Removable wigs?

Am I the only one insane enough to make removable wigs for the male dolls? The first one had a tulle backing and looked like 80's hair, too poofy. I'm going to try braiding it into one of those viking shoe styles. The second one has a nylon stocking wig cap. Much thinner and the hair is looking better, I'm going to try some stitches to hold the style I'm going for. I am also am thinning out the leather on the piece of mohair I have to try for an undercut look. Any one else do this? Or do you just buy multiple heads?

I recall the user tinyumbrellas mentioning something about wigs like that, but her project involved custom bald heads made for bjd’s which were intended (I think?) to be used with wigs.

You are right that some people buy multiples of the same heads in order to do different styles. The reason for glueing directly on the head with 1/6 tends to be for scale reasons, due to issues with ‘poofiness’ like what you experienced.

That being said, there are some 1/6 headsculpts that have detachable scalps, and some people make use of that feature in order to change hairstyles.

Nothing wrong with experimenting with wigs for male figures though if that is something you are willing to try — I’ll certainly be curious to see the results!

I’ve used premade wigs on a couple of female figures, though I glued them in place so they would sit where I wanted them. Haven’t tried any on a male yet, though I am planning to do a hair job on a male sculpt that I have a number of copies of.

Curious to see the results of your experiment as well, Stryker!  

For me personally, I've never had a reason to want to change hairstyles on the same head, so wigs aren't a necessity. I have used small tibetan lambhair wigs on some of my female figures to get an idea of how the hair will look, but eventually I'm hoping to upgrade to 'rooted' [aka glued] hair, because even these tiny wigs still seem a little too bulky to my eyes. 

I tend to work on figures that are meant to replicate one particular scene and/or 'look', so their outfits, along with their hairstyles, are intended from the start to remain the same and never be changed. Basically, I create them to look a certain way for display and photos, and then leave it at that. At present I have at least two, working on three, versions of several of my favourite characters... all with different outfits and 'looks', depending on the scene/episode they are meant to replicate. This is in large part because I find switching clothing at this scale to be a huge pain, and often times I end up needing to sew a figure into their clothing in order to get the right look. Also, sometimes characters go through dramatic physical changes during the course of a story, and merely changing their clothing wouldn't quite capture said changes. So it just makes more sense for my purposes to have specific figures for each outfit or appearance. 

That's just me, though. Others prefer not to have all their figures 'dedicated' to one single look -- see some of GubernatorFan's excellent photos for great examples of what can be done when kitbashing figures in a much less permanent manner. 

So, if you are not creating figures to depict one single scene, or if you are hesitant to 'commit' to one style, etc, then it would certainly be worth figuring out a way to make the hairstyle swappable as well. I think it was Ovy who recently sculpted a removeable 'scalp' for one of his Post-Apocalyptic Mediterran people, and it turned out really well. So there are multiple ways to potentially approach it. : )

Yes, I do seem to have a commitment issue when it comes to dedicating bodies and heads to specific figures forever, though in practice some appear to have "set" (e.g., Conan).

On to removable hair. That would be awesome, provided it is effective and practical. If I were designing head sculpts from the get go, except maybe for ones requiring a buzz cut (where the choice would be either sculpted/molded hair or the chia pet effect), I would make them all bald, so that you could swap a number of interchangeable hair pieces. This does exist with some figures: for example, the Alexander the Great figure has a molded hair wig that was removable so that you could put the helmet on (and I've seen a few others like that, most recently the Theoden figure). HT did that at least partly with its first Thor and Han Solo heads. But while that can work pretty well with molded pieces, I'm just not sure how easy, practical, and aesthetic it would be with something that would allow for actual "real" (as opposed to sculpted/molded) hair in the wig. If it works well, it would be excellent.

I am quite new to hair rooting and wigs too, but here the wig Sky mentioned:

Was my first attempt at rooting so I played safe by using the Alice head which came with two interchangable plastik hairpieces. First I made a 'bald' wig which was then outfitted with fur.


I haven't removed it since I made it, but it's made from polymer clay and quite elastic. Don't know how it might look with shorter hair.

Here's Red Sonja (the first release); I swapped out the original head (which looked way too young and too docile to be RS), and replaced it with a Mercy Dante HS and a size 4 doll wig (permanently glued to the skull after I shaved her head).



Not great, but I like the color better than the fire-engine red that doll manufacturers generally use for "red" hair.

Stryker - the colour is indeed a lot better in terms of realism, and looks nice with her eyes. 

And Ovy -- when you used the foil, was that because you were using clay and needed to heat it in the oven?

She looks stunning, Mark!

Ovy once again I love what you did with her hair.

Sky, I think he had foil so that the wig "scalp" would not attach permanently to the back of the "skull" while curing.

