07 January, 2012

I turned away, I would pretend, but the burning never ends

Bit of an oddity, here--I'm not endorsing the publication of Katawa Shoujo, nor how it came to be (as a developed game primarily funded and launched by 4chan), but I think it's worth mentioning, both because disability seems to be such a taboo subject in Japanese culture, and because it may be the first game ever where the object is to start a relationship with a disabled person.

Something to keep in mind for free players in City of Heroes:

[Help] Far Shadow: Free to players can use the /r command to reply to the person who last sent them a tell
[Help] Sigma Volt: oooooh. thanks. now that's something that they should add to the tutorial
[Help] Far Shadow: I think it's something undocumented, but I try to spread that hint around whenever possible.


Well, I know I've never heard of that tip, so that's very good to know!

And now, more dolly pictures.

Last night, a friend told me they still had the old (1.26) mesh viewer from Henri Beauchamp, all packaged up. I was still feeling out of sorts with him, but I told her to go ahead and upload it to me. This morning, I stared at the zip file, and thought, well, what the hell, it might work.

Went to a skybox, popped up a platform, set the sky to Incongruent Truths...and here you go.

(from the dolly album)

This is (barring shoes, of course) the full ball-jointed doll mesh avatar from Dollcoco (the SLUrl for you, or just go back to yesterday's entry). All nine pieces comprising the doll body, and the two pieces of the black dress (one whole dress piece, and one neck piece).

(from the dolly album)

The same avatar and dress, back view. (Hair is not included, though Dollcoco also makes one mesh hairstyle, and will likely be working on more.)

(from the dolly album)

Detail shot of the back of the dress's corset. Lovely work.

(from the dolly album)

Full length shot of the doll body, sans dress (though this is the variant that features painted-on lingerie).

(from the dolly album)

And the back view. If you think it looks better than the traditional doll skins with painted-on joints, that's because it does. With the body being in nine rigged sections, there are natural separations and some limited shadowing (even without "actual" shadows and deferred rendering options selected).

Just be sure that you're using a mesh-enabled viewer, and that those looking at you are using a mesh-enabled viewer (which is the hard part); elsewise, this avatar is going to look very odd indeed.

(from the dolly album)

Detail shot of one of the jointed elbows. While most ball-jointed dolls are made from plastic resin (like this offering from Iplehouse, or the Fenny Delf from LUTS), a very select few companies and artists make their ball-jointed dolls out of porcelain. In the case of some (though not all) of the porcelain dolls, there is unglazed edging along certain parts, where they had to balance cleanly on kiln shelves.

Intriguingly enough, as can be seen in the above picture, this doll avatar combines both the smooth separations of the resin BJD dolls, with the artistic casting lines of the porcelain dolls. You can clearly see the white "unglazed" edging along the arms, the torso, and the upper legs.

(from the dolly album)

As mentioned before, I believe, I chose the Emily head as my first official head purchase. Partially because of the name (of course), but also, it seemed to have a fresh quality the others didn't seem to have (at least, at the time).

(from the dolly album)

All doll heads come with two options: eyes open (they do not blink) and eyes closed. This is the Emily head with eyes closed.

(from the dolly album)

And finally, I picked up a demo for the Kyoko Asian-style head, which is just lovely. I may have to pick that one up, too. (Finances allowing.)

This avatar includes one thing I did not show in these images, which may make it an ideal purchase for shop alts (who work for designers developing mesh clothing): something termed a "white cap" that fits over the neck and takes the place of the head, i.e. the neck block found on mannequin sales sites. This renders the entire doll simply that: a display object. Headless, posed, and silent.

I'm fairly sure that if you wanted the neck block in colors other than white, the designer behind Dollcoco may well be willing to accommodate.

But that's it. I will definitely be angling for a set of shoes, but all in all--while I'm still paranoid about walking around, on view of folks who don't have mesh enabled on their viewers--I'm quite, quite pleased with Dollcoco's work. Start to finish, it's easy to wear, and already rigged, so there's no need for adjusting anything--it fits into place and perfectly where it's intended to be.

The main body (in any color shade) is on the thin and tall side, but that also matches well with the BJD dolls as sold in many, many places. All in all, if you've seen a BJD doll, you'll immediately recognize this version. It's not cheap, by any means, but I think it's well worth the expense.

1 comment:

Emilly Orr said...

The doll has shoes now, by the way, which look quite fetching on her. I'd normally use them to trample all over you with narrow booted feet, but I'll leave this up because it's pitiable how little you understand of this blog, or blogging in general.

Scurry off, little spammer. I'll delete anything else you post.

hide away, they say, 'cos we don't want your broken parts

Yeah, so...remember that thing I was recovering from? You know, last year ? Yeah. I did it again. So this is Em Faw Down Go Boom part ...