Swimming the Seas and Rivers: A Lagoona Blue Roundup

Back for more of Monster High's main fish monster, because I've found more to do with her! It's just not a G3-only roundup this time.

I already reconciled myself to G3 Lagoona by taking the approach of tweaking her signature doll to match the G3 cartoon design I favored. (read that here.) 

But now I wanted to take a look at a G3 Lagoona I genuinely really liked for her factory design--her Monster Ball doll!

Monster Ball is G3's first dance/party doll line, and depicts the school dance event that ends Season 1 of the cartoon. Alongside the Fearidescent line, Monster Ball welcomely proved that the G1 flair for fashion and makeup has not left Monster High. The only real problem I have with the line is that it doesn't include a Frankie! I just know they'd have been awesome.

Monster Ball Lagoona immediately rose above the rest in the line for me. I loved all of her styling.
The Monster Ball boxes have unique molding with a textured curve to make the boxes feel like a disco ball. It's very difficult to see in photographs, but I tried.

The back shows off the shiny new art style that replaced the wave 1 art style. This art is good and an improvement, but the faces can be a little weirdly-expressive, which extends to Lagoona here.

The skimpy profile text refers to Lagoona's experience at the dance.

Here she is unboxed and demonstrating her fun tentacle-beard photo prop! 

Monster Ball Lagoona has my favorite hair rooting the G3 character has received. It's side-parted toward her right with a subtle blend of blue, teal, and lavender streaks over blonde, and it's tightly waved almost to a curl. Blue tinsel has also been mixed in--all of the Monster Ball dolls feature hair tinsel (though for Cleo, it's nothing unusual). The hair is tied into a low side ponytail. 

I really prefer the subtler blend of colors and the side part and hair texture. G3 sig Lagoona's hair is very color-blocked and I find the blended hair tones to feel more beautiful and more fitting for her "mermaidcore" aesthetic. (I mean, if they're gonna make her even more fantasy-mermaidish, then why not go all the way?)

G3 sig's hair colors.

Around her ponytail base, Lagoona has a huge purple sea flower which clips on, reminiscent of the small flower she wore in G1. I had to manually pry the clip wider to get it back around her ponytail after removing it, but it looks really nice. 

This dark purple color is something they should keep experimenting with. It looks great on this doll as a dramatic grounding tone that works with her tropical palette.

Monster Ball Lagoona's face has a lot going on, but it's nice. 

Her forehead scales feel a lot subtler due to their lower-contrast color and two tones, so I welcome them on this doll! I wiped them off her sig edition. Her eye makeup is busy with blue dots over layers of magenta and purple, and her lips are flatly two-toned with magenta in the middle of purple like the colors of her hair flower. Up close, this looks really silly, but you get a better ombre-lipstick effect from a distance.

Here's my sig Lagoona next to Monster Ball, with the caveats that this is not a perfect comparison because I wiped off the sig's forehead scales and added the fangs.

The best praise I can give Monster Ball Lagoona is that I find her faceup to require neither of the modifications I made to my G3 sig. Her scales are totally unobtrusive and fangs don't feel called-for on her.

Monster Ball Lagoona's earrings continue the purple and are wonderfully shaped like octopuses!

Cephalopods have always enchanted me (is it any wonder I turned out this way?), so I love these earrings to bits.

Lagoona's clip-on choker matches, looking like tentacles. 

Lagoona's dress features asymmetrical shoulders, with black straps on her right and a pinkish-red coral-print ruffle cutting across her left. There's something a bit retro about this cut in my mind, but it doesn't feel out-of-date. The body of the dress is metallic blue with a scale print, and the bottom has another ruffle.

I really like the look of this dress, but there's something about the way it's sewn that makes her torso look quite boxy. I feel like if this hugged her waist more or floated less around her hips, or if the blue body of the dress was extended down, it'd look more stylish than it already is.

Surprisingly, Mattel did not leap at the opportunity to do a mermaid silhouette here, but this is a case where I might have encouraged it.

Lagoona also has a chunky blue bauble bracelet.

Lagoona's shoes are pink heels with more purple flowers on them.

Her purse is a small blue shell on a wrist strap, which opens on a folded plastic hinge.

