Left Out Dolls 3-D: The Revenge

 Go here to see the post where the Left Out Dolls came from, and here to see the preceding post to this one.

Chemichelle Mutant

I knew I needed to do something with Harley Limestone, being such a fan of green myself and with Harley's doll being so striking, but I didn't know what the plan was once I had her.

I had considered making her a neon green witch-themed character, but then decided maybe her neon makeup was too good to wipe--should she be a robot or Frankenmonster instead? But I liked her colors so much that I wanted a look to really embrace that bright, bright green without much black or grey in the way, and the best base choice for an android character would be the upcoming Series 3 character Berrie Skies with her computer-themed futuristic costume. I suddenly felt like I was sitting purposelessly with a doll whose potential transformations weren't calling out to me.

MGA stock photo of Harley Limestone.

But then, going on the idea of how violently green she was, I landed on the idea of her becoming a chemical mutant.

I have a couple of notes about Harley as a doll as-sold first. For one, my copy's stand felt the weakest I've encountered in these two brands, with the pole not being very firm at all in the base. Another weird thing I noticed with my copy of Harley is how soft her hands were. The hands of the other dolls in these RH/SH brands I've gotten are firmer plastic, with the SH hands in particular becoming fairly pokey due to them being firm plastic with sharp nails. Harley's hands and hand pegs are instead very soft vinyl and completely stress-free to pop in and out. I'm used to soft vinyl hands with Monster High but not this brand. I'm not sure why this is the case for Harley. Dolls in the SH brand released after her have had more solid plastic hands, even when visibly coming from alternate manufacturing facilities, and Harley's hand shape isn't one of the ultra-long-nailed hands that would require being soft-cast to be less fragile.

Harley also had pretty poor hair. Her green-and-black twists are actually formed of mixed materials--the green is her rooted hair and the black is cord sewn into her scalp, so I cut the cord out, but her hair was otherwise a mix of dry and wild and overgelled. It's not quite as silky as I've come to expect from these brands, even after treatment, but as long as it's tidy, it's okay. I decided that for the visual of a chemical mutant, she should have a punk half-shaved style, so I cut off the right side of her hair. I had also wiped off as much of her faceup as I could, forcing myself to abandon the neon-light makeup as a way to push myself into something more inventive and interesting to me.

The first mutation I needed for this concept was a third eye in her head. I cut an eye socket out of her forehead and then cut a flap in her shaven side so I could peel the scalp open enough to get inside her head to glue the eye in from the back. I then glued the scalp closed again after, but opted not to paint this section of the head black to disguise the cut. That would bring too much black and contrast to her palette for me. Dunking Harley's head face down in boiling water during her hair treatment caused her eyes to get filled with hot water that fogged them up and bled the print of whatever paper was inside them, so I had to toss them and replace both with alternate blue eyes. Huge mistake in the handling there; it's always useful to keep around eyes I'm not using for the benefit of other characters. The different eyes are evidently different sizes, making for a subtly weird asymmetry to her sockets and irises. On anyone else, that'd be a problem.

For clothing, I decided to go with Harley's sequined lime top and pair it with Karma Nichols' neon yellow skirt and sandals. Those had to be stolen away from Bad Karma, so we'll see what she got instead later. It was about time I re-examined her, anyway. The Karma skirt was absolutely essential for Chemichelle in conveying a liquid spill effect and the heels were a good match for her fashion sense.

For her new face paint, I just added neon yellow around her eye sockets and to cover her lips to give her a subtle glowing effect with minimal graphic styling. The face paint color balances the skirt's yellower tone.

