I have been working on piecing together my next anime style doll for a few months now and I have finally confirmed my design and wanted to share! I am building a custom Dollfie Dream Dynamite which is a 1/3 scale ball jointed doll, modeled after a character by my favorite Japanese Doujin artist Syroh. Now this is just something I love about dolls vs figures because you can literally build any combination and get it to look exactly how you want. The chances of a doujin artists original characters getting any type of figure is next to none. Do you have a favorite character from a niche 12 episode anime that never got any good figures but you wish they did? You can build a doll to look just like it! The possibilities are really endless. So anyway here is my nekomimi Shia Flatpaddy that we will be recreating in doll form, she is just adorable! <3 <3
So where do we start? The head is the primary thing that really makes a character look the part and I found my head at SQLabs. They do a lot of great custom heads / faceups and the one I chose has little fang like teeth which are perfect since I am making a catgirl. This cost about 25K yen for head / face makeup / eyes.
Now we need a body, the Dollfie Dream line comes in several shapes & sizes and I chose the Dollfie Dream Dynamite body for its curvy design since Shia is a very voluptuous girl. I bought a body on Yahoo Auctions JP from someone who parted out a DDdy Miko for 25k yen which is a great price! So this is what our body will look like. (Miko pictured below)
While the DD Dynamite is pretty busty, Shia is a very well endowed girl so she needed something special. I got her the Peach Pai Plus, which is a custom aftermarket silicone bust made by Rajikaru and is pretty much the coveted grail of Dollfie Dream collectors around the world haha. They are made from custom molds designed technically for the DD2 older generation body do they do fit the DD3 new body with some slight modification. They allow you to have a more realistic bust that will squish and mold into clothing much better than just hard vinyl and looks great. A few examples of Dollfie Dream equipped with Peach Pai below. (Photo credit to bluebluewave on Flickr)
I found a wig pretty close to the style I need from Miruya.com , it will need a bit of wig wax and styling to achieve the exact look I want but I think it will be a good match. The pigtails are detachable too which is nice
For the ears I will be attempting to make my own with some felt like fabric and little fuzzy hair to stick out the middle of the ear. I got the inspiration for the ear style from my friend @kugapost on twitter. I will use magnets on the bottom of the ear that will have counterparts glued inside of the head, this will create the look of the ears growing out of the hair rather than being just a headband. The tail I will be creating with a fabric coated pipecleaner that will attach through a drilled small hole through the back that will tie around the center skeleton frame for support. It will be scary drilling into her but worth it for a permanent tail!
See a pic of @kugapost’s cute Mini Dollfie Dream below with her kitty ears.
So there is my custom doll progress, at this point everything has been ordered and I’m just waiting for it all to come! Now I need to pick out outfits… this might take a while lol.
As you can see putting together a custom doll exactly the way you want it really can be a hassle but how else could I recreate a niche doujin character in physical form? It took shopping around to a lot of different vendors, talking with all the helpful people on the DD forums, and a lot of planning but finally I can say this stage is done.
Have any of you built your own custom DD? Let me know if you have any questions about my custom Shia. I might in the future make a more comprehensive post listing all the resources I have found for DD parts and how/where to buy them if there is interest. =)
Ah, a cute character to turn into a figure ^^ Will this be your second fashion doll then?
Good you already ordered everything and you don’t have to wait for Volks late restocks.
Well, there are different ways to find a non standard make up head, asking artists for faceups, buying on Yahoo auction or certain shops. Fortunately I found a talented one on my continent, who also just demands reasonable prices for the work. Though a faceup commissions can be nervewrecking as hell XD So far I always was happy in the end (◍＞◡＜◍)。✧♡
Sp peach pai+ (//∇//) I have that, it’s slightly too big, but I like it honestly ♡.
Make sure to find a supporting bra.
I’m looking forward to Shia 😉
Yeah this will be my 2nd doll, Mirai was my first. I am pretty excited now I just have to wait for shipping on everything which is the worst part lol.
Yeah I have seen some amazing heads on yahoo auction but some of them the bid prices get so high its crazy!
Yeah it’s totally exciting to get an own custom doll Ｏ(≧▽≦)Ｏ
I tried to bid a few times when heads started cheap ,
but near the auctions end my wallet wasn’t full enough *lol*
I’m currently trying to make my own custom Dollfie Dream of Sora Kasugano from Yosuga no Sora! I can’t find a face i like though, so I’m going to try to get ahold of a DDH-09 and get an artist from the Dollfie Dream forums to paint it for me. I hope it goes well, and yours does too ^^ And man, its going to be a pain looking for my clothes.
She would make a really pretty DD! DDH-09 would be a pretty good fit, though I also think something like this SQlabs head with thinner cheeks could work too, with the right faceup of course – http://www.sqlabdolls.com/xe/index.php?mid=gallery&page=3&document_srl=6484
Her clothes wont be too bad imo, youre going for the white dress? You might be able to find something pretty similar already made, but theres always custom comissions though that becomes $$$ lol
I was thinking of getting the DDH-09 and having an artist from the DD forums do the face ups for me (I already found one, actually). I’m having trouble finding good eyes, though! Do you know any other good websites other than the Volks store that sells eyes?
And as for the dress, it was actually easier finding it than I thought lolz (I looked for them yesterday). I want to get her a couple casual clothes too 🙂
Well I have not bought any eyes yet and I’ve only bought 1 pair of shoes and they were from etsy. I have seen a lot of both of them in my usual shopping places which would be taobao, etsy, ebay, and Cool Cat (http://us.sk-coolcat.com/front/bin/ptlist.phtml?Category=158847)
My girls are really lacking in shoes but I keep buying more outfits, the struggle! lol
Thanks!! I took a look at that Cool Cat site and there’s some nice looking shoes I might buy ^^ As for the eyes, I found some really nice looking ones on Kaleidoll. They also have some cute sweaters!
Ahaha yeah I probably will only get about 2 pairs of shoes and the rest will be clothes lol
Oh btw, how did you order your wig from Miruya? Looks like I need a Japanese address to order, so I’m very confused.
Yeah you need to use a proxy with them, if you want to make it real easy you can use sutocorp.com they handle it all for you with a not too bad fee. I use tenso.com quite a bit which gives you a japanese address at their warehouse basically. So you can order a bunch of stuff from different places, have them combine it all and then ship to you
Thanks for the info! I’ll be using one of those proxies, then :3
Oh yeah, do you also know a good place to buy DD shoes (other than Volks site)?
Nice name XD very interesting concept, I do look forward for this new Girl