Ah ok. Would cling film/plastic wrap work in the same way? Or would that stick?

skywalkersaga wrote:Ah ok. Would cling film/plastic wrap work in the same way? Or would that stick?

I'm sure he'll correct me if I'm wrong but I think that was the idea -- that foil won't stick (maybe it was even that special non-stick foil!). Not sure about plastic wrap -- I placed the Medusa head on a little plastic ziplock baggie to cure, and it stuck to it a little, but was easy to unstick (then again, it wasn't really jammed on there with little crevices and what not). If not and the plastic wrap gets stuck on the material, you can always trim the edges of the plastic wrap after the thing cures. In case there is confusion between materials, I was using the Kneadatite blue and yellow green stuff.

Good job with the mercy Dante, that is really one badass cold killer headsculpt.

skywalkersaga wrote:Stryker - the colour is indeed a lot better in terms of realism, and looks nice with her eyes. 

And Ovy -- when you used the foil, was that because you were using clay and needed to heat it in the oven?

GubernatorFan wrote:She looks stunning, Mark!

Ovy once again I love what you did with her hair.

Sky, I think he had foil so that the wig "scalp" would not attach permanently to the back of the "skull" while curing.

You are both right in a way, I used polymer clay which has to be heated in the oven to cure. The foil was used so it could be separated from the head in one piece, as it was only a very thin layer, and baked. The polymer clay can also melt and damage many kinds of plastic if it's in contact to long.
After it cured in the oven I could remove the foil and I trimmed the polymer clay wig a little, very easy to cut material. I made some flintstone looking tools from it this week. I didn't use kneadite/green stuff because I didn't have to make it very detailed as the hair would cover it anyway and polymer clay is also much cheaper. I haven't tried green stuff on aluminium foil yet but I guess it could be separated from plastic foil.

I'm interested in getting a second KT004 head and changing the hair from blonde to red as a story-specific character transition like what Gubernator described. I'm new to 1/6 dolls, so I tried to read about how I might do this without finding anything I'd consider conclusive or specific. I've seen varying approaches, like the clay mold on this thread, as well as a carving off of one face and gluing it on the hollow space where the face of a head with the desired hair color was (referring to Ed's Toy Box Red Sonja/Sheena face swap). Obviously, the best way would be to change the slotted wig insert like some heads have, but Kimi Toys doesn't have that (unless I've overlooked something). Do any of you long-time collectors and customization experts have any suggestions for how I can do this? I'm not opposed to reaching out to a mod expert and hiring them to do it. Fortunately, it happened to be a popular head I got for this character, so maybe that'll help? Even if it makes for a greater likelihood that someone has tried to mod one of these heads? Thank you in advance for any advice, though please remember I'm not going to be familiar with any brand names of special clays, epoxies, or even established crafting techniques, so I will likely have more questions for anyone that cares to field this.
Kano

Hi, Kano, and welcome! : )

Regarding the Kimi heads — I believe most rooted sculpts have a separate hairpiece, but in some cases those are glued on pretty hard. Sometimes you can loosen the glue enough to pull it off by soaking it in some hot water. But even if you got the hairpiece off, I am not sure if the Kimi head in question would be compatible in size with a Kumik wig. ( Or it might work fine, I’m not sure.)

Another option is removing the synthetic hair and gluing Tibetan lamb hair (a natural fiber) in your preferred colour in its place. GubernatorFan has several threads about re-hairing with lamb hair:

https://onesixthfigures.forumotion.com/t2006-converting-jason-momoa-ht-aquaman-head

For an example of a female figure, I also used Tibetan lamb hair on my custom Padme from earlier this year:

https://onesixthfigures.forumotion.com/t2855-death-and-the-maiden-rots-style-anakin-and-padme-image-heavy



Happy to answer questions...

I viewed and left feedback for you on your Star Wars dolls, which were awesome and the post full of useful information. I saw something interesting in one of your shots where you'd separated the part of the head the wig is rooted into from the part with the face: the edges where the 2 pieces fit (glued from the factory) together are beveled. So, the hair on the wig piece fits in behind the forehead on the face piece and creates the hairline. Clever! I don't remember if you wrote what brand Padme's head was. GAC Toys? If so, I'm daring to get excited because that means the GC009-A head I have will probably have a similar design and then I can buy an aftermarket wig for her like what I've seen on eBay. I've included images of about what I'm after on that.
Will pretty much any wig on the 1/6 scale doll market fit popular brands like GAC Toys and Kimi Toys? I understand your description above that these are held together with glue that's pretty stout and needs to be loosened with hot water. Any craft knife cutting along the seams of the 2 parts of the head(s) required as well? What specific process did you use to get Padme's GAC Toys head apart? I'll want to try to do that for the KT004 head I mentioned earlier as well. Ideally I'll be able to find 2 of the exact same red-haired wig. I don't think the red hair color of the GC009-A was pronounced enough (although I don't want the fire engine red Gubernator described it as either...too far in the other direction in this case). I want the KT004 redo's red hair to match the bolder red redo for the GC009 because they're going to be younger/older representations of the same character. Thanks for your welcoming response to my first post, and hopefully you and others will have more to share on this soon.