For extra body parts, I went to my G3 Ghoulia who I'd stripped down for repainting but never found an idea for. Her skin tone is close enough to Harley's that I thought she could be a parts donor to fit Chemichelle out. I knew I wanted a leg attached to her left wrist, so I sawed Ghoulia's right leg apart to extract her lower leg with the hinge pin. I cut the pin down to make it fit into the socket, which was also bored out a little to widen it. Then I bored holes in her right leg and her neck to put Ghoulia's hands in. I initially used Harley's original left hand and put that in the leg, but I decided it wasn't right to ever use an original left hand on a Left Out Doll, and I thought using both of the Ghoulia hands would be better than just one, and added the one in the neck. Since the Ghoulia pegs are wider, I had to bore the leg hole out more, but I made it too wide so I ultimately had to glue the hand peg in place. Both extra hands can hinge, but only the top one can rotate. The arm-leg has its full rotation and hinge capability, though it can pop out if I'm not careful.

That was a lot of process talk that probably didn't make sense without photos. Thing is, I don't even think the doll makes sense with them!

And that's why I adore her.

I love how purely bizarre her design comes out. She's not overly edgy or threatening or glam, just supremely strangely beautiful. My brain gets confused just looking at her, almost like she's a photo from the early days of AI image generation; she doesn't feel fully real to me. I also love how her design flows. Her long half-shaved hair looks like pouring chemicals, and it's complemented by the length of her arm-leg nesting into the shape. Her leg-hand is almost easy to miss among the other weirdness like her third eye and her leg-arm and she feels aglow and eerie in a really unique way. She's like pop surrealist art, something you want to ponder a little. I'm so grateful for Ghoulia!

Chemichelle Mutant

The first people who fall in the chemical vat just die. But enough of them in there, and the next one will start to absorb them on a level that's more than skin-deep.

Chemichelle has all the beauty of a toxic spill. She's everything you could want. Long cascading hair like liquid. Blue eyes of two sizes, and a brown one for those who like those. She could be a wonderful hand model, and she has legs for days. She's always glowing. But like a toxic spill, the beauty isn't quite normal and people tend to run away from it.

She swears she's not radioactive or poisonous to the touch. Nobody really wants to know for sure. But that makes her feel pretty good about herself, in a way. If people think you're weird enough to be dangerous, you probably are...and maybe you're just the shakeup to simplistic ideals that the world really needs.

Jeanie

Hey, let's make Kim Nguyen Left Out!

MGA stock photo of Rainbow High Kim Nguyen.

Kim is Rainbow High's second denim-themed blue character after Skyler Bradshaw, and it's arguable she's one of the less exciting dolls. Her muted denim tones don't do a lot for the eye and her presence isn't super bold. But suddenly, Kim was striking me with a weird compelling idea--what if she had a zipper strip where her mouth should be, which could unzip to an open mouth cavity? I loved that interactive idea of a goth so into denim she zipped her mouth closed, and the idea of opening her mouth with a zipper. I thought Kim's darker tones made her more suitable than Skyler, as well as her bangs, which I thought would create a fun parallel line with the zipper mouth. So I got a Kim and a pencil pouch with a good zipper strip and a spare zipper pull for her arm. The actual raw zipper strips at the craft store all had square pulls that weren't able to dangle downward on the zipper, which was crucial for a horizontal zipper across her mouth. The pencil pouch would be easy enough to rob of its zipper strip for her.

The first thing to do with the doll was to cut the zipper strip down and measure it on the doll's mouth. Once I had that, I had to glue tabs of black fabric at the ends to create stoppers to seal the zipper strip as a closed track. Then I glued one edge of the strip by the tab to her cheek so I could cut the mouth cavity out underneath it, flipping the strip back and forth and opening and closing it to check the fit. Once satisfied, I glued the other end down. At that point, I painted blue splotches onto the black fabric to make it look like denim. I also bored holes in the corners of the end tabs and pushed pin heads in to secure the piece a little further and give it more detail, and I had to put one more pin in her top lip to keep the strip tight above her mouth because it was creating a gap visible from angles above the mouth. I couldn't glue or tack down the fabric completely because it needed to flex enough to open and close, so I left the bottom edge unanchored because gaps aren't visually problematic there. I also added a gold screw on her cheek to evoke the rivets and gold stitching of jeans.