Lagoona also comes with a lip gloss tube with a removable cap. This fits inside the purse.

Lagoona's Kraken beard prop has two holes so her index finger and the three below it slot in separately. This can squeeze quite securely onto her hand and it poses well. 

Lagoona's other party accessories are a punch bowl, a ladle, and two goblets. 

Don't ask about the fish skeletons.

The punch bowl has a screw in the bottom presumably holding the blue plastic piece depicting the liquid in place. 

The goblets and ladles are good scene setting, but have not been designed to be held by dolls. There are no finger loops on them, and I couldn't pose a glass in Lagoona's hand.

The Monster Ball dolls also come with large cards depicting a group photo of the characters, with each doll having a different picture. These photos are real photographs taken of the dolls. It's been ages since a Monster High playline doll had a paper-goods extra like a photo, card, or diary, so these are nice to see. Lagoona's photo does not include Draculaura, and Clawdeen's photo does not include Cleo. Cleo and Draculaura's photos both include all four dolls.

I then took some portraits of my own.

But plot twist--while I was compelled by Monster Ball Lagoona, I did not ultimately get her for herself. In fact, I selected Monster Ball Lagoona as my ideal base for an "Old-Skull" nostalgic restyle!

The reason this was the one I wanted to use was all down to the hair. Of any G3 Lagoona, her side-part, hair texture, and hair blend felt the most similar to G1 sig Lagoona's.

My decision instantly felt validated when I took her hair down. It's more hair than she needs, but I instantly recognized the older Lagoona in this.

The hair is voluminous and quite long, so I took it for some rinsing, boiling, re-curling, and cutting until I got it about waist-length. I kept its lower curve rounded to keep the wavy, bouncy look. 

G1 sig Lagoona's costume consists of a jacket hoodie with shorts over a bodysuit, thus meaning Lagoona was given a bathing-suit swim layer to her costume that could be used when her shorts and hoodie were off. I love the way that was included, and it would be pretty easy to re-create that with the G1 sig bathing suit. Here's the haircut with the bathing suit (tie-ribbon strap cut off because screw those).

G3 currently has five jacket hoodies with "ear" accents through the Neon Frights line. While Twyla's hoodie is the most Lagoona-colored, the bunny ear accents don't work with her at all. Frankie's yellow hoodie could work, but I worried it wouldn't be saturated enough for Lagoona's palette, and selling the bolt accents as fins would be tricky. Ghoulia's hoodie has wing accents that would translate well to fins, but the color is wrong. I decided to order a Draculaura hoodie. I disliked the pink hoodie of the signature G3 Lagoona doll because the solid pink was inaccurate to the cartoon, but on this Lagoona, solid pink might work, and the bat-wing accents could easily be taken as sharp fish fins. 

Here it is, with the hood up emulating the G1 sig look. (I had to cut the sleeves shorter to keep them from interfering with her arm fins.) It's not easy getting the hood onto her head with her hair all coming out the front, but this is how the sig doll was styled. (I honestly mistook the G1 sig hood for a beanie because of this configuration!)

The pink hoodie also feels like a nod toward the G2 sig look, which had a reddish hoodie I enjoyed. The outfit was all one piece, though.

For G3 shorts, Mattel was generous by designing a piece that directly replicated the sig Lagoona style--Fearidescent Lagoona has a pair of shorts with fishnets coming out the bottom, so I ordered those. 

For shoes, Lagoona needed basic sandals to evoke the original, and the best match was her Spa Day hair-play doll's shoes.

I also ordered Skulltimate Series 1 Lagoona's hat to see if that'd work. I didn't like the baseball cap on that doll because it looked more like it was meant to be tough street fashion rather than athletic wear, but I thought it could work on my Old-Skull Lagoona as a new touch that would complete her look in a different way than the hood. 

Then her shorts arrived. They don't look at all impressive when they're off since the nets don't hang out like this and the legs look way too wide. 

Putting them on fixes things and they look good! I was really nervous that the coral-orange leghole frills of her bathing suit would come up too high and I wouldn't be able to pull the shorts over them completely, but fortunately, I could. With difficulty. I needed to put a stylus under the waist to keep pulling it and turning it upward so the pants sit properly. Here's the ensemble!

