Apology to Avea

This is the story of an extended abject disaster. Consider this the tale of a series of toy crimes and my attempt to atone.

After reviewing Avea Trotter last year, I had chosen to customize her by de-horsifying her head and making it more birdlike to make her hybrid blend of monsters (harpy and centaur) more balanced.

 

As time went on, though, the colors still weren't quite clicking and I decided that since dyeing was a handy tool in my arsenal after Gilliana (this reasoning at the time comes across as perfect dramatic irony now), that I could dye Avea's hair greener to match her wing feathers better. That was seriously all I had planned to do. I had nothing else going on, so I decided to occupy my time with that.

The poor ghoul was sentenced to an extended hell because of this simple choice. Her dignity has fortunately been spared for you readers because I alternately neglected to document and lost the pictures of different stages of the disaster. But let's describe. It's bad enough that way.

The first issue was that dye got into the face, either by sweating in over the pot or some liquid getting on another way, so I decided to try dyeing her skin green to cover it up. That entailed sanding her torso to let the dye get in and spending a lot of time. Her hair also got burned a little bit by the stove, so I had to try to cut it down and reshape it to save it, attempting a vertical swoop akin to Gilda Goldstag or my custom doll Eva. I also dyed her blue halter top green. 

At the end of that, though, I found her too green so I decided to dye her again, blue, to give her a peacock feel and contrast the green hair in a more colorful, dramatic bird theme. That didn't work well because the head that had already been dyed came out so dark on the second go that it wasn't creating a good contrast or pop. Since I had dyed the torso green, I was kind of stuck with what I had, and was intrigued by a blue Avea, so I saved it the best way I could--I grabbed the original Avea head that I replaced. While I had favored the second head for its personality, the first head wasn't that bad, and it was the only way I was getting a blue Avea without ordering a second copy. The first head also had intact hair!

I cut off the ears of the v1 head and dyed the head to a proper blue pop. It felt like some of the hair got a little damaged from the heat, but it wasn't fully ruined and I wanted to push this to work because I didn't want to be wasteful. I was also working on Avea to fill the productivity vacuum of other projects that had forced me to delay and wait for more orders at the time (I think it was maybe during the extremely drawn-out G3 Clawdeen project). I dyed the body blue as well as I could. It was blotchy because there were spots of green I couldn't sand out from the first color attempt. Fortunately, her clothes covered most of it. I left the forearms green, though, since I thought the color separation sold the idea of bird forelimbs and worked with the feather texture well. 

I tied the hair back in its old ponytail style since it worked well to mimic a peacock crest, and now did double-duty for both her bird and horse sides--something it didn't with Avea's factory look. 

I then took Avea down to address her face. I knew she needed a white beak and eyebrow paint for the right peacock-style contrast, and painted her lips pale purple to make them stand out. I wanted all of her facial features legible and clear in the same manner as they were before so the change in vinyl color didn't end up changing her facial personality. Changing the value balance will change the mood of the face, so I had to maintain the level of contrast she had before. I also layered some red over parts of her eye makeup to restore a bit of the color pop that got muted by the dye. It cost some of the black line detail, but that's fine. To add a bit more, I painted her arm feathers black, painted green on the texture around her hooves, and painted the hooves black.

I then did a second round of green on her hair and got a very rich emerald blue-green color, something I've only seen in doll hair before on Rainbow High Jewel Richie. I wanted to make absolutely sure her hair color was distinct from her face. I also went back and painted over her irises with yellow. It's more peacock-like and her eyes needed that pop to make her face as beautifully colorful and arresting as it needed to be. I shared this result a while ago on an Insta story, but I no longer have the photos due to my phone incident. If you caught the picture and liked it, I did too. 

I also decided now with this version of things, her top needed to be its original color to match her glove accents and make her poppier, so I ordered another copy. I'm sure the green top won't be wasted, but it was a false step here. 

Things weren't quite clicking here, though. I had wanted to go for kind of a chic wealthy look mixing modern and ornate to suit a peacock equestrian, but the ensemble just didn't come together for me somehow. I put Avea on the back burner to work on other things...and then time itself put her out of her misery when I learned that dye on vinyl will fade pretty quickly with exposure to light, simultaneously marring my precious Gilliana (who has now been touched up to match the faded color) and my Gamma Babe. So hooray, there's just no ideal body-color-change method for me. I can't be upset at something that narrows my focus, though. Goodness knows I have an excess of things I want to bring to the blog already.

Here's what's left of that trainwreck. I was onto something with the colors and paint for sure, but even when it was fresh and intact, the look wasn't assembling properly and it was a radical removal from the original doll.

The dye fading was the final insult. I'd tortured the doll well beyond "enough".  I had to give up on that copy of the doll and order a replacement because Avea became important to me. And I had to rethink what to do with her, because even at the end of it all, I wasn't happy with the factory Avea or her first restyle. While knowing body color was off the table, I didn't see any change with dyed hair I'd done, so I figured hair and fabric were stable candidates for color change. And since I couldn't balance the colors by turning the doll blue...what if I just made her hair red/purple? Dipping her hair in red dye had the potential of resolving her color scheme by taking out the jarring blue and making her more red/purple, which are already colors I associate with harpy monsters for some reason. Then I just needed to repaint the wings, re-add the beak, and rub the blue paint off the hands.

Avea II provided face number III. She had good personality. The new body doesn't stand as easily on her legs, and wants to tip to her left pretty often.