With her faceup, I just wiped her brows off, and I trimmed her hair to a choppy short bob. Her wrist got a screw loop and jewelry link attached to a bare zipper pull. For her outfit, she got back the original Kim dress and jacket, but I opted to have her wearing the jacket as a jacket, rather than as a cape. Unlike Heather Grayson's cape jacket, I think the Kim coat looks best worn as a coat, and especially after I figured out how to thread the belt to close it in front. (I had to use embroidery scissors as tweezers to pull the strap through the buckle and her belt loop, but it's darn secure now). I traded the heels Kim came with for Nicole Steel's sneakers, which suited this character better, and she got one of Nicole's tab-shaped silver earrings and one of Heather's safety-pin rings as a bracelet because they look like zipper pulls.

Here's the full Jeanie.

I'm intrigued by how this character tonally turned into more of a victim after I had first envisioned her as an enthusiastic freak. Her mouth zipper feels more like an allusion to zombie gore than I expected, looking like torn flesh, and the frown it took on looks great but makes her look less happy about it. The coat and belt are an incredible look, but they emphasize an idea of confinement. Furthermore, with the direction I attached her zipper mouth in, she can't actually open her zipper as a doll--only her right hand reaches it, and it can't pull the zipper open. Jeanie has been silenced and imprisoned in the fabric she loves most. I think I'll have to recalibrate her to be another bad egg to make that predicament more acceptable. (Remember: we want a wryly tasteless nostalgic goth-horror tone, not genuine tragedy.)

The zipper effect in action is marvelously ghastly. I think it's the scariest visual on any of the dolls so far.

Horrific. You really don't need explicit gore to be terrifying. I think Jeanie's concept would be more satisfying on a larger doll whose mouth could be used to hold or hide things, but this visual gag is more than worth it.

Jeanie

Jeanie was a denim demon whose favorite thing was other people's business. Being so obsessed with image herself, she had to know what everybody was doing and hiding away, and she'd air out any person's dirty laundry to make her own trendy laundry wear more favorably on her frame.

Eventually, people got sick of Jeanie spilling their secrets, so they tore apart one of her finest jean jackets and literally zipped her lips. Now trapped behind her mouth and inside her clothes, Jeanie feels a little blue. It's a little extreme, isn't it? She promises she won't tell that many more secrets...

Please, won't you be a pal and unzip her? You have no idea how hungry someone gets like this!

After the fact, I got a Dia Mante to work on and realized her earrings were shaped like jeans buttons, so I added one of them into Jeanie's other ear.

SK-51

Luna Madison intrigued me the moment I wrapped my head around her bizarre fashion sense.

MGA stock photo of Luna.

At first I thought she was going for some kind of pop-star look with her bizarre flared metallic leotard and strappy boots, but then I thought again. Luna is (somehow) the twin sister of more human-looking Sunny Madison, who is themed to the sun as Luna is to the moon. Under that lens, Luna's costume looks like a mix of sci-fi and even a little Ancient Roman...almost like a midcentury fantasy depiction of someone who lives on the moon! Luna's dressed like an alien, and because she's all grey, I knew I needed to get a copy and make her an alien Left Out Doll.

In person, it turns out Luna's hair is pretty much only rooted for its factory style--the center part is only there for the hair that forms her space buns and the rest is rooted in rows behind the part that can't be shaped otherwise, so I went with the option of making her bald. I trimmed her hair to the roots, heated her head to remove it, and scraped out the hair with a flathead screwdriver. Her faceup lost the brows and blush and I removed the visible teeth on her lips. Her eyes got painted over solid black with reflection dots and gloss to look alien. Before I popped her head back on, I put a rubber utility ring painted silver around her neck to give a bit more sci-fi robustness to her outfit. Her right hand still has her glove, but I took her socks away. I also glued down the hip flares a bit so the outfit looked less ugly and rectangular.