The colors are almost too much, but I think they come together. G3 Lagoona's palette is naturally a lot, and the only color that's not quite balanced is the coral orange...but I don't know if that bothers me. Trying to draw over it in Paint with purple or black (the only coordinated colors I could stain that base tone into) didn't make a huge improvement to me. I think I like the splash of coral there. It helps push her that much further into the tropical overload. 

Seeing my Old-Skull restyle next to the G3 sig is stark. 

The sig doll looks like a child next to the restyle. Granted, I think a lot of that is the fault of her customized hoodie, which is stiffened by paint and probably looks more shrugged and less form-fitting than it once was, but the hairstyling and makeup differences are also huge and the G3 sig feels not only extremely distant from G1 Lagoona, but also quite a bit younger than Monster Ball restyled. I had fun with my sig restyle at the time, but now, I have to say, I've lost affection for the doll because she looks too childish to me. I don't know if the factory sig was truly cut out to embody the cartoon sig design. 

However, even though I'm being an old fart and indulging in nostalgia, I have to remember that the G3 characters are not their G1 originals, and with that, it's true that the G3 sig, with my restyles, accurately captures the manic side of G3 Lagoona's piranha-esque intensity. I think her outfit swallows her and my hair work was a bit botched, but her face is right for the way the G3 character is written and portrayed. If I was really interested, I could probably get myself a second sig copy (or just a factory body) to try tweaking things a little more on a second go so I was more satisfied with her, because I do want to honor the G3 canon when I can.

I just can't help but prefer my restyles in some cases where the factory sigs aren't workable. I think Lagoona is going in the same category as Lagoona, where the original doll was pushed to a better place, but hit a wall in the pushing. Like with Ghoulia, my restyle essentially replaces the sig on my shelf because the original can't work it.

Here's the four of the classic squad I've restyled together. Ghoulia is the loosest restyle due to her low number of dolls and current dearth of G1-esque pieces, but all of these are more classic-themed takes on the G3 cast.

I also wanted to try a reimagining restyle of G1 Lagoona. Despite her name, she never had very much visual or even thematic influence from Creature from the Black Lagoon. For one, her color is blue despite the iconic Gill-man monster being famously depicted as saturated green in all color media. Also, Lagoona is a sea monster whereas the Gill-man was found in the Amazon River. In that respect, Lagoona's river-monster boyfriend Gil has more to do with the classic monster. There wasn't a lot else visually in common, either. Lagoona always felt pretty safe and girly and mermaid-ish in the way she played with sea imagery and fish features, and that's fine...but, just for me, couldn't there be a doll that depicted the Gill-man more closely?

Colorized still of the Gill-man monster.

This is fairly opportune timing for me to embark on this, since Mattel is apparently making a Monster High Skullector doll or set based on the film, so it's very likely we'll see their own direct interpretation of the Gill-man, which...should be very interesting just because of how nonhuman the character's design is. And if I get mine done first, then that offers the exciting chance to compare what my brain and the MH designers did similarly and differently with the same task! No guarantee I'll like their Gill-man doll enough to do a physical comparison, but nothing can stop me from writing a quick post to compare from afar if I decide to pass on it!

First, a name for future reference. While I didn't know for most of this process if I was going to treat this doll as an alternate-universe Lagoona, the actual Creature from the Black Lagoon, or an original character directly descended from it, I eventually landed on the latter. She's the actual Creature's daughter. And since that places her a South American monster from the Amazon, I looked for names found in Brazil, the largest Amazonian country. I've decided to call her Gilliana Manuela Ribeiro. "Gilliana" is an invented name to get the "gill" of "Gill-man" in somewhere, but the name guides I found indicated that Manuela was a common enough authentic name to complete the pun, and "Ribeiro" is a surname relating to rivers, somewhat equivalent to "Rivera" (which would be wrong for the location). 

Oh, dear child, this project was a rollercoaster ride. I don't remember working on a doll for such extended time since Treesa...and didn't have a bumpier long ride since Dahlia. 

