I wasn't sure I was getting here!
I wrote up a whole post about the craft doll bases I've fairly confidently posited to be the models that the original "handmade" LDD custom dolls were built on prior to their official production by Mezco Toyz. As part of that post, I had wanted to make at least one handmade custom myself on the same doll base as tribute to the history of the doll brand...but I found myself stymied for long enough that I went ahead and published it without having a custom done. Let's talk about that.
It started out okay. I got two craft dolls, a blonde and a brunette, and my plan was to keep the blonde as the "control" and customize the brunette. Here's the (formerly) brunette doll at base just to show the sculpt. I also used this photo to sketch on digitally when planning ideas.
My concern with this doll when stripped to basics was the difference in head and body color. The body sanded down later to lose its shine easily, and I figured repainting it with acrylics would be viable, but for the head, I wasn't sure what to do. I was thinking of making a paler unnatural-toned doll, and that would seemingly require sealants I've been scared away from using.
Well, I ended up scared no more. This was my threshold to get a damn respirator and Mr. Super Clear sealant.
With sealant on first, my first idea for coloring the doll was to try using spray paint. This worked fine and seemed to adhere well and didn't break or peel when popping the head back into the body, but I wasn't happy with the texture of the paint and I wiped it off with acetone. The LDD handmades are not photographed in high definition, but I still got the impression they would have looked cleaner than what I'd achieved. I was concerned to find the whole thing wiped off with acetone, however, as I'd gotten the wrong idea that the sealant wouldn't be vulnerable to it. Just wait me out; I eventually understand why I was self-destructing.
I then tried applying white paint very thinly in layers to change the head color and sealed it...but I found that sealant did not serve as a primer to stabilize paint over vinyl, and it cracked and flaked off when squeezed like I'd observed it doing on previous novice projects. I honestly had better results with the spray paint as far as adhering to the head, though the texture was undesirable. The lack of confidence in being able to recolor a doll head with paint also killed some rerooting prospects because deforming the vinyl is bound to happen when punching in hair, and I wouldn't want it breaking the paint job. I was losing patience at this rate and decided to, once again, give up hope on the prospect of recoloring a doll head to a lighter tone, at least for now.
To have anything to show for this project (which was quite a long time out since getting the dolls now!) I went back to the reliable method of dyeing the head a darker tone. The options I had in hand were black and red, and I decided for black because I thought maybe a high-contrast photo-negative theme could be interesting. I worked on that for a minute, but I wasn't happy with the outcome, finding it inauthentic for LDD, so I felt stuck again. This was when I decided to demake the blonde copy and start over with a character design that used the doll's original skintone. Not having the means to stably change the doll color to a lighter shade really bothers me, and I'd really love to know how Ed and Damien went about it, or if their work was just super fragile, because their handmade customs look good in the archive photos and they all seem to be body recolors.
This time, at the end of my rope, my approach for a new character was firmly to create "the Series 1 doll who never existed". I wanted to capture something from that early LDD aesthetic, which also allowed the flesh color of the doll to fit in because all of Series 1 is flesh-toned. It was a good opportunity to explore the simpler, more cartoony 1960s look of Series 1 I loved, too. I finally landed on the idea of a snake woman with a green color scheme and bite marks in her neck, leaking venom trails--perhaps like a classic vampire if snakes were the thematic animal for the monster instead of bats:
I also liked the idea of these eyebrow shapes, which suited the classic-LDD look but offered a distinct expression. I think this reads well as an early LDD who could fit in with the originals due to her color theme being a "missing piece" of the Series 1 assortment (no existing green theming there!) and her look being pretty simple but spooky and in-tone with the retro aspect of the dolls. Series 1 has no adult-coded characters, which makes her an exception, but another long parted loose hairstyle would be too many and put her too close to Sadie and Sin.
With a concept in hand, I proceeded to take the blonde doll to base to prep her. I needed to figure out where to source clothing for this concept now, but I was moving.
The blonde's torso still had the disc of plastic cut out for the neck hole partially attached.
The first thing I did, which I didn't need sealant for, was making the snake bites. I punctured the neck twice and then pushed the tip of a paint marker into the holes to fill them and make them clear. It was important to me that the punctures be real and very subtly tactile, and not just dots on the surface.
I also finally decided to do this correctly, with the one tool repainters swear by: Watercolor pencils. These and sealant provide the magic combination and just about the only successful way to make a custom faceup durable, because the watercolor--shocker--comes off with water. This means if you use the pencil (with or without water blending) and like it, you can then apply sealant to lock in your work and it's not a material that will just fall off. Then, working on the new layer with watercolor still, anything you don't like wipes right off with water, leaving the sealant and the layer you locked in protected. Acrylic paint doesn't allow you that freedom of making "checkpoints". This is also why some powdered pastels can be used to recolor bodies and seal the work in that way because the texture is so subtle it won't just come off with the sealant on top of it. Something to look into later.
