Monday, April 7, 2014

Project Wolverine: Getting there!

LOL so where I work we have a trivia night. This year the theme is geekery, and they have a whole category on superheros/villains and their real names vs their costumed crusader name. My boss and I had a mini contest to see who could get the most....I blew him away. And caught three mistakes they made when compiling the list.
All X-men related. Which makes me worried about the ones I didn't know....lol

Anyway
Last entry on Wolvie: here

It's been a while since I've done anything with him. I got the body in the mail (a while ago), it fit almost nothing I owned, but I managed to get him crammed into a white tshirt made for David (which is probably stretched out of shape now) that barely fit and couldn't even remotely be closed in back.

He also fit quite nicely into my most expensive pair of jeans :\\\ also David's, so I'll have to buy them again. Bleh. I made him a wig (twice, my first attempt didn't work out), and sideburns, which will be attached by glue (yes) after I get him a faceup.

Wolverine3

This is just with the sideburns shoved up under the wig...

and next to the rest of the group. He's actually pretty perfect height-wise. I think the head could be a tad smaller, but I like Cosmo as Wolverine, so it's staying.

xmen-crappy

ugh. They're all still in those clothes >.< They all need a changing. Hopefully Gambit will get some decent pants soon. I'm debating shortening his neck too - possibly wolverines as well.

I don't have any shoes that fit, and what pisses me off the most is that Mirodoll has the shoes I need, and I didn't know until after the body shipped XD so I have to order from them again eventually.

Logan has sat on the shelf looking pretty much like that until last weekend when I finally decided to get over my fear and just boil him, but didn't get a chance. So for the last week he sat on my desk under a tshirt, with no arms. XD

Saturday I was supposed to go hang out at a friends house, but that got cancelled so I used that opportunity to do some boiling.

If you've never seen a Mirodoll body, you should know that they are a pretty decent, especially for the price (it was only $100) - however the hands are horrible.

I'm not a fan of the actual hands, there's really nothing wrong with them, but I don't like them. Then the wrist socket is oval. to compensate for that, the hand ball is also oval.....but since I didn't intend on using the hands anyway, who cares. The socket is the part that sucks. Not to mention it's WAY too small for the giant ball of the Dikadoll hands I bought for him to wear. Therefor, mods.

I hadn't had a concrete idea of what to try in order to get those hands on the body, but another Miro hybrider had boiled the sockets and reshaped them to fit the 60cm DK hands, so I thought I'd try that first, before I did any sanding and then rebuilding (because, no.). Boiling was easy. I literally just dipped the arms in the water, held them for a few seconds, then started working the hand ball into the socket. After a while, you could see the socket was much rounder than it started out, and though it wasn't quite big enough for the hand to go in perfectly, it actually works quite well!

I let the arms dry and cool over night and strung him up the next morning. It's great! They go on and unless you're really looking, you can't really tell they don't fit. Plus, they have a MUCH better range of motion than his original hands (which no longer fit the body). They are huge. I mean huge. But as he is a proportionately short man, I think it actually works in his favor. I mean, look at all the Marvel artist portrayals of him. Huge hands. The head is a 65cm head anyway. It needs big hands XD
They don't fist well though, which sucks. I have to find fist hands now anyway. Better for claws I think.

Even better, the shirt and cowboy hat I ordered came Saturday! It's amazing how much that matters. With an almost complete outfit (still no shoes....lol) he really looks like Logan. Or James. I'm old-skool, I can't think of him as James XD it hurts my childhood.

I'm  a little disappointed by the hat, for the money I expected higher quality....it has no shape so you have shape it yourself with the wire, so it really isn't a cowboy hat at all....it's a floppy hat with wire.
I've worked with it and managed to make it work, but IMO - not worth 30+ at all. The shirt is perfect though.

I don't have pictures -- I beheaded him and finally started his faceup (along with 3 commissions)....and now it's raining again (omg when will we stop getting weather?! WHEN?!??!?!??!11/1/1/1) so I'll never finish. But for real. He's coming together. I'm a little worried about how he's going to look with the rest of my X-men (he's very realistic - the others are very not), but not enough to care that much lol. He's kind of fabulous as an independent.

I need to start designing costumes for Gambit and Jubilee. I feel like Jubilee's black body suit shouldn't be too hard so that might just be as is, but Gambit needs something and he's a tough one. I kid of want to go current and use X-Factor colors - or all black like what he wore in the latest series. For some reason Jean was easy to recreate, everyone else not so much. Logan/James/Wolvie needs some kind of thing too....but I don't think I can get past the Wolverine mask. So he gets to wait. Possibly forever lol

I'm hoping to have a faceuped wolverine to update with soon...then body blush and eventually claws. He looks pretty good so far! To me at least lol

6 comments:

  1. Ahhh - look a him, he's looking awesome! I think his neck looks just about right to be honest, Logan's such a stocky bloke as is that it sort of matches his proportions :D Can't wait to see him all painted up! Shame about the hat though - it was from Iple wasn't it? I do think they're starting to overcharge on some of their clothing items, I've been a little disappointed with some of them too...

    This is the first time I've actually seen your Gambit! Remy is hands down my favourite, always will be!

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    1. thank you!

      Yeah, I keep looking at him and he seems ok as is. I think it's must me thinking about it when I'm not looking. I do that sometimes. They seem really wrong when they're not in front of me, but when they are they're perfect.

      And thanks! He's my favorite too X3 and looks so much better after last night. I put together a much better outfit for him to hang out in until I come up with something better. He's a tough one to dress, his upper torso is big too *bangs head against the wall*
      I also changed Jubilee....I need to do some photographing now. I wish I had a decent place to take pics!!

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  2. Oh, Wolverine is coming along nicely. I like what you have so far and his head looks really nice on that Mirodoll body you have him on. I find Cosmo has such a big noggin. I compared his head to my Soom Epidos and the difference is pretty astounding, also given the fact both heads are on 65cm bodies as their default. Right now, I have my Cosmo on my Soom body but I need to change out the hands to my DZ jointed ones. That is not fun to do. Last time it was such a hassle changing those darn hands around.

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    1. Thank you!
      Cosmo does have a large head. I'm not sure it's any bigger than Heath (and nothing is bigger than the DES lol) but they're all so proportionately different. Oh well. Maybe the fact that they're all different means they match somehow?

      Changing hands can be a pain. I chipped a doll doing it once (and of course it was one of the LE Kara Klums) so now I put a wooden chopstick at the wrist to hold the string while I just slip the hands on and off. It works so much better than struggling with....everything.

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  3. He's looking good! Can't wait to see face up pics!

    So boiling the wrists let you reshape the socket? That's neat! Might have to try that in the future. I'm a little trigger happy with the dremel and this seems like a simpler option with less resin dust mess.

    Very cool to see the whole x-men crew you have too!

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    1. Thanks! It's not raining today so I might be able to finish him! I'd like too....I'm going to upgrade my Manga Studio this week so I want to get all the pending doll stuff out of the way so I can play with that XD

      Yep, it worked quite well! I couldn't really dremel this....I could have, but it might have made the walls of the socket too thin to hold a hand without breaking....so that would have been my last resort, and I probably would have had to rebuild some of it with epoxy. Or Apoxy. I never know which is which.

      Thanks! I need to do a real group shot asap. This one is sad.

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