NifffiThe Nendoroid Doll line ENTRY #134905 has become a bit of an obsession for me on the past few months. I wasn’t too sold on them the first time I saw them, but the more I looked at pictures, the more they grew on me. Something about the chibi proportions combined with the baggy clothes is just so cute!
The other thing that drew me to this line was the possibility of making customs, and that’s why we are here today! On this first part, I’ll cover my process for making the faceplates and hair piece (and a couple other things).
The subject for this project will be my character, Fili:
Let’s begin! (๑•ㅂ•)و✧
(Apologies for the bad pictures ahead, I mostly worked on this at night when I got back from classes. Also this is very long and picture heavy).
Base.｡.:*☆
As my base, I got the archetype boy body ITEM #719689 and three of the customizable heads (which aren’t on MFC for some reason?). The cinnamon skin tone is pretty much perfect for Fili!
Both the body and the heads come with two joints (a standard one and a slightly longer one) and two neck pieces each, so I ended up with a ton of spares.
The body comes with three pairs of hands: relaxed palm, fists and peace signs. I was a bit disappointed that they didn’t include at least one pair of jointed hands, and now I’m in desperate need of one those extra hands sets.
Also included with the body is the stand, of course. They give quite a bit of options, with two different arm lengths and either a clasp or a peg to hold the character. Since the feet are magnetized, in theory you also have the option to display without the arm stands, but I find this doesn’t work that well. The feet are very tiny so they don’t provide a lot of stability, and for the most part the magnets just got in the way of posing.
I quickly got annoyed with the magnets so I decided to modify the base. I removed the metal plate and made a hole in one of the corners to place the little piece that connects the arm to the base. I then fixed it in place with epoxy putty, and sanded the surface of the base to remove the glue leftovers. I'll later put a paper or something on top of this to cover the mess.
Faces.｡.:*☆
With the base out of the way, I got to work on the face plates. To reduce the risk of things going wrong as much as possible, I first made some digital mockups. My hope was to be able to print and transfer them directly onto the face, but if that ended up not being possible, at least I would have a guide for what the face should look like.
GSC provided a very nice and symmetrical product shot, so I used that to draw the faces on:
It was hard deciding on the expressions. I wanted to get more heads but AmiAmi only lets you order three :( In the end I went for a happy expression with teary eyes, and a surprised/embarrassed one. I thought this best reflected Fili's character, and also worked best with the accessories I had in mind.
Once the mockups were ready I printed them on tracing paper (is that what it’s called? I hope so ;;). I printed two sets in the original size, and two sets slightly bigger, because printers (or at least mine), tend to shrink things. In the end, the original set turned out a millimeter smaller than I intended, but the enlarged version was a millimeter bigger OTL
I still decided to test how the enlarged version would look on the face, and I was happy enough that I decided to continue with that one. Now that I have everything put together, this is something that I kind of regret, as his eyes did turn out just a bit too large. Something to take note of for next time, I guess!
To transfer the features onto the face, I traced them on the reverse side of the paper using 8B pencil and then carefully placed them on the head, with the pencil side facing down.
Once I was happy with the positioning, I traced over the features again so that the pencil lines I made would transfer onto the face. Getting everything aligned properly wasn’t so easy though. My first attempt was so crooked I had a mini crisis and rage quit the whole thing for a day:
I had a couple of guidelines drawn on the face to help me place things, but it still took a few tries and tweaks to get it right (btw the best way to remove pencil from the face is an eraser, unsurprisingly). With a bit of patience, I managed to get it to a point I liked. It still looked uneven when I checked on a mirror, but at least it was cute enough in normal viewing situations. I was also checking regularly with nendo hair pieces.
Next I did the closed eyes one because I thought it would be less stressful, and luckily I was right. I managed to get this one more or less right on the first attempt.
Lastly I made the surprised one. I placed the features too low on my first attempt, so I had to redo it, but after that, I think this one turned out the best. It’s the most symmetrical one of the three, and even on a mirror it looks pretty decent.
With the expressions sketched out, it was time to paint! I used acrylics and the smallest brushes I could find on the store.