It started easy. Since the color green was what I wanted to focus on, I selected Skultimate Roller Maze Lagoona for my hair/head model. The Roller Maze line had an unexplained color emphasis on lime green, which became a stylish one-off color for some of the dolls in the line. For Lagoona, that meant most of Lagoona's chlorinated blue streaks were replaced by green ones. Her makeup also leaned green and yellow in a way I could work with. Here's that doll. 

This is not even a little bit of a review of the doll, so I didn't get a good picture of it, but her right hand is sculpted in a surfer's hang-ten sign! 

I undressed Lagoona and took her hair down and washed it out and worked on a faceup. 

With the face, it was fairly improvisational and I had to wipe and repaint several times. I recolored the brows green, and then I realized I could wipe off the factory paint to isolate two of her lashes and imitate the angry-looking eye socket creases of the Gill-man. 

Then, I painted green eyeshadow around her lashes, and patched up the rubbed lip paint and added two upward fangs, which the Gill-man is sometimes depicted with and which I felt added something. I then played more with the shaping of the eyeshadow and lash line, so I ended up with something very fluid and graphical and campy, like a retro cartoon illustration. I liked the effect a lot. Creature from the Black Lagoon was actually made later than I would have guessed--it's from 1954 rather than being a thirties film like most of the Universal horror classics, so I think this cartoony makeup style fits the period pretty well. Lastly, I added more green dots on her forehead to mimic the warty bumps on the Gill-man design--that might have actually been the reason Lagoona always had freckles: to beautify that design detail!

I had also decided in the parts-ordering phase of this project that the concept would be done the most justice if I swapped her head onto a Freaky Fusion Lagoonafire, since the draconic full-body scales and segmented underbelly brought in from the Jinafire Long half of the character fusion felt much truer to the plated, textured body of the Gill-man. Jinafire's body is also marginally bulkier than the standard MH silhouette, and I thought that heft worked well for the Gill-man idea too. Lagoonafire's head had its own potential for a good base face and also has lime green, but I wanted to work with a pure-Lagoona head and I couldn't waste this faceup. 

Here's Lagoonafire. I just ordered a nude copy.

Their face is Lagoona with Jinafire-esque painting and their ears fuse the two's textures. Their body has all of Jinafire's texture and (originally had) her tail, but added Lagoona's arm and leg fins. The fins are solid gold, meaning Lagoonafire had no translucent parts and thus they had arms and hands cast in opaque vinyl rather than having translucent pieces painted over to block out everything but the webs and fins. I prefer the way Lagoonafire did it. This Lagoonafire didn't have the leg fins, but what aftermarket Lagoona does these days?

The Lagoonafire body is more shimmery and looks bluer all around, likely to bring the shiny luster of Jinafire into Lagoona's default color. I've always found G1 Lagoona's pale grey-blue color to be fairly dreary, so I support editions that are more frankly blue. 

I did take the time to test my faceup work on the Lagoonafire head to see if I could replicate it and if I liked it better there, since this head did seem equally viable to use and the Lagoonafire eye design could be an asset, but I didn't like where the faceup went on this head so I resolved to use the head I'd already finished. 

With the body, I painted the arm fins green and added more green dots.
Here's the head on the body, but all is not well. 

A big problem arose when taking off Lagoonafire's head. Their neck peg broke out of the body when the seam split open just enough for it to slide off the internal pin. That's some real Harry Houdini shenanigans there and I don't think it would be possible to put the peg back on because squeezing the neck open enough to make room to slide the piece back on would crack the plastic.  I did attempt to replace the peg, cutting the bottom of the loop of another peg so it could clip onto the internal pin...

I've proven I'm a better artist than this at this point, so I'm not afraid to share awful MS Paint sketches.

...but even though I could get the head on this way, it just didn't work because the peg kept popping back out with the head attached. Breaking the internal pin out and popping in yet another broken body's intact peg didn't improve things because it could still pop out! I continued to struggle with this and worried that this monster wouldn't have a stable head attachment. Big issue. Still, I kept on. Something something sunk cost, but with a faceup this good, that can't be re-created or wasted.

