Project - Asami Yamazaki (from Audition)

skywalkersaga wrote:That's looking great so far!  

Regarding the hair... just be cautioned that synthetic hair doesn't always work or react well with hair products intended for real human hair. The only 1/6 hair I know that reacts similarly to human hair are made with natural fibers such as tibetan lamb hair  or angora mohair. You may wish to look up methods of straightening synthetic 'doll' hair... from what I recall, sometimes heat can help, though of course it depends and one has to be careful not to melt the hair.

ETA: Alternatively, you could try to replace the Kumik wig/scalp piece with one that already has straight black hair.  Kumik scalps are usually made to be interchangeable.

Stryker2011 wrote:Looks good. And Sky’s suggestion is the way I would go. Just search for Kumik wigs on the Bay.

GubernatorFan wrote:I think the choice of head sculpt was vindicated, and your modifications really do make it look very close to the desired features. Good matching of the skin tone (I would have given up on trying and just repainted the whole exposed skin, so well done), and reduction of the eyeliner. By the way, as a general rule of thumb, paint looks lighter before it dries/cures.

ukshaun wrote:I popped the KUMiK head sculpt onto the Phicen body. The metal ball joint went in fine, but the head sits as such that the metal bar below the ball joint is on show.
I read here on the forum the concept of reaming out.

Question: how far can i ream out, ream into the head sculpt? how many mm are available?

ThePhotogsBlog wrote:

ukshaun wrote:I popped the KUMiK head sculpt onto the Phicen body. The metal ball joint went in fine, but the head sits as such that the metal bar below the ball joint is on show.
I read here on the forum the concept of reaming out.

Question: how far can i ream out, ream into the head sculpt? how many mm are available?

.

This is what I found when i received the same sculpt and had to drill fairly deeply into it to get the head to fit properly.  It was through the trial and error process of taking the head off, trying the fit, and putting it back on, drilling a bit more, and repeating the process that I noticed the paint wearing off the sculpt where there was a major friction point such as the nose, or around the eye sockets.  This is why I don't buy Kumik heads.  Sooooo, before you start, I suggest you handle it very, very carefully. You are more likely to rub off paint than you are to drill a hole through the back of the head.  Trial and error....

skywalkersaga wrote:The 'cavities' in most 1/6 female headsculpts usually go pretty deep  --- so yeah, don't worry too  much about going too far into it. Just measure the length of the tbleague neck peg to see how deep you really need to go in order for it to not be showing, nor for there not to be a gap between the head and the neck. If anything, it's probably better to make it a little too big/deep, then you can pad it back out with strips of craft foam to fit snugly around the neck peg. 

If you have gloves of some kind, this can be very helpful when handling ANY 1/6 headsculpts... I tend to wear 'examination' gloves when handling simply to stop transference of oils from my hands , and to keep my nails from scratching and/or catching on things. Alternatively, if you are worried about the paint rubbing off, you could find a suitable acrylic clear matte spray varnish and give it a quick go-over. You'd have to block out the eyes and/lips though so those retained their gloss. 

There are always ways around these things!

Stryker2011 wrote:Hold the head by the ears as you Dremel and you’ll avoid paint rub.

ukshaun wrote:

ThePhotogsBlog wrote:

ukshaun wrote:I popped the KUMiK head sculpt onto the Phicen body. The metal ball joint went in fine, but the head sits as such that the metal bar below the ball joint is on show.
I read here on the forum the concept of reaming out.

Question: how far can i ream out, ream into the head sculpt? how many mm are available?

.

This is what I found when i received the same sculpt and had to drill fairly deeply into it to get the head to fit properly.  It was through the trial and error process of taking the head off, trying the fit, and putting it back on, drilling a bit more, and repeating the process that I noticed the paint wearing off the sculpt where there was a major friction point such as the nose, or around the eye sockets.  This is why I don't buy Kumik heads.  Sooooo, before you start, I suggest you handle it very, very carefully. You are more likely to rub off paint than you are to drill a hole through the back of the head.  Trial and error....

Thanks. I did not want to drill into a cavity. As i thought there might be a hollow area where the hair fits in.

skywalkersaga wrote:The 'cavities' in most 1/6 female headsculpts usually go pretty deep  --- so yeah, don't worry too  much about going too far into it. Just measure the length of the tbleague neck peg to see how deep you really need to go in order for it to not be showing, nor for there not to be a gap between the head and the neck. If anything, it's probably better to make it a little too big/deep, then you can pad it back out with strips of craft foam to fit snugly around the neck peg. 

This head is actually nicely scaled for the smaller TBLeague bodies like the S24, which is what I bought it for. Except for the very poor quality of the paint and the other things mentioned, this would have been a very nice sculpt to go with that body.


If you have gloves of some kind, this can be very helpful when handling ANY 1/6 headsculpts... I tend to wear 'examination' gloves when handling simply to stop transference of oils from my hands , and to keep my nails from scratching and/or catching on things. Alternatively, if you are worried about the paint rubbing off, you could find a suitable acrylic clear matte spray varnish and give it a quick go-over. You'd have to block out the eyes and/lips though so those retained their gloss. 

There are always ways around these things!

I think i am going at drilling in atleast 5mm, which is quite a lot.
I will try the drill a bit at a time technique.