I didn’t want to use pure black so I mixed it with red and blue. However acrylic darkens when it dries so it ended up looking basically like straight black from the tube, and this whole step was probably pointless.
Once I had the color ready I diluted it with glass cleaning liquid. Garage kit tutorials always say to dilute the paint to about the consistency of milk, and this is what I did first, but it ended up being too runny and just wouldn’t stick to the plastic. So I prepared a second batch of paint this one far less diluted, and that’s what I used to paint.
I have to say painting was a very fun step. I could slowly see the expression come together and it was really exciting. I think what surprised me the most was adding that bit of shadow on the sclera. It’s a subtle detail, but I feel like it added a lot of depth to the eyes, and it really gave me hope that this was heading in a good direction.
I was originally planning to fill out the tears with a light blue, but I liked how they looked with just the white outline, so I left them like that. I also considered carving the mouths, so that they had a bit of volume the same way normal nendoroids do, but after coloring them in I decided they looked good enough that way, and that it probably wasn’t worth risking to ruin everything.
Next step was adding the blush lines. In hindsight, it would’ve been better to draw them with a color pencil instead of acrylic. I also sanded the nose on the smiling face, to fit the blush a bit better.
The last step in coloring the faces was adding blush with chalk pastel. I mixed two colors because the pink alone was too light for this skin tone. I sealed everything with Testors Dullcote and the faces were done! ｡ﾟ(TヮT)ﾟ｡ I felt so proud at this point!
Body.｡.:*☆
Before moving on to the hair, I wanted to paint his tan lines. I only painted the legs and chest because those would be the only areas visible with clothes on. I later give up on the chest as I get more frustrated and more frustrated with this.
I first painted this with acrylic, but it created noticeable bump between the two colors, and made the transition look unnatural. You can also see on the pictures that the masking chipped the painting in some areas when it came off.
My second attempt was colored pencils, but this just looked plain bad.
My third and final attempt was with chalk pastels. I wasn’t 100% happy with these results, but at this point I just couldn’t be bothered to redo it all again (I had also ran out of art supplies to try). You can see there’s still a bit of that bump in the transition, I guess caused by the topcoat + masking, but it’s not as severe as the acrylic one. The less drastic color change also helps hide it a bit.
Hair.｡.:*☆
The sculpting process involved a lot of back and forth and minor adjustments, so apologies if the following is a little tedious to read.
I used epoxy putty, which works by mixing both components together, and hardens in about 2-3 hours. It doesn’t require baking, which is basically the reason I chose it.
Epoxy putty is very sticky, and that can make it a difficult to work with, but you can get around this by dipping your fingers in water. Water can also be used to smooth out the putty and blend pieces together, so that’s why I had a cup of water set up. That little swiss army knife thingy I used to cut and shape smaller pieces. Not pictured here is a set of sandpapers I bought. I used 120 grit to shape out the pieces, and 220, 400 and 1000 grit to remove the scratches and get a smooth finish.
The Nendoroid heads came with bald front and back pieces, so that’s what I used as a base for the hair. I covered the face part with a plastic bag to protect it, and rubbed cream on it so that the putty didn’t stick.
I also made a mockup for the hair pieces, but as you can see I was far lazier with this one. I didn’t reference it as much as the face mockups, but it still helped me to get basic structure right.
Laying down the first few pieces was very scary. I felt like I had no idea of what I was doing.
I slowly built up volume by adding little bits of clay and blending them in.
I also started adding the little stray hairs at the back. I normally draw his hair in a very flat simplified way so figuring out where to put those strands on a 3d shape was quite challenging. I take them out and redo them a couple of times.
I used the stand to hold the head while the first round of putty dried.
After it was dried I kept building up volume. I tried adding more strands to the back of the hair, to see if that would look better, but I didn’t like it and ended up removing it. I also added that one little strand of hair you can see sticking out on the left side of the bangs, but again, this is something that I later remove.
I wasn’t happy with the whole area around the back of the neck, so I removed everything and started over with a different approach, first defining the little hairs on the center. This was quite tricky to get right, as it needed to look a certain way when viewed from the front. By this point I also started sanding in between rounds of putty.