Something else to note is that even Jinafire's neck is thicker than average, so regular Lagoona's head is pretty snug on this body. That meant the head could squeeze onto the top of the neck and stay put, to an extent, but that's not sufficient. 

I had also ordered some clothing pieces. For a top, I thought Freaky Fusion Sirena von Boo's lime green top and black ruffle (separate parts) would work great, despite the tentacle patterns corresponding to no river creature.

For a skirt, I went back to the CAM Dragon piece I had also used for my fly monster, DiDi DiPterri. The polka-dots and scale patterns were perfect for this monster type, and the color was ideal. 

For shoes, I fittingly chose transformed freshwater Lagoona's from the 13 Wishes doll line. Those shoes feature aqua platforms with river plants in lime around the sides and straps. It's just right for this. 

And the floppy black sunhat from my G3 Refresh Draculaura might just have found its owner immediately, because I thought it could be perfect for Gilliana. I also kept sig Drac's shades on standby.
And now. Huge step. 

The grey and bluish tones of Lagoona weren't close enough to the Gill-man for me now, and I wanted to find a proper way to change her color. I first tried painting manually and wiping away to stain the plastic lightly, but that didn't give me an even tone like I had hoped, and I spend a lot of time scrubbing that paint back off. I didn't even consider spray paint because that hasn't turned out to be remotely stable enough, either--Dahlia is wrecked now. While I should have stored her in a padded box rather than a plastic bag, her spray-paint coats peeled off her head vinyl and stuck to other surfaces all the same and she's quite damaged now. I'll spare her dignity and not show you what happened to her, because this is how I want her remembered:

--but I'm calling it--say a gentle R.I.P. to Dahlia. My ambitions were still too high in the end. That doll was kind of a doomed concept because white-cast vinyl won't reliably stay white with age, and there's no way I know to really stably change another vinyl color to white--and even in those cases, the shiny porcelain finish was never gonna hold up. I totally accomplished my goals with that project and had something wonderful, but she was on a time limit from the moment I completed her. I continue to learn from her, it seems.

So at this point, with Gilliana,  I decided to finally try dyeing a doll a new color. That's a real option for lighter dolls...with caveats.

I'd seen through videos that play doll bodies' multiple plastics result have meaningfully different dye outcomes for different body parts. These different materials in one doll dye at different rates and concentrations, and legs, on Mattel's dolls, seem to take hardly any dye in at all. I was arrogant and confident anyway. I ordered a polyester dye in a green shade--you want something made for plastics. My target was a saturated medium green or limey tone with the original hair colors retained.

I got very dark evergreen, and the hair was pretty much all dyed by the time I was done. Well. 
I second-guessed myself and mixed in more dye than I needed, deepening the color. The forearms were more absorbent, so they turned almost black very quickly, while the head, completely dyed, was lighter than them, the body was lighter than the head, and the lower legs were the lightest of all. As expected, the legs took on very little color.

The paint job was mostly untouched. The lips got stained so I had to go over them again, and because the skin was so dark now, I had to take the color away from pink and made it a dramatic black. A bit of my own paint had come off, but it was easily retouched. I also added some blue to her eye makeup to match the shoe soles. 

The hair didn't want to behave in any way. It felt messy and didn't respond to reshaping attempts. It became mostly green, though it stayed lighter than her head because I wasn't intentionally dyeing the hair itself.

The heat bath had loosened parts of the body. The neck seam split open more than it previously had, and the hip joints (which are plastic; this isn't one of the oldest MH doll bodies) became completely floppy in both of their motions. 

To correct the body discrepancies, I mixed some acrylic paint and brushed over to match the head better. The legs got left off at a fade because I didn't want the shoes over painted areas.

What a tumultuous process just to get to this incomplete point, and so little turned out like I had expected. This is just a first test of her put together to see "the whole picture"...but isn't she stunning, though?

I've always been attracted to the atmosphere of murky, moody green waters, and this doll really embodies that. The colors also form a super fun contrast to her sunny jungle costuming. 

While this wasn't my first vision for the character, I think this is very strong and demonstrates that sometimes the process can have better ideas than the artist! She feels like the fish-monster version of being deeply melanated in a really beautiful way. In fact, while Monster High has had literally-black characters, it's never done a character who actually felt evocative to me of very dark Black skin and that'd be something nice to see from the brand. 