Kano wrote:I viewed and left feedback for you on your Star Wars dolls, which were awesome and the post full of useful information.  I saw something interesting in one of your shots where you'd separated the part of the head the wig is rooted into from the part with the face: the edges where the 2 pieces fit (glued from the factory) together are beveled.  So, the hair on the wig piece fits in behind the forehead on the face piece and creates the hairline.  Clever!  I don't remember if you wrote what brand Padme's head was.  GAC Toys?  If so, I'm daring to get excited because that means the GC009-A head I have will probably have a similar design and then I can buy an aftermarket wig for her like what I've seen on eBay.  I've included images of about what I'm after on that.

Thanks again for taking the time to read and comment on the Anakin and Padme thread, it really made my day.  And apologies for my late response, things were very stressful this past week. But I finally got a chance to sit down and type out a reply.

Yes, the head with the removeable 'scalp' is indeed a clever design, as the 1/6 head sculpts are quite small, and actual doll wigs tend to look too large and bulky on them. So the answer is to root the hair directly in, and even slightly 'indented' into the head to reduce the hair volume. But the 1/6 scale heads are also made of hard plastic, whereas typically doll heads that have rooted hair (like Barbie) are made of soft vinyl, which makes rooting (and re-rooting) easier. To root the hair on these tiny hard plastic heads, however, it seems that it is necessary for the scalp piece to be removable. This comes in quite handy when both swapping 'wigs' (or rather the hair/scalp piece), and also if one wants to re-hair with natural fibers.

And oh, yes....the Padme head is indeed the GacToys one.

Kano wrote:Will pretty much any wig on the 1/6 scale doll market fit popular brands like GAC Toys and Kimi Toys?  I understand your description above that these are held together with glue that's pretty stout and needs to be loosened with hot water.  Any craft knife cutting along the seams of the 2 parts of the head(s) required as well?  What specific process did you use to get Padme's GAC Toys head apart?  I'll want to try to do that for the KT004 head I mentioned earlier as well.  Ideally I'll be able to find 2 of the exact same red-haired wig.  I don't think the red hair color of the GC009-A was pronounced enough (although I don't want the fire engine red Gubernator described it as either...too far in the other direction in this case).  I want the KT004 redo's red hair to match the bolder red redo for the GC009 because they're going to be younger/older representations of the same character.  Thanks for your welcoming response to my first post, and hopefully you and others will have more to share on this soon.  

To separate the pieces, I soaked the head in hot water for several minutes and was then able to pull the  pieces apart by holding onto the hair with one hand and pulling it, and pulling the face piece with the other hand. (I was wearing gloves while doing this so I didn't accidentally scratch the face in the process.)

I've done this on several other heads as well, and it really just depends. Some pull right off after a brief soaking, while some need a little more 'help'. In those cases, I do have an exacto knife at hand just in case. You have to be extremely careful if you do use the exacto knife though....not only to avoid cutting yourself, but also to avoid cutting too far into the plastic. Alternatively, you could try to use something thin and flat but without a sharp edge to help 'pry' it apart.... that might be a safer route.

I'm not sure if the spare wigs that you can buy online will fit every single 1/6 head out there. For that part, it will be trial and error. This is simply due to the fact that each head is shaped a bit differently and some are larger than others.

Regardless of what method you end up using, I'm looking forward to seeing how your heads turn out!

Thank you for letting me know how you did that. I must've already had a pretty clear vision of how the whole thing worked, even down to the concession of trial and error with the wig(s) I want to try; none of that was a surprise. I don't guess there's really anything more I can hope to learn through words, I'll just need to give it a try when I've got all the pieces. I hope you had a Merry Christmas, and and I'm glad my simple post on your thread about your awesome Star Wars dolls was able to lift your spirit after reading you've had a rough go of it lately. Once I get this done (not rushing myself), I'll post pictures of how they turn out. Thank you again!

Kano wrote:Thank you for letting me know how you did that.  I must've already had a pretty clear vision of how the whole thing worked, even down to the concession of trial and error with the wig(s) I want to try; none of that was a surprise.  I don't guess there's really anything more I can hope to learn through words, I'll just need to give it a try when I've got all the pieces.  I hope you had a Merry Christmas, and and I'm glad my simple post on your thread about your awesome Star Wars dolls was able to lift your spirit after reading you've had a rough go of it lately.  Once I get this done (not rushing myself), I'll post pictures of how they turn out.  Thank you again!  

You're most welcome! And thank you, I had as nice a holiday as possible, under the circumstances. Hope you did as well. And best of luck with your own project!