I redid that little ‘horn’ of hair sticking out on the side. I was quite happy with this, especially with how it looks when viewed from the front.
That strand sticking on the front left was looking a little flat, so I gave it more volume and defined the shape by sanding.
I re-added the two little strands of hair at the bottom. I was much happier with the placement this time!
I didn’t take many pictures of this, but all throughout the sculpting process I was checking how the hair looked with the faceplates. By this point the bangs where sitting a bit crooked, so I corrected this by adding that bit of putty on the right inner side. Also by this point, the bangs were going through sort of an awkward Miku phase.
More sanding on the bangs. I also added yet another hair sticking out on the right side.
This is more or less the final shape for the hair. I made the center section a bit thicker and flatter, and also made the strands on the sides stick out more. Attaching the little ahoge on top also improved the whole thing greatly.
Only a few steps left! I did my best to smooth out the seam between the front and back, but this was harder than it appeared and even after a few rounds of putty and sanding it still ended up quite rough.
I noticed the hair was obscuring his eyebrows too much, so I sanded away a bit. The very last step was adding Fili’s hair clips, and after that, more sanding. This entire sculpt is like 60% sanding.
With that the sculpting was complete! (╯✧▽✧)╯ Like the faces, starting out was scary and frustrating, but once I got the general shape down I was having a ton of fun! My favorite part is probably that center section of hair, the shape came out exactly the way I wanted and the hairclips look really cute <3
Painting was fairly straightforward. I mixed red, yellow and white to get the orange shade, and again diluted the paint with glass cleaning liquid. If I remember correctly, I did 4 layers in total.
Once the acrylic was dry I added a bit of shading using chalk pastels. I literally only bought three pastels for this entire project so the colors are the exact same I used on the blush. I applied the shading around the bottom of the hair pieces, trying to get a smooth gradient. Apparently I didn’t take pictures of this but I also used the same creamy white color from his tan lines to lighten the top area of the head. Sadly my phone’s camera doesn’t quite capture my shading efforts. Like with the faces, I sealed everything in with the top coat.
This wouldn’t be a crafty project of mine without some sort of dumb accident. I was a clumsy idiot and dropped the back hair piece, which unfortunately caused the ahoge to snap off :( These kinds of things really only happen when something is 99% complete…
On a more positive note I guess, I don’t know if you can see here, but the top coat actually smoothed out the rough hand painted texture quite a bit, and made the finish much nicer.
I glued the piece in place, and added a bit of putty around the break to cover it and reinforce the glue.
Luckily the orange paint still hadn’t dried, so I didn’t have to re mix the color. I also took the chance to add an extra bit of shading. I applied a final layer of the top coat, and it was complete! This time for real!
And with that this first part is finished! Here is how he looks so far!
(I don’t have any clothes for him yet, so I made a quick baggy t-shirt for him to wear for now. Special thanks to my brother for donating one of his old t-shirts so that my boy can have something to wear).
As you can tell, the eyes did end up just a tiny bit too big. It would’ve been better to print in the correct size, but I think he still looks fine like this. One thing I’ll most likely retouch though is the eye color, after seeing it with the hair, it looks too gray. Probably add the tan lines to that list too.
Overall I’m extremely happy with how he turned out ;v; He’s not perfect, but I was honestly expecting much worse. I currently keep him by my side on my desk and I smile like an idiot every time I look at him.
I can’t wait to get started on his clothes now! I’ll make a second part with the process of those, so look forward to that if that, although I haven't started yet so it may take a while...
Thank you for reading!! I hope this was an interesting read, and maybe inspired you to start your own customization projects! ;v;)9
See you on the next part! (ﾉ´ヮ`)ﾉ*: ･ﾟ
The other thing that drew me to this line was the possibility of making customs, and that’s why we are here today! On this first part, I’ll cover my process for making the faceplates and hair piece (and a couple other things).