It's also remarkable to me how flipping the value balance between makeup and skin also flips the tone of the makeup. With the makeup being lighter than her face now, it doesn't feel nearly as harsh or overdone or campy-retro now (I had clearly altered the lids to look half-closed and dreary and I just don't see that anymore!), but that doesn't feel like a major loss to me. The lips would be much sassier if I made them a neon green color, but I don't really think that's the direction I want for her now.
Here's what Gilliana looks like with the Drac shades on. I think this is too much dark and black on the head region. I needed to find a way to put a pop of lime above her shoulders.

This was the end result of her second session of work, but I knew I needed to put at least one more night in. The doll's still loose, physically and in design. 

The first order of business was to try one last thing to save the neck, because I was extremely disheartened by the prospect of a doll whose head couldn't stay on, and was ready to shelf or outright toss the whole project if there was nothing I could do. I'm not in the business of broken dolls! There was no amount of squeezing that would make the socket hold a neck peg in without risk of it popping back out, because that's just how ball-joint sockets work. I knew to keep the neck peck working, the only way was to re-anchor it by replacing the internal pin through the loop so the peg wouldn't be able to come out of the socket. Because Gilliana's head now had lost an actual three unfortunate pegs inside it, I made a last-ditch attempt and stole a Create-A-Monster neck peck from a body I didn't have use for, popped it in, and bored a hole straight through the front of the neck all the way through the back with a potter's needle, threading the needle through the loop of the neck peg in the process. I then took a sewing pin and pushed that into the hole, where it fit perfectly. I dabbed super glue over the front and pushed the pin in the rest of the way to secure it. I cut the back of the pin with wire cutters, and we have a secure peg again! There's not a whole lot I can do to obscure the pin, but the head popped on mostly covers it, and I'm so proud of the repair engineering that I honestly don't want to hide it! 

The sheer relief I felt-

The other big thing was that I was still disappointed by the hair, especially since I had a specific vision for the style and shape I wanted and I wasn't getting anywhere with what she had rooted. I also felt the hair could be a good place to bring in the lime pop I thought Gilliana needed up top so she wouldn't seem overly moody and mysterious. I thought about getting a wig to replace her hair, but then realized I might not have to spend money and time on that prospect and delay this post even further when I had a candidate at home, and there weren't Etsy offerings in the right color and shape combined. 

I already mentioned that Dahlia aged very poorly and got too damaged. 

Dahlia has a white wig that's straight and with bangs. 

Dahlia is past her time, so why waste her?

The style I wanted to try for this was a straight bob cut in very conspicuous tiered layers to mirror the frilled gills on the side of the Gill-man's face. I had more green dye I could use on the wig. I figured this idea had better potential than the messy, resistant hair the doll was rooted with. If it didn't, then I would try to find another wig.

I used much less green dye in the pot this time around, and the color actually came out pretty good. It was actually what I had intended her body to look like, but I won't hold a grudge about it because the color the doll did become is gorgeous and I don't think it would have been possible to make it look like this with the doll base. For the dye to take, she had to be darker. 

I liked the effect of the lime hair on this evergreen skin. This pop of neon hair against very dark skin feels really nostalgic-2000s for me in a way that feels appropriate. The wig has an odd effect, though, of looking more saturated and yellow-lime under direct white lighting, but indirect lighting makes it look paler and less yellow. 

From poor skin-peeling Dahlia, this wig did have some paint stuck inside the cap and inside the bangs, but I tried to comb it out in the front and took the wig off the head while it dried. I then figured out how I wanted it positioned on Gilliana, deciding her brows needed to be visible, and then glued the wig on in that place. This doll didn't call for the wig being removable, and the rest of the hair process would be easier to work with if I knew the hair wouldn't be pulling off. Boiling and combing and cutting are easier with attached hair. However, the doll having a removable head per the CAM neck peg was an unintentionally wise move because the hot water seemed to take off some of the paint on the hard-plastic body pieces, so it was convenient to pop her head onto a Tinker Toy stand for those steps of the process. 

