My Lifesize 1:1 Carrie Fisher ANH Princess Leia


Thank you, that's very helpful! I think while I wait for the new eyes to come in I may try and tweak the face a little more.

In the meantime, I want to finish the body. Like I mentioned before I want this mannequin to be about the size of Fisher, so I altered the feet since she won't be wearing high heels. A little glue will hold these in place.

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I tested the boots and they're large enough to where I don't have to mess with the toes since they point up a little. I also spend $6 and bought a top and bottom piece to put under the main robe, gives it the appearance of a little heavier weight fabric.

With making the mods to the neck and feet the mannequin is closer to the 5' 1" height I was shooting for. Now I need to work on the arms.

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hah! Smart fix. I love how this is coming together. I had the same problem getting my mannequin and my soviet boots to work together. But I ended up just getting different boots for mannequin alltogether ( after sawing off half of the foot)
 
hah! Smart fix. I love how this is coming together.

Love the work here!

Thanks!

A little more progress today.........first, this is the belt I found on eBay. All metal pieces and a pretty heavy weight pleather, real pleased for under $50.00.

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As I was looking at the arms I was wondering if I could get away without modifying the hands. So I modded just the arms first and took a look.............

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It didn't look all that bad, but it definitely didn't look natural enough.

So I decided to go ahead and use the flexible ones, only took a minute to cut off the mannequin hands and modify the flexible ones. And it looks 100 times better IMHO. This is not final, just wanted to see how they looked slightly posed. I still need to paint them to match the tone of the face.

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As for the arms, I didn't spend any time making the modification look pretty since they won't be seen. Made the cuts, glued them, then wrapped the seam in some white tape.

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Definitely liking the flexible hands. Also glad I found this plastic mannequin, under $60.00 shipped and so much easier to work with than a fiberglass one. I'm going to use more of these in the future.
 
Oh, her lower arms should be longer than her upper arms, but I really like the pose you chose with the hands folded at the front and you don't see the issue with the arms as much with the dress on.

Great progress.

I know it's not exactly a female bust he's painting, but you can get some tips and ideas on how to paint buts from watching this guy painting a Rambo bust - how he goes with a base color and then mottles on other colors to add depth and details and break up the bland painted base color look:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhpvLfP1vjM
 
Oh, her lower arms should be longer than her upper arms, but I really like the pose you chose with the hands folded at the front and you don't see the issue with the arms as much with the dress on.

Great progress.

Thanks, that picture is a bit deceiving because I pushed the flexible hands all the way in for the pic on the floor but pulled them out when I mounted the arms on the body. I think that's why it doesn't look that bad once displayed, but I did cut them a little lower than I should have. I can definitely use the play in the dress arms to hide it some.
 
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The new eyes came in and I need some suggestions. It's obvious the 28mm have too large of an iris. Below are pictures of the 24mm and 26mm sizes. I like the 24mm iris but it leaves a little gap in the corners, but that can be back filled with some putty. The 26mm iris looks a tad bigger but it's doable, and no gaps. Thoughts?

24mm
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26mm
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I agree 24 mm. Are you gonna do some skin tone contouring?

Painting heads is not my strong suit, but several others have mentioned some good tutorials so I'm going to mess with it a little more.

26 is standard but the 24 you have looks better here.

You might want to also check this place out for eyes...

http://www.tech-optics.com/

You can get them with or without blood vessels.
They do great work!

Thanks, someone mentioned them and I checked them out. But for this project I'm not spending that kind of money. I think I paid $12.00 for these and that included shipping.

Agreed, the 24mm look the best.

Thanks, I'm sold on the 24mm.
 
So I watched some videos and read a few threads related to painting a bust like this, much respect to those of you have mastered this skill! This is my first ever attempt at painting a bust outside of a single flesh color. I decided to start slow with this, making subtle changes until I get a feel for what I'm doing.

I did a light scattered wash / blot of red / brown paint.

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Then I did some light speckling.

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Then I started washing / dabbing over that with watered down layers of flesh tone.

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Several coats later and I installed the eyes and did a few minor touch-ups. The lighting sucked when I took these pics so it's hard to see, but there's definitely a subtle change which looks so much better in person compared to the one flesh tone color.

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So once again, this is my first ever attempt at painting a bust like this. I think I was being overly cautious because I didn't want to mess it up and don't know what I'm doing just yet. But when I look at the previous photos compared to the head now, so much better. Thanks for all the great recommendations!

I have some tweaking to do still, hope to learn these techniques a little better. I have a Luke bust I need to do next so that'll be more practice!
 
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Much better! The slight unevenness makes for a much more realistic feel to it!

Thank you.

Before I finally mount the head I wanted to do a real quick body mod to add some sound. I cut out a small portion in the back, built a quick box out of foam board, and glued it to the inside. I also disassembled the sound module and rewired the switch with a micro switch. I've loaded this with about a minute of sound, will post that shortly. I'll run the switch down the left arm and hide it under the wrist.

Adds a little something extra..............

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Trying to wrap this up this weekend if I can. After stepping back, I wasn't happy with how I modded the arms. Even though the robe hid the length, the upper potions bothered me so I had to fix them. After taking several measurements I decided to remove about 2". After removing each section I cut up the pieces and glued them to the inside of each arm as connectors for the two halves. Much happier now.........

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I also mounted the head. I just need to add some matching flesh tone color to the hands, put on her robe, and I think this is about done. Here's video of the audio................

 
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The paint work on the bust looks awesome. Makes her look much more alive. Having watched a lot of Darran Carnall's videos on youtube I noticed that he always darkened the skin a little all around the hair line, so it didn't have the sharp contrasting transition, and it looks much more natural. I always wondered why, when I painted, I couldn't get the transition to look right, but having watched those videos and seen what he does, I now know what I did wrong. It's not necessary to do, but I think it would make her look even more natural.

Awesome work.
 
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