davidd’s A DOLL A DAY 2022

[Alliecat]

I'd want to paint her fingernails
I thought "Rec" might be "recipe" and it was a jar of something edible, but between Dal House & here I took a google detour so now I know about wax cylinders. I'm curious what story idea might have led you to make this, which I assume you did.

[davidd]

I'd want to paint her fingernails 

I'm curious what story idea might have led you to make this, which I assume you did.

I completely agree about the fingernails. The need for nail polish became obviously apparent in this series of photos. I don't know if it would be possible to add a clear gloss to make the nails more realistic, or if I should paint them in color. 

As you have discovered, the miniature prop I made is intended to represent an Edison Cylinder Recording, a type of sound recording popular in the late-1800s and early 1900s before flat phonograph records became the standard format.

An Edison cylinder  features prominently in the 2015 Disney movie Tomorrowland, which inspired me to try to make a miniature version for a custom action figure project:

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23 September - A Doll A Day 2022:
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23 September - "Frank" figure from the movie "Tomorrowland" (2015),
kitbashed from a variety of sources, based on a TBLeague body

[davidd]

24 September - A Doll A Day 2022:

Side-By-Side comparison: TBLEAGUE S41 and S37 "Anime" Bodies

Left: S41 - stock head and costume
Right: S37 - stock head and S36/37 hybrid costume (because the straps break)

Head Swap

Both bodies feature detachable feet.

Bracelets are 10mm jewelry supply jump rings.

General visual impression:

The new S41 has a more detailed head sculpt with more realistic eyes, is nominally taller, and the bust sits higher than the S37. The waist directly above the hips is perhaps ever so lightly thicker, but not significantly.

The S37 features a more stylized, cartoonish head sculpt, is nominally shorter, and features a slightly larger bust that sits lower on the chest. The waist may be slightly more slim. The provided hand set with the S37 is different than the standard hands provided with most other TBLeague bodies, offering the "splayed fingers" hand as seen here on the left hand.

[Alliecat]

The jump rings are a good way to disguise the wrist joints. It's funny how joints in Pullip bodies generally don't bother me, but I can see why you find they stand out with these -- it's the lack of joints elsewhere, I guess.

I've never seen "Tomorrowland"; do you recommend it?
My first thought with "Frank" was that he reminded me of an elderly neighbour -- what he might have looked like as an action figure if he was a much younger man

[davidd]

My first thought with "Frank" was that he reminded me of an elderly neighbour -- what he might have looked like as an action figure if he was a much younger man 

That's really nice to hear (read), as the character in the movie is basically a reclusive late middle-aged grumpy neighbor type. I'm glad the general impression of that type of character comes through.

The movie had some interesting ideas, but the plot is somewhat disjointed and difficult to follow, and some of the action sequences seem like they are tossed in simply for the sake of adding an "action sequence" rather than to serve any significant plot purpose.

I thought the scenes set during the 1964 World's Fair were convincingly authentic.

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25 September - A Doll A Day 2022:
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25 September - The Space Girls Put the Template They Found

a Few Days Ago to Work as They Begin to Construct a Rocketship

[dargosmydaddy]

I think I had that Barbie spacesuit when I was a kid, or a very similar one. My Barbies were not nearly as industrious, though...

[Alliecat]

Aw, he doesn't look grumpy. Rather introspective, I'd have said.

Sporty Space and Handy Space hard at work... Does this mean you have a little momentum for projects??

[davidd]

Aw, he doesn't look grumpy.  Rather introspective, I'd have said.

Sporty Space and Handy Space hard at work...  Does this mean you have a little momentum for projects?? 

"Introspective" is a more accurate word. 

A little momentum, perhaps. And briefly, probably.

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26 September - A Doll A Day 2022: Rambling with Red Robot
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Red Robot says "Welcome..."

"... to the Ends of the Earth!"

Red Robot wonders where his rambling will take him today!

Red Robot wanders up a dry wash.

Red Robot rambles round a rugged rock.

After a long ramble, Red Robot pitches camp for the night.

[Alliecat]

The Ends of the Earth sounds really good right now. Like, quiet, and not peopley.
Red Robot’s ramblings sound like the beginnings of a children’s story.

[davidd]

The Ends of the Earth sounds really good right now. Like, quiet, and not peopley.

It used to be quiet and not particularly peopley. Traffic on the nearby highway has increased considerably over the last few years, so now there's traffic noise round the clock, and somebody is breaking ground for yet another new house across the river in the valley. That's in addition to the fifty house subdivision being built in the nearest town. Maybe it's eighty houses. I have no idea who is moving in. There are no jobs here. The town only has a population of around 1600, so adding fifty to eighty houses is a pretty big deal.

Nobody right next door, though. And public forest land behind the house for miles and miles, so robot could ramble a long way without seeing anybody.

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27 September - A Doll A Day 2022:

27 September - Neglected Camera

I am very tired of not knowing how to use this camera! I've used it so little that it usually takes me some fussing about to remember how to turn it on. I can never remember how to activate the flip-out viewfinder (it does not come on automatically). My old model 20D was intuitive and easy and fun to use. This 80D, which is not even the latest incarnation in this Canon line, is a fussy chore to use.

I have a book about the camera that I keep meaning to read. How many years has that been now? Three? Four? A quick online glance indicates this model was introduced in 2016, so I probably purchased both the camera and the book sometime in mid-2017, so five years ago!

Today I decided, yet again, to make another attempt at learning to use this obsolete boat anchor of a DSLR. I got out the camera, I charged the batteries, and I found the how-to book. But I also ran across another book, a novel I started reading, what, like, six or nine months ago? Rather than starting on the camera book, I decided to finish reading the novel, because I was over halfway through it.