The wig isn't perfectly even, and maybe fibers shifted out of place over multiple boils, but there are clear patches of little hair coverage. It's fine. If it really bothers me, she can get another wig later, but I just want her complete and I don't think it ruins her. 

The other repair I needed to do was re-tightening her hips. I'd heard that squeezing significant amounts of superglue into the hip joints and letting it set a little and also moving the hips in and out and back and forth periodically to work the glue around without getting her stuck permanently in one position was a viable strategy. It was, and now her hips are rock-solid. 

With her new hair dry, I figured it'd be a good time to finally show her whole body. Only the head, forearms, and the plated "underbelly" are really the dye's color; the rest had to be brushed over with paint, but I think it's seamless and this body sculpt was the perfect choice.

And the hair is simply correct--I went back and trimmed it even more to get clearer layering, so here's that. I made a couple of false snips I regret and made some gaps in the back, but the effect is overall good. Again, she can get another wig later if she needs one and I might do better then, but that doesn't matter right now.

I'm glad I came up with this style concept because it really does feel layered and fin-like to mimic the Gill-man. 

Here's the outfit and hat on.

And built out a little more. I decided the glasses I gave to my Scarah would be better on Gilliana to keep up the green pop on her head. I don't use them on Scarah for display. I did clip the very ends of the glasses arms off, though, since they prevented them from sliding over her ears while the wig was in the way. I also added the Shy/Silly Inner Monster leaf piece, which could be worn as either a skirt or a collar. It balances the platforms of her shoes and makeup and adds a riverbed-foliage theme akin to gator Honey Swamp's plant details, and a summery overskirt element. This also makes her feel a bit more authentic Monster High-- a real release of Gilliana would have something a little jarringly toylike in its color palette, and I don't think it's a bad thing here. 

This is a good complete look. I think Gilliana could be a Monster Exchange character, being Lagoona's freshwater Amazonian cousin, but I couldn't find a good travel-size bag for her and didn't want to spend the time and money building her out for that role. 

I think I might like her best, though, without the skirt and hat and with her shades on her head. This looks poppy and sunny in monster-weird chic fashion!

This was the first time I found myself so captivated by a doll that I was taking entirely redundant photos of them. I had been taking shots I had already taken a few pictures back, or really bland photos that illustrated nothing unique except for the fact that, yep, Dmitry, she's still being gorgeous! 

Here's a non-redundant photo of Gilliana looking awesome.

And speaking of Scarah, here's the two green ghouls together.

And my surviving body-recolor ghoul, and Gilliana's skirt-sister, DiDi!

Here's the two fish together.

And it's been ages since I had a new character profile to write! Here's Gilliana's profile.

Gilliana Maneula Ribeiro

Monster Parentage: The Creature from the Black Lagoon--some might know me better as Lagoona Blue's distant cousin, though. 

Killer Style: Fun in the sun meets murky mystery. The jungle and rivers are full of beauty and the ancient unknown.

Freaky Flaw: I may have...skewed views on how relationships are supposed to work after being raised on the tales of Mama and Papa's romance. I've been too pushy toward the people I'm interested in before and I'm realizing most people can't work with that.

Favorite Activity: Collecting river stones. The hunt is relaxing, and there are true treasures among them. A good stone can be used for jewelry, games, gifts, or weight--the possibilites are endless.

Biggest Pet Peeve: Everybody asks if my home waters are truly black in color. It's an annoying name and even more annoying that so many people think it's literal. 

Favorite School Subject: Environmental science. I am passionate about the fight for conservation. 

Least Favorite School Subject: Swimming. I can't be in a chemically-treated pool. It's disgusting and distressing to me.

Favorite Food: I love piranha. They're a fun challenge to catch and are a great snack. 

Pet: I prefer riverbed gardening, so I do not have a pet.