For a hand replacement, I fashioned together a ray blaster. I put a screw through a screw loop and used a bolt to hold it in and create a hinge joint, with another screw loop on that hinge attached to a barrel and dish made of a painted wood part, a washer, and a tack. The piece can angle and rotate for different alien-blaster poses and it works well as a gun attached to her wrist. I put two bracelets on the wrist to create a better segue between the arm and gun.

Despite me following the same basic playbook, I like how different a product she is from my previous retro alien custom doll Marcia Greyman.

SK-51

She comes from another world. Her metallic clothing and death ray cause a stir wherever she goes. It seems like she can read your mind without even trying. And yet, there's something so familiar.

SK-51 may be an alien with unknowably terrifying powers, but she seems like a pretty normal girl when all of that is put aside. She's just as passionate about dissolving bones and exploding brains as the next gal, and seems perfectly easy to talk to. She never tries to make a big deal of her differences, though she does ask they be respected. In most ways, she's just there to hang out like everybody else.

There's no conspiracy with most aliens. Just give them a chance.

Summer Storms

This doll held up this entire second post. She was the first Left Out Doll I planned to go out and deliberately buy a base for, but waiting for parts and having to restart a process left her to come almost at the end of this post.

The reason I got into this project was because of Fantastic Fashion Project Rainbow Sunny Madison, who has a brilliantly wacky yellow dress with a skirt shaped like an inverted umbrella canopy.

MGA stock photo of Fantastic Fashion Sunny.

It's such an unusual, inspiring piece to me, and even though I have no particular favor for cheery, sweet Sunny, I simply couldn't pass up the chance to put that dress into use. Horror loves yellow rain gear after all--just ask IT, Coraline, and Little Nightmares! For this doll, I thought the dress would make for a great rainy-day goth who represents rainfall and sunny optimism in one-- Summer Storms, a goth who stands for the changeability of weather and embracing random misfortune.

For this idea, I needed a doll with blue hair and skin to contrast the yellow costume. I had first settled on the base being Uma Vanhoose from the Neon Shadow band, but I was leery about her being too pale and too skewed toward purple to be suitable for the role-- I'd heard her hair had zero true blue tones in it and her skin didn't seem to feel anywhere close to the saturation I wanted for the image in my mind. When I went to Target to check, they didn't have Uma, but they did have Glitch Crowne from the second main wave and in a contest between Glitch's more obviously blue tones and Uma's more vibrant hair, Glitch won out for me.

Reina "Glitch" Crowne unboxed (not all of her stock was photographed).

Glitch is actually where I got that microphone head I used for Boa, so she was especially fortuitous! Harley arrived after Glitch because I started work on Summer Storms before any of the other the dolls in this post!

I boiled Glitch's hair and tied it off into four pigtails, inspired by the hair of upcoming blue boy character Oliver Ocean (who actually has six, but early photos made it look like he had four). I thought it'd nicely evoke rainfall and the hairstyle of Sunny (and Living Dead Dolls' resident umbrella girl Morgana) while having a more differentiated goth edge by being split in four. I wiped off Glitch's lip paint and pink blush and painted yellow over her eyeshadow. Dark blue tear designs like raindrops got painted under her eyes and I painted over her purple baby hairs with blue. Her lips also became dark blue because yellow wasn't opaque enough to look good and I thought blue lips grounded her as a goth character better amid the bright yellow costume she'd be contrasted with. It was important to me that she be clearly smiling in contrast with her tears for her "make the best of the rain" philosophy.

Glitch's hair was not rooted for quadrant pigtails, so we'll not look at the top of
Summer's head.

My phone camera really doesn't do her body color justice on its own, so I played with filters more to get a photo that matches the blue I'm actually seeing with my eyes in-person. She's not quite as grey and muted as the previous photos show.

This is closer to reality, if a bit more saturated, and this was the promising blueness that
made me choose Glitch for this character.

While I waited for Sunny, I had the thought that maybe my NECA Coraline "Little Me" doll replica's raincoat would fit a Rainbow High body, and I tried it out.