Anyhow, I started trying, but the vinyl of these doll heads is lower-quality and more porous in texture, with small pits and crevices that pigment can be trapped in, punishing some slips and errors by trapping the color in the tiny indents. This head also ended up a bust and that's about where I put things away, until I ordered a third doll base. She had black hair, making me hope I could keep what was rooted, but the hair was combing out in clumps and large strands and seemed to make a mess every time I touched it, so I cut it out and removed the roots. (I wonder if it's just a thing with some black hair fibers and they decay into clumps--it happened to LDD Minis Isabel too.) The final head was more carefully painted with watercolor pencils up until I simply needed acrylic paint for more solid coverage--on the eyes, brows, and eye outlines. I could have gotten tidier, smoother irises with watercolor pencil, perhaps, but I was fine letting them be painted to get it done. I told myself not to get too hung up on perfection because these dolls only need to look clean through the blur of an aughts-style low-res photo. I don't know what the LDD handmades look like in HD, so they might have had rougher elements too! I created the punctures the same way in the neck, though it's not obvious they're real anymore. I know they are, though, and that matters. The face design stayed true to my sketch, but I added some green shading around the eyes and kept to one venom stream from the eyes, on her right, and one from a neck hole on the opposite side. This face was painted in many rounds to make sure I didn't do too much I would have to backtrack on in the case of an error. The final touch was the pupil slits, which I made their own layer just in case. While I was worried this doll head was too pale and yellowish, it matched the sanded body from doll base 2 pretty well, so that was sorted.
I made her hair from black cord that was unwound, but not fully combed out. I glued it down in a part and saturated the yarn to fix it tight, and tied a ponytail before wrapping it in a bun which I secured with more glue and paint. I gave her more of a Grace Kelly side bun than I'd initially planned.
The hair doesn't look very tidy or real, but yarn doesn't brush out to very long strands (I don't really know how the LDD guys did the hair on their handmades) and perfection can be the enemy of completion. Her dress is an off-the shoulder piece made from a simple black sock cut up (If I had a smoother stretch fabric tube I could cut, I'd have used it, but again--work with what you can), and I cut a green feather boa and trimmed the feathers for her size. Snake ladies and boas are a recurring joke with me, I guess. The core of the boa is a thicker cord than I'd like, making it less floppy and drapeable on the doll at this scale. Oh, well.
To modify the shoes, I cut off the ankle straps and dyed them black, but the dye ultimately didn't fully take and faded. Oh, well. Because the loss of the straps made the shoes too loose, they're basically horseshoed onto the doll with a single pin pushed through both the shoe and the sole of each foot.
Here's the finished doll!
And some information!
Snakebite
Date of death: June 14, 1964
The deathdate isn't thematically chosen because most of Series 1's don't have obvious deathdate themes, and falls in the same range of dates as Series 1.
"Chipboard" poem:
She always wears a Boa
Like the snake that took her life
Dripping venom, green of eye
She's here to cause you strife
"Certificate" poem:
Snakebite was a socialite
Who had a fatal fête
An odd exotic jungle act
Set loose the deadly snake
Now she walks among the dead
With poison in her teeth
Will her bite make you like her?
Or just send you beneath?
Or just send you beneath?
I thought the name Snakebite suited her best. I could have called her something overly corny like Anna Conda, or maybe Viper, but I already did the name Boa for a snake-themed character before. Boa herself actually had snakebite piercings that would make this name work for her too, but I'm happy with where the names are assigned.
Now, I had to make photos of Snakebite that looked like the low-quality 2000s pictures of the original LDD handmades! I'm not in the business of hoaxes or misinformation, though, so if by any remote chance these pictures breach containment and float around to wider circles, they're watermarked to trace them back to me so nobody will think they're photos of an actual undiscovered LDD handmade.
That was fun to shoot. It's so interesting how poor-quality or dated or incidental photos can really be their own nostalgic aesthetic.
And here's a glamor shot for the road.
This was a frustrating project, and I see so many ways it might have been done better...but then I think if it even should have been, given the target aesthetic of this doll. She's not supposed to be on par with the Mezco factory dolls...still, I can't help but feel like Ed and Damien were on their game and had some skills and tricks making their handmades better than this. I still have the dyed-black base and the parts of the third doll if I want to keep trying at the handmade aesthetic for a rainy day, but that will happen when it happens! I think I designed a cool character for now.
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