Stryker2011 wrote:Hold the head by the ears as you Dremel and you’ll avoid paint rub.

During my 1st attempt at drilling, before any replies were posted here, i held the head up-side-down while holding the hair and pressing on the ears without using too much pressure. I have avoid touching the portrait all together to avoid the above mention paint removal, which i read about in the past (possibly from the same poster).

I thought the scale of the head seemed on the small side, given the width of the neck. Slightly too small is better than slightly too large. Too large and it can make the character appear on the short side (which is fine, if that's the effect you are after).

Ovy wrote:Your attention to detail is outstanding, like all the tiny rivets in the right places!

If you haven't cut the hair yet: I once cut a long haired figures hair on a head that could not be removed from the body without risking damage. Be sure to cover the body barber style before doing so, saves a lot of time cleaning up all those tiny sticky synthetic hair pieces.

ukshaun wrote:
Kumik Asian Headsculpt - Hair Cut (flash on/flash off)

Decided to brave it and chop the hair.
I found it difficult to cut. I used a pair of standard medium size scissors.
The hair was soaked first using water, as this helped straighten the wavey hair.
Now that it has dried, it is back to wavey.
Attempting to cut it perfectly straight proved impossible. The ends look a little chunky.
I noticed someone on YouTube used possibly proper hair cut scissors. Maybe a pair of those could improve the results?

ThePhotogsBlog wrote:

ukshaun wrote:
Kumik Asian Headsculpt - Hair Cut (flash on/flash off)

Decided to brave it and chop the hair.
I found it difficult to cut. I used a pair of standard medium size scissors.
The hair was soaked first using water, as this helped straighten the wavey hair.
Now that it has dried, it is back to wavey.
Attempting to cut it perfectly straight proved impossible. The ends look a little chunky.
I noticed someone on YouTube used possibly proper hair cut scissors. Maybe a pair of those could improve the results?

The trick that usually straightens wavy hair is to dip the wig into very hot water for about 30 seconds or so and pull out.  Dry it out and comb it, it should be straight.  I would not try this on this head sculpt unless you can separate the wig from the face. Further, I would first try dipping just a few strands to see how the hair reacts.  

skywalkersaga wrote:It looks good! Sorry for the frustration with the waviness -- this is unfortunately an issue with the synthetic hair, in that it does have quite a bit of volume that doesn't always make it 'hang' naturally on the head. 

TPB's solution of dipping into hot water is what I was trying to get at earlier when I mentioned using 'heat' -- apologies I didn't explain that better. :3

skywalkersaga wrote:It's difficult to impossible to accurately advise on 1/6 scale synthetic factory hair, mainly because I am not sure what *type* of synthetic hair it actually is. There are several different kinds of synthetic doll hair and they do not all react the same ways to the same types of treatments. On dolls, most of the time the information about what the hair is made out of is readily available -- but with 1/6 female figures, it is usually never specified. So it is really a wild guess , and therefore I've never been able to predict precisely how such hair will react to a given treatment. 

Boiling water won't 'melt' the hair in the way a flat iron might, but it could cause it go frizzy. I have at times submerged the heads entirely in boiling water, but only for the purpose of loosening the glue to remove the hairpiece -- and since I was discarding the hair, I didn't try to do much with it. But I did notice that if you soak the hair in boiling water and then do nothing with it during and/or afterward, it will become extremely frizzy/ruined. From what I understand, in order for the hair to straighten you probably have to just do a quick dip in the boiling water and comb it out straight while it's in the water, and then take it out. I'm not sure how much combing would be necessary or if you'd need to continue combing it once out. 

However, I would strongly suggest to be VERY careful, and only proceed if you are still able to remove the hair from the head and replace it , in case of something going wrong with the experiment. 

Personally, due to how many unknown factors are at work here, I feel the safer option would be either a) to remove the hairpiece/wig entirely and replace with one that has straight hair, or b) to rehair it with natural fibers.

skywalkersaga wrote:I think that's a good plan! For what it's worth , the hair looks ok to me as it is at the moment.  

Regarding the 'doll' comment -- I think you misunderstand what I was getting at. I'm not referring to your figure as a 'doll', nor am I referring to 1/6 figures as 'dolls' [even though I do believe there is at times an overlap] -- rather I am referring to the fact that the 1/6 factory synthetic hair *IS* often considered in comparison to, and in same category as,  'doll hair', due to to the fact that a lot of factory doll hair is likewise synthetic. For that reason, most of the instructions online for dealing with synthetic hair at this kind of smaller scale are intended to be used on *DOLL* hair.  Sometimes doll hair is made out of more or less the same type of material as the 1/6 factory hair, sometimes a different type of synthetic hair, depending on the doll. But in my experience, calling synthetic hair 'doll hair' is simply a term to describe these types of synthetic hair, not meant to reflect on the specific categorization of the figure that said hair is used on. Nor is 'doll' intended as a derogatory term on my part, since 'dolls' can be anything from cheap toys to higher-end fashion dolls, to even extremely unique customized works of art. 

Hope that helps. ; )

Stryker2011 wrote:But.. but... they ARE Dolls. Or, Over-Priced Barbies (according to my wife).

skywalkersaga wrote:And it is a particular pleasure of mine to use the 'd' word as often as possible, and to transcend the false boundaries imposed between the two hobbies.