I find this to be a flawed replica, but Coraline is my favorite film and the doll still
looks great, plus it has wire in the coat and body to match the stop-motion medium
of the movie!

Because Helen is essentially bald and has no hairdo to interfere, plus a slim outfit, I tried the coat on her first to see if the hood would work with these dolls. Here's how she looks.

The coat works pretty great on the Rainbow High frame, though the hood is not quite deep enough. I think it'd work better, maybe, on a boy doll since their head sculpts look marginally smaller. I like that the sleeves are so wide the hands slide right through, and the mud splatters on the coat suit goth characters just as well as the source doll.

I think Summer looks fabulous in the coat, but her hairstyle, which I was sure was right for her, prohibits her from wearing the hood up.

I wasn't sure if the coat would be too much on top of the umbrella dress, but if it was, I did think I could save and keep it for Oliver Ocean, modifying him in the near future to be a twin to Summer. Maybe the rainy duo could have Summer representing the umbrella and her brother representing the raincoat.

Then Sunny arrived so I could steal her stock, and I think the resulting look is wonderful.

The dress is a pretty great vinyl fabric assembly (very worried about how it'll age but now it's incredible) and the umbrella ribs are plastic pieces in the bottom of the skirt. Most of it is a solid piece, but the few prongs at the back are hinged, presumably so they can compress with the stand and the packaging.

The dress doesn't like to stay up on the doll's bust very much, but it's fine. Straps wouldn't have killed this dress, but it works nicely as it is on a visual level, even if it's not tight enough around the waist or front to hug her more securely. The Rainbow High body seems to fairly consistently cause awkward sewing challenges for the doll clothing.

I also tried the coat on, and I think I was right to think it'd be too much with her dress. I'll definitely keep it around for a potential rainy Oliver makeover, though.

The umbrella dress without the coat better suits the vibe of a summer day that can flip into a rainstorm at any moment. With the coat on, it's more like she's expecting rain and cold weather, and it interferes with the presence of her umbrella skirt.

Similar to the coat, though, I was finding her hair to overwhelm the focal point of her skirt, so I cut her four pigtails short so they all hung above the umbrella. I think it creates a fun topsy-turvy tension with the inverted canopy mirrored by her cascading rain-torrent hairstyle, and the skirt is unobstructed from view now.

I also decided to wipe off her factory eyebrows and do without them, since on this doll, I was finding the brows to ground her too much into a conventionally pretty look. For a goth character predicated so heavily on the visual pop factor, I wanted her face a little more stark, and taking off the brows fixed that problem immediately. Giving her new more caricatured brows likely wouldn't help because the most expressive options could ruin the tone of her genuinely having a positive outlook. Mischievous brows would work fine for adding character, but they'd add the wrong character.

I questioned whether I should split her four pigtails once more to tie them in eight to perfectly parallel the spokes of her dress and the rain beads attached to the skirt, but trying to split just one pigtail made her hair obscure her face too much and gain a little more volume than I wanted. I did add a yellow plastic party ribbon around her neck to give her a choker. She was looking a little bare up top and that helped balance the outfit and colors much better.

Then I decided to try again at splitting the hair into eight. I lowered the pigtails to look less perky and tied them with more yellow party ribbon to keep the volume under control, and I think it worked. Having that mirror to the umbrella spokes and a more circular hair silhouette made the character look more dramatic and caricatured.

Of course, the doll's hand replacement simply had to be a yellow umbrella, so I looked for a long time for functional doll umbrellas that worked to shove onto her arm for a true showstopper doll. This was the main source of the holdup. I first found an American Girl umbrella, and before you scream at me for my naivete, I have very limited familiarity with American Girl and had not garnered a good sense of their proportions and scale. Fittingly, the umbrella that arrived was far too large, since American Girl is about double the 1/6 scale of 11-inch fashion dolls. Its pole was too thick and its canopy was far too wide to sell on Summer in any way. She didn't even fit properly on my portrait backdrop with the canopy open! And even if its size was correct, the cap at the end of the stick being a white bowler hat shape so as to not poke the children would have not worked with the edgy look, so I went to search again.