The subject for this project will be my character, Fili:
Let’s begin! (๑•ㅂ•)و✧
(Apologies for the bad pictures ahead, I mostly worked on this at night when I got back from classes. Also this is very long and picture heavy).
Base.｡.:*☆
As my base, I got the archetype boy body ITEM #719689 and three of the customizable heads (which aren’t on MFC for some reason?). The cinnamon skin tone is pretty much perfect for Fili!
Both the body and the heads come with two joints (a standard one and a slightly longer one) and two neck pieces each, so I ended up with a ton of spares.
The body comes with three pairs of hands: relaxed palm, fists and peace signs. I was a bit disappointed that they didn’t include at least one pair of jointed hands, and now I’m in desperate need of one those extra hands sets.
Also included with the body is the stand, of course. They give quite a bit of options, with two different arm lengths and either a clasp or a peg to hold the character. Since the feet are magnetized, in theory you also have the option to display without the arm stands, but I find this doesn’t work that well. The feet are very tiny so they don’t provide a lot of stability, and for the most part the magnets just got in the way of posing.
I quickly got annoyed with the magnets so I decided to modify the base. I removed the metal plate and made a hole in one of the corners to place the little piece that connects the arm to the base. I then fixed it in place with epoxy putty, and sanded the surface of the base to remove the glue leftovers. I'll later put a paper or something on top of this to cover the mess.
Faces.｡.:*☆
With the base out of the way, I got to work on the face plates. To reduce the risk of things going wrong as much as possible, I first made some digital mockups. My hope was to be able to print and transfer them directly onto the face, but if that ended up not being possible, at least I would have a guide for what the face should look like.
GSC provided a very nice and symmetrical product shot, so I used that to draw the faces on:
It was hard deciding on the expressions. I wanted to get more heads but AmiAmi only lets you order three :( In the end I went for a happy expression with teary eyes, and a surprised/embarrassed one. I thought this best reflected Fili's character, and also worked best with the accessories I had in mind.
Once the mockups were ready I printed them on tracing paper (is that what it’s called? I hope so ;;). I printed two sets in the original size, and two sets slightly bigger, because printers (or at least mine), tend to shrink things. In the end, the original set turned out a millimeter smaller than I intended, but the enlarged version was a millimeter bigger OTL
I still decided to test how the enlarged version would look on the face, and I was happy enough that I decided to continue with that one. Now that I have everything put together, this is something that I kind of regret, as his eyes did turn out just a bit too large. Something to take note of for next time, I guess!
To transfer the features onto the face, I traced them on the reverse side of the paper using 8B pencil and then carefully placed them on the head, with the pencil side facing down.
Once I was happy with the positioning, I traced over the features again so that the pencil lines I made would transfer onto the face. Getting everything aligned properly wasn’t so easy though. My first attempt was so crooked I had a mini crisis and rage quit the whole thing for a day:
I had a couple of guidelines drawn on the face to help me place things, but it still took a few tries and tweaks to get it right (btw the best way to remove pencil from the face is an eraser, unsurprisingly). With a bit of patience, I managed to get it to a point I liked. It still looked uneven when I checked on a mirror, but at least it was cute enough in normal viewing situations. I was also checking regularly with nendo hair pieces.
Next I did the closed eyes one because I thought it would be less stressful, and luckily I was right. I managed to get this one more or less right on the first attempt.
Lastly I made the surprised one. I placed the features too low on my first attempt, so I had to redo it, but after that, I think this one turned out the best. It’s the most symmetrical one of the three, and even on a mirror it looks pretty decent.
With the expressions sketched out, it was time to paint! I used acrylics and the smallest brushes I could find on the store.
I didn’t want to use pure black so I mixed it with red and blue. However acrylic darkens when it dries so it ended up looking basically like straight black from the tube, and this whole step was probably pointless.
Once I had the color ready I diluted it with glass cleaning liquid. Garage kit tutorials always say to dilute the paint to about the consistency of milk, and this is what I did first, but it ended up being too runny and just wouldn’t stick to the plastic. So I prepared a second batch of paint this one far less diluted, and that’s what I used to paint.
