BALL-JOINTED DOLL - WEEK THREE

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Current face

This week, I focused on refining and finalizing the doll's face. After adjusting its overall dimensions, I felt that the face appeared too smooth and lacked definition. To address this, I used the crease tool to add more dimension, while the smooth and planar tools helped enhance the depth of the nose and lips. There isn't much of a visual different from the image i shared last week however. I also realized that last week, I hadn't enabled the mirroring effect, which made the face asymmetrical. After making all the necessary edits, I used the mirroring topology tool to ensure symmetry.

Nomad Sculpt Tools

I also worked on the overall body this week and made a 'rough draft': I found images of a ball-jointed doll I currently own and used them to study how the body parts align. I also worked on aligning all the body parts to see how they fit together. During this process, I noticed that the neck, hips, and legs didn’t look quite right. To fix this, I referred to other dolls for guidance and adjusted the proportions accordingly. I used the move tool to reshape the outer body without affecting the joints, ensuring everything could still fit together. However, I plan to do more test prints to confirm that the adjustments work properly.

I noticed that I didn’t really like how the body parts aligned, so I roughly readjusted them to better fit my vision. The body lacked curves and stylization, so I modified the overall shape to add more form. I also realized that the hands were too small for my preference, so I attempted to resize them. However, I’ll likely revisit and refine these parts further to create a smoother, more cohesive base.

Body rough draft

Next week, my goal is to finalize the body and determine the final scale. I plan to export all the parts from Nomad Sculpt and import them into Rhino, where I'll set the doll’s height to 16 cm. Using Rhino, I’ll create precise measurements to scale the doll accordingly. From there, I'll continue prototyping to ensure all parts fit together. If everything looks good, I’ll likely move on to resin printing afterwards.

Since deciding to scale the doll down last week, I’ve also ordered all the necessary parts, which have started to arrive. I now have the elastic and S-hooks, and I’m excited to move forward with the fabrication process!