I eventually found an Etsy seller, Wishescometruegift, selling handmade 1/6 scale doll umbrellas which had a yellow option, and even better, included a strap and snap to keep the canopy closed for even more realistic interactivity. It was essential that the umbrella be 1/6 scale to not overwhelm the doll, and I knew it had to look classically modern with no frills or particular femininity in its design. She's a modern pop girl who doesn't do ruffles or patterns. I crossed my fingers that the size of the brolly would be appropriate and waited.

The umbrella arrived, and was pretty much perfect. Pointy silver end, snap strap, and functional. The size works pretty darn well with Summer, too. Maybe it's a tad large, but not in a distracting or unappealing way. This is the best thing available, for sure.

For the purposes of replacing hands or otherwise, 1/6 dolls need 1/6 umbrellas!

Now, for deconstructing and affixing the thing, which was its own ordeal. There was a seam at the end of the brown-painted crook of the stick, suggesting that could be pulled out, but the piece wouldn't budge and I really didn't want to snap any ribs of the umbrella trying to wrench it away, so I decided I'd saw it off instead. Besides, the length of just the silver part would mean the edge of the closed canopy would be coming right to Summer's wrist, and I didn't want that.

Trying to saw the handle revealed an unpleasant surprise. I'd assumed the crook was brown plastic, but it's actually painted metal, and the whole stick seems to be some kind of solid steel. I was actually able to manually saw through the stick and sand off the brown paint, but it took a long time and wasn't easy. During this, the saw did catch on the canopy once and created some small snagged holes, but I'm not too worried about the canopy unraveling.

Once the umbrella was ready, I needed to figure out attaching it. I'd realized that even though the umbrella replaces Summer's hand, she and the bumbershoot would still look their best if she could pose it like it was being held in a hand. I constructed a joint similar to the one I made for SK-51 with two screw loops held together by a screw and bolt. To attach the umbrella pole to the screw loop, I first tried to see if I could wrap them together with wire and then glue it in, but that was overcomplicated and ineffective. I eventually pulled off and cut down the bristle cap of a ratty paintbrush to use as a sleeve and superglued the screw loop and umbrella pole into the tube.

The joint is essential because it lets Summer hold the umbrella up off to the side, hold it upright in front of her face, or use it like a walking stick. The umbrella is heavy for both the improvised joint and her forearm hinge and rotation, but she can be posed with it well bracing it against her head, the floor, a wall, or her hand. And it's great because umbrellas are wonderful for poses.

I really wanted this doll to be a showstopper, and that's exactly how she turned out. The display variety offered by her functional umbrella and the joint I put in for it are amazing. I also love the way I pushed at the concept of goth aesthetics here, using bright cheerful solid color pop in a way that makes sense with the overall look of the doll. She's way more appealing and fun this way than if she was wearing a purple, black, or blue version of the same pieces. This doll was well worth the long wait!

Summer Storms

She's the rain on your parade. The cloudy skies above your picnic blanket. The lightning and thunder that strike your swimming pool and fry any little minnows trying out their water wings.

Summer knows any bright day can go wrong. So why not embrace it? She can be sunny and cheerful while it lasts, and yet remain prepared to get doused by a typhoon at a moment's notice. Life is ever-changing and unpredictable, so you can't hold on too hard to the moment. Cherish it while it lasts...or while it goes wrong! Hey, sometimes, if you're caught in a field in the middle of a downpour...well, there's nothing to do but give up, laugh, and splash in the puddles.

