TOPIC: [Craft] Custom Filly

[Craft] Custom Filly 26 May 2013 20:40 #1

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A while ago I bought a Filly out of boredom. I've always liked My Little Pony (and was an avid collector and still have mine) so I thought buying one of those little random packs for the dollhouse room of my pony-crazy Dal wouldn't hurt. Well, a short time later... (Added a piccie because I thought Lirael might like it. ^^ )
Most of my Fillies are from the Unicorn series. The one on top of the shelf is from the new Elf series and I have some uniques and a few Faeries and Faerie Babies from the advent calendars. Some duplicates are on the shelf where I couldn't decide which one to keep - there's a lot of defect or not-so-nice Fillies. There are two Cavally ponies mixed in too - the white winged unicorn and the grey pony in the second row from top. Funny thing is - of course I never got the rare unicorn princess but I only bought one pack from Cavally and already had their mega rare pony Luna. Go figure.

Anyway, why is this in the artwork board? Well, as picture 2 illustrates quite nicely my fruitless search for a complete Unicorn collection ended up with a large box of duplicates.
So I decided to customize them.

The third picture shows my first try at a custom Filly. (original on the right) Here I tried to change the fur colour with a pastel pencil. It works to some extend but has some downsides. The good thing is that the flock is untouched. The bad thing is that the all-too-often flaws in the original fur show through and that colour pigments fall off easily. It's also hard to reach into deep folds with the pencil. The new colour also has to be quite similar to the original. The pen I used was pink, for instance, to achieve purple on the original blue. I doubt I could remove e.g. the ring around the eye with such a pen. If I press too hard the fur comes off so creating shadows or thicker layers of pigments isn't possible.

For the hooves I used golden acrylic paint. This works better, of course, and I can change the colour completely. The downside is that the pony becomes hard and loses the flock. Still, I think that's the way I have to go. Too many of those ponies are not properly made anyway and lack fur or have paint spluttered on the wrong parts. My Little Pony had no fur either and neither have tin miniatures so I'm not sure why I want the fur so much.

Other things I did was to exchange the gem in the crown (not a true Swarovski gem anymore now) and add the cutie mark gem on the bum. I used acrylic paint for the decoration around it.

On other Filly projects I also plan to exchange horns but for the new colour scheme a pink horn is okay so I'll only add some golden accents. My main focus is on adding cutie marks to their hips.

I'm a bit stuck with the project as I still have to decide whether to paint the pony body with acrylics or not. I don't want to keep the blue pattern but as I said I doubt I can remove it with pastel pens.
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[Craft] Custom Filly 26 May 2013 21:08 #2

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The more I look at these things, the cuter they get. If the store that's had some MLP Fluttershy's in, still has some when I next have money, I might buy one and do some custom work on her.

I can imagine that trying to work on flocked bodies is a bit difficult. I've seen these over here a few times, but never really took much notice of them. Go figure I find them cute now though. Hah!
Up there just me and my shadow, no bass, no guitar, no tambourine. Then I found you like a melody, you were singin' in the same key as me. <3
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[Craft] Custom Filly 26 May 2013 21:13 #3

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I have seen some rather spectacular custom My Little Ponys but I must admit I'm not a fan of the new design. The eyes are so large and weird now. Fillies look like the old designs, plus they are much smaller and thus don't take so much space. (I'd love to see your custom Pony though, of course!)

My Filly is still stuck since I can't decide what to do with the flock (thanks for the right word!). Maybe I should de-flock one and see how it looks with fresh paint. Well, I guess that's the only way to decide if I like it or not, actually.
If you want to I can send you a Filly or two someday so Fluttershy can keep them as pets, lol. I have 4 of the same elven filly already and I only bought 9 or 10. :-\ Terrible mix this time and most of them are pink. I like green and blue much better.

If there was a way to add new flock to the paint job that'd be great but I couldn't find anything like that at the artstore.
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[Craft] Custom Filly 26 May 2013 21:19 #4

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Aww, I'm sure Fluttershy would love that!

I remember the older ponies. Had a fair few when I was a kid. Wish I still had them all now. I even had an old school Spike! He was so cute.