I dyed Avea's top, forearms, and hair in red. Her blue parts turned dark purple, while the top became blackish with a dark red cast. I had really liked the effect of the dyed forearms from the disaster copy, so I carried it over to a new color palette, turning them red. The arms fading wouldn't be too problematic as long as the color is still visibly red, and they didn't seem to fade over time after all. I gave the result time to check if it was stable after learning through the "peacock" dye and Gilliana that I couldn't trust it. I wiped the paint off her hands and wings as best I could to remove the blue and teal.

Her hair and tail both turned dark purple that went well with her lips and lower body. I'd really wanted to have dark red hair for her, but that just wasn't going to happen with the hair color she had.

This time, I had tried to exercise extreme care. After dyeing, I soaked the dyed pieces in water for a long time to get rid of excess dye before removing the tape and plastic I used to reduce the dye in the doll head. 

Fat lot of good that did me. The dye still got into the head, and Remove-Zit wasn't doing much. At a certain point, Avea head III got stained red and yellow and the paint was rubbing off from the treatments. I tried seeing if I could make her bald for a wig to replace her hair, but the head had just gotten too marred to bother toiling further with. So that head's a loss, too. The body and costume still worked out, though. Some progress was made. 

So forget doll hair dyeing altogether, I guess. Clothing only.

Only one thing to do to make amends while pursuing my vision: that planned red wig and a fourth head. Ugh. I'm so sorry.

I got another copy, incomplete, for a new head. This time, I just cut off the ears and got her bald. Avea is built on the second body still. I didn't bother switching to the third one even though I'd only need to swap forearms.  

After my positive experience with Bramble, I made sure to choose a wavy wig from Fnfdollstudio on Etsy, knowing the wavy ones would be luxuriously soft and able to be reshaped. The straight wigs, not so much. I found a dark red berry color I wouldn't have been able to reach with her rooted hair color. It's center parted and tightly wavy. 

I'm going to lose the ponytail visual pun, but I already did with my first restyle vision back on head 1. This attempt is essentially just recreating restyle 1 with new colors. This wig has a slightly different hairline, but it can likely create the same feathery bob shape. I also cut off the tail holder on body 2 to remove as much of the blue rooted tail as I could. I hoped to thread some excess red hair from the trimmed wig through the wrap and then glue it back together to replace Avea's tail completely. Dyeing Avea's tail on either body was extremely awkward due to the shape of her body and trying to lower the tail into the pot, and her factory tail wouldn't dye to match the wig anyway.

Here's the wig on. The fibers feel exceptionally fine, and they can get very disorderly, particularly at the forehead hairline where I feel like I'm always pulling stray hairs out of the way. It looks nice, though.

I trimmed the hair down into a fluffy harpyish shape and glued some tail fibers together by twisting them together while soaked in fabric glue, all before reattaching the tail holder and sliding the new tail in. This tail isn't as dense as the original and it's pretty floaty, but it works out and has some nice character. I probably could have made the tail thicker, but the fibers were very difficult to work with without them falling out of order and sticking to my hands. I took what I could get.

I replicated the beaky nose paint on head 4, and decided to reintroduce the yellow eyes I'd tried on the "peacock" version. They'd work well with the red and make her spookier--more like a hawk in this case. I also painted her hooves and hoof feathers. Since her wings are now red-tipped, I might have to go back to Maudie's locker and repaint the feather I put there. 

Here's the result. I can finally leave her alone!

The hat doesn't fit as easily with the wig thickening her physical hairline, so it has to be shoved very far back to stay on. I think I like her more without it, but I'm glad it can be worn. I also realized belatedly that it can be clipped around her riding tack when not being worn! I don't think that was a designed feature, but it works.

I think the colors really succeed now and don't feel as messy as they did when blue was fighting with the red and purple. Taking blue out was a better solution than leaning into blue and green.

Maudie was absolutely a hurricane when she saw her friend again.

"AVEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-"

"Whoa-Oof!"
"Oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh-"
"Good to see you too, dots."

"You're like a whole new monster...again! Where've you been?!?!  You were gone foreverrrrr!"
"I do not want to talk about it."

"OOH!"

"I've got the perfect hair to match; so much has changed with me too; oh, you have got to see my dressing room-"

"That ghoul..."

"TA-DA!"
"Ackgh-geez! You have got to stop doing that."

"The hair looks good. Wish you'd shown it to me sooner, would have saved some time!"
"Hm?"
"Don't worry about it."

"Is it okay now to say that blue was just not you at all?"
"If it's true, it's true."

As with my Old-Skull G3 Clawdeen restyle, this nightmarish process leaves me feeling like there's not a whole lot of pride I can take here. It's more of a feeling of disgusted relief and happiness to be done with the whole struggle.

This project was wasteful and inept and represents a major low point for my customizing endeavors. I destroyed three Avea heads and one body, and ended up having to get a spare incomplete body to obtain the final head I used. But I've learned lessons about customizing. Dye is largely uncontrollable and dyeing hair attached to a doll head is just asking for trouble unless the doll is stark black and the hair is going to be. Dye can be good for clothes or selective body parts, but a whole doll will look uneven as long as the doll is made of multiple materials and finishes. Dye is also not for the bored. I should have never jumped to using it on a whim. Avea needed a proper plan, not a time-waster chemical party to fill an idle afternoon. 

The positive is that I believe Avea now represents the last of the projects I started which were affected by my loss of photos. There aren't other things I began work on way back with pictures that I've lost access to. 

I'm very happy to have Avea back in good standing. She's a very cool piece of doll engineering, and has become oddly sentimental to this blog through the storytelling choices I made with Maudie alongside her. Avea Trotter deserved none of her mistreatment here. I should have just left well enough alone, but at least I got her somewhere better than my first restyle after all of this. Wigs and surface repaints are the name of the game for me from now on, though. Those are the only color changes I can rely on.

But what a change.