Vespa

Of course, making Summer left me with a Sunny Madison, and with the pieces I had available, it was a bit of a scramble. None of the ideas I had of concrete characters to try would work with a base of Sunny, so I just started by undoing Sunny's hair, which created a fluffy cloud I thought would work well cut short into a vertical short fluff. That made me think of it as a little bit of a granny hairstyle, and that gave me the idea to make the doll into a tough older woman. I gave her a good black and gold outfit, using Heather's tank top under Sunny's sequin dress under Shanelle's jacket with the sleeves cut down, and Karla I's boots. Spare Heather earrings worked well. Her face got wiped of its rainbow shimmer, lips, brows, and blush, and she got a wide smile with black lips, fluffy yellow eyebrows, and wrinkle lines under her eyes and at the edges of her mouth to age her. I also lowered her eyelids by painting black over her eyes. For a hand replacement, I found a Playmobil hammer that worked well, and I constructed a chain of jewelry links to create a handcuff-style chain around both wrists. I think the glam handcuffs help emphasize her long life as a rebel, and the circular links work well with the sequins of her dress.

Vespa

Whoever said rebellion never gets old clearly hadn't met Vespa.

Vespa isn't your granny's granny. For decades, she's broken all the rules and scandalized most of the people in her own generation. Piercings? Got 'em. Arrests? Too many to count. Informal fashion? Bring it on. Radical views? Mm-hm, honey. She's got steadfast love for all the innocent people she was told to scorn, and fought for it tooth and nail. She will never tell anyone to settle down.

Vespa's never wavered in the face of adversity. She's a soldier for all the freaks just like her. As long as she lives, she's determined to prove old folks can be fierce and fun and ahead of the curve. It's best you fight with her rather than against, 'cause when it comes to dangers, she's the grandmother of them all.

For a doll with zero planning behind her and one who was thrown together out of the stock I had, I'm stunned by how cohesive and personable Vespa turned out. I love how characterful she is and she looks really unified and appealing. Making her an older lady was a great idea.

TViva

Glitch's glitchy-screen costume pieces felt too good to waste, and somewhere in my mind, I thought Nicole Steel would wear the glitchy pieces well under her silver jacket and Ash's grey shorts to turn into a television goth. My first idea for using Nicole was to try making her a stone statue, but I liked this idea even more. I got a Nicole in and set to work. I dressed her in Glitch's top and leggings under Nicole's silver jacket and Ash's grey shorts. I had to cut the inner sleeves from the Nicole coat so the sleeves of Glitch's top were visible out of the ends of the metallic portion. For her face, I wiped off her brows and repainted her lips slightly to remove the exposed teeth and make her expression a little more somber. TViva got the most metal in her head, with a wall-hanging hook pin for a dial knob above a nail for a button on her cheek, small flathead screws screwed into her earring holes, and two longer nails pushed into the top of her head for antennae. I repainted her right eye over with a TV test pattern matching the colors of her leggings and sacrificed one of Zooey's plug shoelaces, which I felt were okay to steal, to give TViva a plug cord coming out of her wrist. I boiled the hair a bit to make it less corkscrew-curly and trimmed it because I realized I could get her pigtails into a shape that made her head silhouette look more rectangular and that aided the abstraction of her head as a television.

I really like how she came out. The black and white and pops of color neatly cover all aspects of retro television and I had so much fun creating details to make a person look like a mechanical TV being.

Unavoidably, I think of Shel Silverstein's "Jimmy Jett and His TV Set".

I'm not saying I'd never do another Nicole custom as a statue like I planned (I'd only need a nude copy for that), but I'm glad I went with the TV-goth idea because it's much weirder and way more fun.

TViva

They always warned her that television would rot her brain and melt her eyes. They didn't think that would appeal to her!

TViva is fascinated with the tube. It's the mid-century version of the séance, after all. You adjust the antennae to pick up a signal, and watch the spirits of people dance across the glass. Often, the dead return each time their show is rerun, and it's up to the viewer to contact them with the cathode-ray medium. Television is full of death and mysticism if you know how to look at it.

Now, TViva has become the medium she so admired. With screens in her eyes and a cable to plug into any wall, she's the television now. She watches the ghosts within her eyes and shares her morbid visions with any who will tune into her.

