus. With that, I painted her leg fins to match. 

But then I walked that back, feeling that her design needed more visual pop to match her bright clothing colors and make her feel beachier. So I wiped the paint back off the fins and I changed her lip color to yellow based on one of the bubble colors of her top, and I think that helped a bit. At this point, I was also unsure about the wings. 

It was an improvement, but that was where I hit a wall and lost interest for quite a while. But I thought I could revisit her after I realized I had two sea monsters in the works at once, and felt that maybe Theta could be a third. I had gotten a Shy/Silly Inner Monster for parts in the meantime and a few more dolls, so I found the pieces to complete her--the tentacle harness and shoes from the Inner Monster, the orange sunglasses from G3 Clawd, a doll-size straw hat, and G3 Draculaura's sunscreen bottle (itself a direct reproduction of G1 Drac's from the Gloom Beach line). Here's the result.

The tentacles are well-applied on her to complement her arm tentacles and the orange sucker designs of her skirt, and the colors are really nicely balanced this way. The hat and shades are great accessories for the theme, and I like the idea of a signature character who's so beachy, since the beach outfits for real MH dolls have all been for beach-themed lines and never as someone's default look.

Since I don't have any beautiful empty beaches or islands around to take these dolls to for location shoots, I decided to pull up other people's background photography on my computer screen to use as a backdrop. I think these faked photos of Theta "in the sunset" turned out really seamless and mostly plausible after some tweaking. It's extra perfect because she is the colors in the photo, and I never would have realized without trying this that I'd turned her look into the beach at sunset!

The issue with the backdrop technique is that the computer screen is pretty small against the doll, so it's only really possible to take very zoomed-in photos of the dolls enclosed by the image on the screen.

And here's the three dolls together. 

While I worked with each generation here, I was obviously the most pleased with turning the G2 character into something worthy of G1. Still, the other two monsters were satisfying projects and I think they're fun. 

The three monsters seemed to get along well despite being from literal different universes. Dayna offered them some treasure, no curse attached, but Theta and Lagoona decided the real treasure was their friendship.

This one was done with digital image compositing!