[NOTE: Son of Rhubarb (1967) by H. Allen Smith, if you are curious.]

Also, I got new eyeglasses, so I can see again. They're not fancy eyeglasses, they are just cheap plastic reading glasses (3 pair for $9) off a spinner rack at a drug store, but when I put them on... I could see again! It was remarkable, like a veil had been lifted. My previous pair of cheap reading glasses had become so scratched up from daily use that, well, actually, I did not realize how hazy everything had been looking. I had learned to look around the most badly scuffed parts. It felt quite astonishing to have a completely clear field of vision.

I've been making do with the scuffed eyeglasses for a long time, which is probably why I have not read an entire book since last June, three or more months ago. I was able to add another book to my book list -- I've now read two books in 2022, yay me!

I'm hoping that will be three books soon, and that I can add David Busch's Canon EOS 80D Photography Guide to my completed reading list. My plan is to sit down with the book and the camera and read the book completely through, cover to cover, without getting distracted; and then read it again and actually tinker with the camera as I go. When I've tried to read the book a few times before, I got distracted fussing with buttons on the camera, and then I started looking up details online, and once I go online I'm lost.

Today's pic was snapped with a point-n-shoot camera. Usually the little Panasonic does a decent job, but today's pic is plagued by one of my pet peeves: blown-out highlights! When the scene is overly dark, the camera's light meter compensates, resulting in highlights that are overex-posed. There's nothing that can be done to fix overex-posed images. The data in the overex-posed areas is lost. There's literally nothing there to tone down. I probably could have compensated for the ex-treme contrast range by manually notching the ex-posure down by a stop or so, but I didn't do that, so the photo sucks, but I'm hoping that soon I'll be able to take similarly sucky photos using a much larger and more ex-pensive camera so I can feel even more frustrated when my photos suck.

One more sucky thing, seeing as how I'm ranting about petty things that suck: The Dal House forum is either off-line, or for some reason it will not load on my computer. It's not just The Dal House; two of the action figure forums (both hosted by a company called Forumotion) are not loading. Yet other sites, including Flickr, Dollieh Sanctuary, Doll Dreaming, and another action figure site, pop right up slick as can be. Either some of the forum hosting sites are temporarily (I hope) offline, or there's a "node" somewhere in the Internet network that is down. 

[Alliecat]

The old-school photographer in me objects to any camera that needs a whole 200 page book to ex-plain it! Somewhere I have the K1000 manual… I think it was like 10 pages??  When I got the Kx I got the manual and started reading it, but never ended up reading the whole thing. Eventually I figured out enough of the settings. But I sure miss the simple organic K1000.
I take it your point-and-shoot doesn’t have a spot-meter option. I suppose if you can set a fixed ex-posure you could try metering off a neutral gray card in front of your model? Or, just whip the card out of the way and push the button before it has a chance to reset the ex-posure. Any camera's gonna do that with a wide light/dark range. Another thing that felt more easily organically compensated for with the K1000.

The highlights aren’t awful on my screen. I can see some detail on her face. But yes, your camera was fooled by all the dark areas.

Yay for new glasses. I recently got some for distance vision and was in equal measure amazed at the difference and appalled at how bad my eyes must have been. 

That construction boom sounds crazy. I cannot imagine that many houses being put in here and we have a bigger population. Are they going to be vacation homes perhaps?  You are fortunate to have some conservation land behind you.

I can see the Dal House forum.

[davidd]

I take it your point-and-shoot doesn’t have a spot-meter option. 

Yay for new glasses. I recently got some for distance vision and was in equal measure amazed at the difference and appalled at how bad my eyes must have been. 

I can see the Dal House forum.

The point-n-shoot has a spot-meter option. I usually keep it set to spot metering. Let me check, perhaps that got changed.
Ohhh... the camera offers spot focus, but not spot metering. The metering system is called "Intelligent Multiple" metering. Usually it works pretty well. And usually I am more on the ball, and I use ex˙posure compensation when there is a wide contrast range, particularly when there are "hot spots." The issue in the above photo is a result of "operator error" rather than a flaw with the camera. I had forgotten until now that the camera offers a "histogram" function. Perhaps I should have that switched on, although the graph is pretty small and clutters up the already small viewfinder.

I'm glad I can still get by with "reading glasses." When I last had my eyes checked, a couple of years ago, the ophthalmologist insisted on creating a custom prescription for my long distance glasses. I got it filled, but I could never see as well out of the "prescription" glasses as I could out of simple readers. I preferred the eye doctor I went to in Hawaii. Every couple of years at my appointment she would laugh and say "you might want to try stronger readers."

The Dal House (and the other) forum came back up for me a short while after my post. I don't know if it was a browser glitch or an internet service glitch.

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28 September - A Doll A Day 2022:

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28 September - Analogue Landscape Photography

[Alliecat]

Just LOOK at all that people-free space!!
That looks like a neat little camera.

[davidd]

Just LOOK at all that people-free space!!
That looks like a neat little camera.

The people-free space is nice. Actually, if she turns around and starts walking, she can go miles and miles (that's a lot in kilometers) without seeing anyone.

The neat little camera is neat. It is an all metal Tammy Doll camera made in the 1960s.

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29 September - A Doll A Day 2022:
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29 September - A Tracker in the Wasteland

Half-nekkid Cowgirl got some more clothes.

[Alliecat]

Well she looks ready for action!
That's quite an outfit. Although I'm not sure I'd want to be climbing around on those rocks with a draggy skirt