I've been on a long break from this grand hobby. To mangle an old hunter's saying, "Always eat what you kill, except for things like cockroaches, rats, mosquitoes... things like that." That be some powerfully profound fortune-cookie wisdom about Needs, Moderation and Bad Eats, and it has some deep personal relevance: I maim toys and dolls only when I have to. I prefer to hunt and feast on a grazing Ribeye, or a General Tso Chicken. (From a supermarket or restaurant, of course.) The fact is, there are lots of ways to invest the valuable time with which I am blessed. One especially worthwhile way is to watch guilty pleasure videos... where the concept of "plot" takes a back seat to cool visuals, like babes with bulging boobs (if you choose your videos wisely). I'm talking about the French animation, "Kaena". Hey, screw the critics-- I liked it. And it got me interested in starting a new project. The main character would probably be an okay doll project, since she's got orbish hooters and the skimpy outfits to prove it. I have less vulgar tastes though, so I was interested in the vid's tall and thin female-esque creature, the Selenite Queen (left). She's clearly Giger-inspired, and is 3-D skinned in a thick, molassy tree-sap material. She forms from a pool of glistening sap, towering, with root-like tentacles instead of legs. Very cool. Modeling the translucent syrup-like quality would be a helluva challenge, but what really interested me was the elongated and skeletal Gigerish flavor. Incidentally, this is similar to the character "Lamprey" (right) from a short-lived animation TV show, "Shadow Raiders"-- I always liked the character design. The Selenite Queen and Lamprey don't have legs, and this contributes greatly to the elongated quality... but I like legs, and you get a pair for free with each doll. Using those directives, combined with my desire to make her a member of my sorority o' demonettes, I came up with my own artless amalgamation of Demoness, Alien, and Bio-Booster Armour (Guyver). This was built from my Joanna Dark doll, which was a great starting-off point by virtue of her perfectly scaled representation of a gal with freakishly long legs. Her other qualifications for a project of this type? Well... not much, except for the walleyed head that had a long overdue and much deserved appointment with my Exacto knife. This was her only escape route from the Box of Forgotten Body Parts, and she'd have to endure hammer/chisel demolition plus total reconstruction as the price of her ticket out. She was reconstructed according to my usual elastic-tensioned body blueprint. For the sake of novelty, I gave the doll's mid shoulder ball articulation a try. I was hoping that the alien-ness of the subject matter might make the extra hardware look less like swollen armpit glands, but on a nekkid figure, in some positions, the unnatural ball shape looks awfully funky. Also, something I thought about too late (and was too lazy to do): Dividing the lower torso into two articulated segments. Other than that... well, I was tempted to discuss other construction issues, but it's too hard to write about that and the "Perfect Body" doll design without getting carried away and offending folks who have investments... so I'll satisfy my urge by reiterating how much I appreciate the vintage-style GI Joe body design (read about it elsewhere in the site). After the reconstruction, it was simply a matter of figuring out which ripped-off surface detail ideas to apply, & where. And there were lots of them, so I do credit myself for having the persistence to plug away at it waaaay beyond the point where a lesser fool would just go and watch a different video. A project like this can be awfully aggravating since it's so easy to absent-mindedly smoosh detail you've just slaved over when you go to work on another area... and that happened bunches of time. Despite this, I enjoyed the sculpting part. I just wish that I enjoyed the cleaning up/finishing part more, or I would have removed some of those nasty fingerprints and tooling marks! The look of this project is similar to Teaser from '98, which was inspired by Giger's "Sil" of Species. That was a far more ambitious project because of the flexible castings (which, by the way, haven't turned to goo or cracked yet). In retrospect, I wonder why I did it that way, since chitinous/armoured body plates are more naturally made of a rigid material...? But that was before I'd done any armoured suits (and I believe I thought about giving her squishy boobs). Flexible castings are most logically used only where the material needs to be soft and pliable, like at joint coverings. I used the few left over scraps from that project to conceal this one's elbow and wrist joints, and partially conceal the shoulder balls (more would have restricted the articulation). Comparing the preliminary doodle to what I ended up with, you can see that I followed the distorted facial features, but I abandoned most of the "gothic" trappings-- the headtop wings looked a lot better on paper than they did in model form. I also made her a little more meaty and shapely, since like most normal guys, I have a lemming-like fascination with the fusion of sex and vacuum cleaner hose. It's challenging to make something like this even vaguely attractive since she's a stern, bald creature with huge brows, chin and protruding cheekbones. I spent quite a while fiddling with her nose and mouth, and gave her something which resembled hair. And makeup-- No self-respecting bio-booster armoured alien demoness would be seen in public without her war paint. And of course, some "copulate-with-me" pumps. Since I didn't have a clue about the paint job, I cranked up my airbrush and made a huge mess of it, on me, and everywhere (Note to self: don't make sudden moves when you're holding an airbrush with a full cup of black). I limped through two colors, interrupted by a totally-clogged-airbrush cleaning session before crying "uncle". I tried to salvage the damage with brush. Once I get bold enough to finish her and fix the sloppy airbrushing, she could probably use a gloss coat. The tall and thin physique is an interesting contrast to the others in my sorority o' demonettes, and the first time I placed them together, I was surprised by how stubby and uh... dumpy...them seemed. Working on a single project for a while can burn things like proportions into your brain and you start to see them as normal looking. But that perception is fleeting (though entertaining): After the novelty and project fatigue wore off, I stopped seeing it that way, and now she just looks like a tall, skinny figure. I much prefer the zaftig, meaty look anyway-- short legs and all. And hair. And normal brows, chins and cheekbones. Vacuum cleaner hardware is best when pushed over a dirty carpet.   -- 06/13/05