Addendum: Bad Karma

Since I had deemed the Karma Nichols skirt and shoes vital pieces to transfer to Chemichelle Mutant, that left Bad Karma a little incomplete. But looking at it, she's been the most unfocused and tossed-together Left Out Doll of the entire group.

Bad Karma as you last saw her.

Bad Karma was driven by as little concept as Vespa and was just as thrown-together, but she ended up less visually cohesive and polished. Her hand replacement and outfit have no real correlation with her story as an aggressive biker who got her just deserts, and I enjoyed that story more than whatever aesthetic the doll had going on. Now that another doll essentially demanded I rework Bad Karma, I decided to take that opportunity.

The first thing I tried was giving her Nicole Steel's grey graffiti coat. I thought the collared cut and tough edge would suit a nasty biker pretty well. Since the nails in her arm were a problem for putting the dress on, I cut the semi-attached sleeves fully off and I thought that suited the look even better. The nails were still preventing her from putting the coat on, so I realized that I should just take them out and change her arm attachment. I realized I could use the chain I took off of Busted Keaton and give it to Bad Karma--a chain attachment works perfectly for a biker thug. Since the Nicole coat completely covered the Shanelle top Bad Karma wore before, I just removed the top from the doll because I don't want clothing to be wasted. The more clothing pieces in the assorted pool that I can use for future Left Out Dolls, the better. To build out the outfit a little more and cover up the holes from the old tacks, I took the inner sleeves I cut out of Nicole's silver jacket and trimmed them down to just the grey parts to give Bad Karma arm warmers. I also gave her Harley's short boots which fit her look perfectly and helped balance out her hair.

Then I got another idea. The party ribbon loop in her hair to hang her severed head from her arm frankly looked like trash to me now, and her hair was getting messy under the ribbons, so I tried to find a new way of displaying her head. I decided to attach the chain to a nose ring so she can drag her head around on it and hold up her head by using the chain. I bored out her nostrils so a loop could thread through both, and got a jewelry link in there to attach the end of the chain. Her head doesn't dangle face-forward when it hangs from the chain, but I can have her head sit on the ground so it's okay. I also wanted a way to keep the head on her neck for that display option to not be so fiddly. I cut her ponytail down to reduce her hair's weight and wrapped the base in silver wire after tying it with an elastic band. Then I put a screw loop into her neck as a makeshift ball for her head to pop onto. It offers limited articulation and is a little wobbly, but she can have her head reattached securely now. If I had thought of that just a bit sooner, I would have left her hair length untouched. Oh, well.

I'm happy with the result. Bad Karma is now much more fleshed out and integrated with her story concept, and looks more polished and interesting while having better interactive functionality.

I think the look feels much more like a rotten biker, and the chain attached to the head is great. It conveys that she owns the look, that she holds her head on by force, and that she can use her head as a makeshift flail weapon, all of which communicate the idea of "this girl did not learn her lesson" in a really entertaining way.

Addendum: Karla II

My second Karla arrived.

Karla II.

I can tell she's from an alternate facility than my first because her faceup has similar differences to the ones I saw in my Zooeys. Karla II's blush, undereye shadow, and lipstick are more heavy and her brows are way harder to see, but her faceup's differences are not nearly as much of an insult to her as the similarly indelicate faceup of my Zooey I (now known as Busted Keaton).

Karla I's face.

Karla II's face.

Karla II also has much less hair pulled through her top ponytail to sweep across her face, which is maybe preferable, since Karla I's hair ungelled was becoming untenable. Karla II's forelock was not gelled at the top.

I decided to wipe Karla II's lips and blush and most of her undereye shadow to get rid of the less delicate aspects of her faceup. I then repainted her lips more subtly to try to match I's, and made her brows a bit more opaque. I think the result is an acceptable replacement for the untouched Karla I.

More dolls in the works, so stay tuned for those!