Best Friends: Lagoona Blue, Gillington "Gil" Webber

Then, the photoshoot, which evolved in its own way! I had initially planned to use a fishbowl-esque round vessel and stage some pieces from these dolls floating in the water with Lagoona looking in, maybe magnified from behind, but then I decided the best thing to put in the vessel would be Gilliana herself, as if she's in a fishtank! The vessel I have is actually a candle holder, and the bell is not watertight, so I had to seal it with poster putty first before I filled it. I then put rocks in the bottom and staged a fake plant and Lagoona's hair flower to make it more like an aquarium, and folded Gilliana's legs back to fit her in, hands against the glass. I had to pile more rocks over the bend in her knees at the back to pin her to the bottom of the tank and keep her below the water level. 

To make the water more atmospheric river-green and murky, I stirred in some more dye powder. With the water being lukewarm, the dye won't activate and soak into anything and dye it further. At this stage, I was trying out the Monster Ball props on the top of the vessel to include the Monster Ball subject matter in the cover photo.

Sediment from the dye powder occasionally settled on the glass, so I used a pipe cleaner to wipe it from time to time while taking pictures so it didn't obscure Gilliana's face.

My compositions weren't inspiring me, and neither were the lighting or the kitchen background, so I tried turning the lights off, and struck inspiration when I moved my spotlight behind the vessel and lit up the tank. Suddenly, I had a pulp-horror drama and it was gorgeous.

LOOK. AT. THIS.

!!!

For the best cover photo, I felt that Gilliana had to have the tank facing forward to the viewer, and Lagoona and her Monster Ball dress could flank the jar on the sides. I also added the leaf skirt piece to the top for more texture, and I realized the Monster Ball beard prop would be way more dynamic and a better subject teaser if it was in silhouette inside the jar. To achieve this I duct-taped the handle of the beard prop to a small rock and dropped it in. Voila. Just one of the coolest photos I've ever engineered.

And this is only very minimally color-boosted in post! This photo without Lagoona and her dress--this is all in-camera and unedited.

And baby, you better believe this makes for some of the sexiest black-and-white photos ever, too because this setup is all lighting. Peak classic horror right here.

And a couple more black-and-white stills with Lagoona getting faint at all the horror that's horroring around.

This is a very static photoshoot, but do you even need more setups and poses than this amazing fishtank? 

I cannot convey how giddy I am at having engineered and taken these photos! I may not have ever been this proud of the art pictures I've created for this blog. I have no professional tools for photography or scene creation, but I've created pure drama and beauty and weird fun here. Everything came together.

None of it was easy, but boy howdy does Gilliana truly shine. I'm quite fiercely attached to her now. We've been through a lot and she's a big hallmark in my doll work now!

As far as techniques learned, doll dyeing is an encouraging process to keep in mind. It's certainly not perfect because dolls aren't all one material, but it can be a great starting point to cover some ground and minimize use of paint. Blending paint and dyed plastic has turned out to be the most stable and hardy method of changing a doll's color that I know, and stability and longevity are very important to me in toy work. Of the dolls I've modified so heavily, Gilliana seems like she has the best prospects. I don't expect her to age poorly, and while I'll still handle her with care, I don't need to be as delicate with her.

I don't know if I plan on dyeing custom dolls for more future projects beyond one I want to do. It requires dyeing a body black, wherein I see no potential troubles since it's only a torso that needs dyed, and with black, the colors should all match up eventually with a long enough soak!

Gilliana taught me a couple of good repair tips, too. I now have a pretty good method for fixing a separated or broken neck peg, and tightening hip joints is viable for me if I need to do that again. I feel like I took a level up in handiness with this project. 

Gilliana was also a case of things going sideways not actually being a negative. Her outcome isn't what I had planned, but it's even more attractive. She feels like an aughties supermodel and she embodies her source monster in a great way. It'd be hard for Mattel to do a Gill-man humanization in a way I like more now...but if their Gill-man really is just her dad (or mom, they might gender-flip it) literally translated, then I'll happily welcome that doll into my collection to complement her.

This post was kind of a paradox. One Lagoona was made better by turning her into the older Lagoona, and I also transformed an older Lagoona into a take on the monster archetype I would have preferred. So which is it? Do I like G1 Lagoona or not? 

Yes.

I think I'm more reconciled to G1 Lagoona through recognizing what was so good about her, and also exploring another idea in a way that I can put it aside. Now that I have Gilliana, there's no reason to look at Lagoona and see the monster she isn't. She can be what she is.