I have to say painting was a very fun step. I could slowly see the expression come together and it was really exciting. I think what surprised me the most was adding that bit of shadow on the sclera. It’s a subtle detail, but I feel like it added a lot of depth to the eyes, and it really gave me hope that this was heading in a good direction.
I was originally planning to fill out the tears with a light blue, but I liked how they looked with just the white outline, so I left them like that. I also considered carving the mouths, so that they had a bit of volume the same way normal nendoroids do, but after coloring them in I decided they looked good enough that way, and that it probably wasn’t worth risking to ruin everything.
Next step was adding the blush lines. In hindsight, it would’ve been better to draw them with a color pencil instead of acrylic. I also sanded the nose on the smiling face, to fit the blush a bit better.
The last step in coloring the faces was adding blush with chalk pastel. I mixed two colors because the pink alone was too light for this skin tone. I sealed everything with Testors Dullcote and the faces were done! ｡ﾟ(TヮT)ﾟ｡ I felt so proud at this point!
Body.｡.:*☆
Before moving on to the hair, I wanted to paint his tan lines. I only painted the legs and chest because those would be the only areas visible with clothes on. I later give up on the chest as I get more frustrated and more frustrated with this.
I first painted this with acrylic, but it created noticeable bump between the two colors, and made the transition look unnatural. You can also see on the pictures that the masking chipped the painting in some areas when it came off.
My second attempt was colored pencils, but this just looked plain bad.
My third and final attempt was with chalk pastels. I wasn’t 100% happy with these results, but at this point I just couldn’t be bothered to redo it all again (I had also ran out of art supplies to try). You can see there’s still a bit of that bump in the transition, I guess caused by the topcoat + masking, but it’s not as severe as the acrylic one. The less drastic color change also helps hide it a bit.
Hair.｡.:*☆
The sculpting process involved a lot of back and forth and minor adjustments, so apologies if the following is a little tedious to read.
I used epoxy putty, which works by mixing both components together, and hardens in about 2-3 hours. It doesn’t require baking, which is basically the reason I chose it.
Epoxy putty is very sticky, and that can make it a difficult to work with, but you can get around this by dipping your fingers in water. Water can also be used to smooth out the putty and blend pieces together, so that’s why I had a cup of water set up. That little swiss army knife thingy I used to cut and shape smaller pieces. Not pictured here is a set of sandpapers I bought. I used 120 grit to shape out the pieces, and 220, 400 and 1000 grit to remove the scratches and get a smooth finish.
The Nendoroid heads came with bald front and back pieces, so that’s what I used as a base for the hair. I covered the face part with a plastic bag to protect it, and rubbed cream on it so that the putty didn’t stick.
I also made a mockup for the hair pieces, but as you can see I was far lazier with this one. I didn’t reference it as much as the face mockups, but it still helped me to get basic structure right.
Laying down the first few pieces was very scary. I felt like I had no idea of what I was doing.
I slowly built up volume by adding little bits of clay and blending them in.
I also started adding the little stray hairs at the back. I normally draw his hair in a very flat simplified way so figuring out where to put those strands on a 3d shape was quite challenging. I take them out and redo them a couple of times.
I used the stand to hold the head while the first round of putty dried.
After it was dried I kept building up volume. I tried adding more strands to the back of the hair, to see if that would look better, but I didn’t like it and ended up removing it. I also added that one little strand of hair you can see sticking out on the left side of the bangs, but again, this is something that I later remove.
I wasn’t happy with the whole area around the back of the neck, so I removed everything and started over with a different approach, first defining the little hairs on the center. This was quite tricky to get right, as it needed to look a certain way when viewed from the front. By this point I also started sanding in between rounds of putty.
I redid that little ‘horn’ of hair sticking out on the side. I was quite happy with this, especially with how it looks when viewed from the front.
That strand sticking on the front left was looking a little flat, so I gave it more volume and defined the shape by sanding.
I re-added the two little strands of hair at the bottom. I was much happier with the placement this time!
I didn’t take many pictures of this, but all throughout the sculpting process I was checking how the hair looked with the faceplates. By this point the bangs where sitting a bit crooked, so I corrected this by adding that bit of putty on the right inner side. Also by this point, the bangs were going through sort of an awkward Miku phase.
More sanding on the bangs. I also added yet another hair sticking out on the right side.
This is more or less the final shape for the hair. I made the center section a bit thicker and flatter, and also made the strands on the sides stick out more. Attaching the little ahoge on top also improved the whole thing greatly.
Only a few steps left! I did my best to smooth out the seam between the front and back, but this was harder than it appeared and even after a few rounds of putty and sanding it still ended up quite rough.
I noticed the hair was obscuring his eyebrows too much, so I sanded away a bit. The very last step was adding Fili’s hair clips, and after that, more sanding. This entire sculpt is like 60% sanding.
With that the sculpting was complete! (╯✧▽✧)╯ Like the faces, starting out was scary and frustrating, but once I got the general shape down I was having a ton of fun! My favorite part is probably that center section of hair, the shape came out exactly the way I wanted and the hairclips look really cute <3
Painting was fairly straightforward. I mixed red, yellow and white to get the orange shade, and again diluted the paint with glass cleaning liquid. If I remember correctly, I did 4 layers in total.
Once the acrylic was dry I added a bit of shading using chalk pastels. I literally only bought three pastels for this entire project so the colors are the exact same I used on the blush. I applied the shading around the bottom of the hair pieces, trying to get a smooth gradient. Apparently I didn’t take pictures of this but I also used the same creamy white color from his tan lines to lighten the top area of the head. Sadly my phone’s camera doesn’t quite capture my shading efforts. Like with the faces, I sealed everything in with the top coat.
This wouldn’t be a crafty project of mine without some sort of dumb accident. I was a clumsy idiot and dropped the back hair piece, which unfortunately caused the ahoge to snap off :( These kinds of things really only happen when something is 99% complete…
On a more positive note I guess, I don’t know if you can see here, but the top coat actually smoothed out the rough hand painted texture quite a bit, and made the finish much nicer.
I glued the piece in place, and added a bit of putty around the break to cover it and reinforce the glue.
Luckily the orange paint still hadn’t dried, so I didn’t have to re mix the color. I also took the chance to add an extra bit of shading. I applied a final layer of the top coat, and it was complete! This time for real!
And with that this first part is finished! Here is how he looks so far!
(I don’t have any clothes for him yet, so I made a quick baggy t-shirt for him to wear for now. Special thanks to my brother for donating one of his old t-shirts so that my boy can have something to wear).
As you can tell, the eyes did end up just a tiny bit too big. It would’ve been better to print in the correct size, but I think he still looks fine like this. One thing I’ll most likely retouch though is the eye color, after seeing it with the hair, it looks too gray. Probably add the tan lines to that list too.
Overall I’m extremely happy with how he turned out ;v; He’s not perfect, but I was honestly expecting much worse. I currently keep him by my side on my desk and I smile like an idiot every time I look at him.
I can’t wait to get started on his clothes now! I’ll make a second part with the process of those, so look forward to that if that, although I haven't started yet so it may take a while...
Thank you for reading!! I hope this was an interesting read, and maybe inspired you to start your own customization projects! ;v;)9
See you on the next part! (ﾉ´ヮ`)ﾉ*: ･ﾟ
Comments42
As you can see, each head includes a base front and back hair piece. I sculpted the hair for my doll on top of that.
OH!! Thanks for the fast reply! I will definitely try it out
-because you use multiple faceplates how did you make the hair pieces stick together?
Normally when you change faces there is a piece that sticks out from the bangs that goes above the forehead to attach the bangs to the back of the head. Did you do something similar?
I used the customizable nendoroid doll head for the hair parts: www.goodsmile.i...
As you can see, each head includes a base front and back hair piece. I sculpted the hair for my doll on top of that.
-because you use multiple faceplates how did you make the hair pieces stick together?
Normally when you change faces there is a piece that sticks out from the bangs that goes above the forehead to attach the bangs to the back of the head. Did you do something similar?
Thank you!! >v<