Not sure I've ever heard of being able to re-flock, or just flock in general at home. Might be a bit of a specialist sort of thing though I guess.
Up there just me and my shadow, no bass, no guitar, no tambourine. Then I found you like a melody, you were singin' in the same key as me. <3
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[Craft] Custom Filly 26 May 2013 21:20 #5

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Today I tried to deflock one but neither water nor nailpolish remover worked. So I decided to paint over the flock and might even do that with the custom Filly from above. It has a few "bald" spots anyway that I can't cover with colour pencils and the hooves are already painted too.
I don't know if I can do this today but I'll keep you updated with a piccie once I got the body painted!

I suppose that flock stuff isn't healthy for lungs while loose so they probably don't sell it... Although I most certainly have all kinds of poisonous stuff in my lungs already from all my tinkering, so what is one more. *rolls eyes*

EDIT:
Okay, couldn't keep my fingers still. Here's the Filly with a basic layer of sand colour. (Thinned down for better result, so a few spots need a second layer.) I'm glad I did that, as it looks so cute all of a sudden. Also, it looks female now. ^^ (Not that I demand more female fillies but having such a radical difference between original and custom is nice as it creates more variety.)
The flock looks a bit coarse now but the paint is still wet. Maybe it'll smooth down a bit. Of course it's not soft anymore.

EDIT2:
Wow, now that the paint is dry the Filly IS still quite soft except for a few spots where the paint is a bit thicker.
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Last Edit: 26 May 2013 21:22 by Eph.
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[Craft] Custom Filly 26 May 2013 21:21 #6

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Just a heads up - the fur can be removed from Fillies after all.
All I had to do was soak it in regular water for some hours. Before that I tried soap water and a toothbrush and nail polish remover combined with a hard brush, so any of that might help, I'm not sure. I used the blunt edge of a scalpel to gentle scrape the wet fur off. It's hard to get out of the small recesses in the mane and tail though.
This is the same Filly as on top - they become much darker without the fur and if you scrape too deep they're dark blue beneath.

So right now I have two Fillies on my table, both yet unfinished. I wasn't thourough enough with my scraping so some blobs of fur show through the first layer of paint. Still have to remedy that before I finish the paint job.
What peeves me off is that I can't exchange the horn. I dragged, pried and tore with several tools and knifes but the horn only became flatter and longer. Either that one Filly is sturdy as heck or I won't be able to exchange any horns.
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[Craft] Custom Filly 26 May 2013 21:23 #7

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The water trick works fine, unless you've got a filly that has electronics inside, like my little ones. Sounds like a pretty logical thing to try though really. I just used a scalpel to scrape the fuzz off of one of mine. The tail and mane are a pain in the rear though, because of all of those creases. D'oh. >.<
Up there just me and my shadow, no bass, no guitar, no tambourine. Then I found you like a melody, you were singin' in the same key as me. <3
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[Craft] Custom Filly 26 May 2013 21:24 #8

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Still not finished with one but here's another work in progress of my customs. By now I think I won't try to remove the fur from future projects. There's always a bit left and it looks slightly sloppy. Plus, even though the flock becomes hard when painted it still looks fluffier.

The first custom now has its tail and mane painted with Liche Purple acrylics. I still have to decorate the horn and put some more purple paint on, on a few spots the original colour still shines through. Then I'll repaint the golden hooves, fix the cutie mark and it will be done.
Btw, I don't know why its jewel looks blue, it's actually pink. Must be a reflection on the camera, it's raining cats and dogs right now.

My second custom also started out as Romeo. This one is ivory and black. I will paint the horn golden and give it brown eyes. I also made some tiny faerie wings for it, so I'm gonna drill some holes into its body. Mane and tail still need some highlights and there's still a little bit of blue poking through the fur here and there. Once that is fixed this custom will get a cutie mark in either gold or brown. It'll get a brown jewel into its crown and two jewels on the wings.
The wings are my second try at this so they're not perfect, but I think they're good enough. :)
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[Craft] Custom Filly 26 May 2013 21:27 #9

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I love those wings!
And if they don't lose their 'fluffiness' through painting, then there really doesn't seem too much point in deflocking them =D
I also like your colour schemes, they're cute. =3
Up there just me and my shadow, no bass, no guitar, no tambourine. Then I found you like a melody, you were singin' in the same key as me. <3
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[Craft] Custom Filly 26 May 2013 21:31 #10

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My first custom, Avalon, is done. ^^

More piccies of him and some bla bla how I made him can be found in the Filly galleries.

I started a third custom already, that one will be green and blue. There are just not enough original green Fillies! Of course I haven't forgotten about my first custom, it's not quite done yet though.
I start to like the thought of changing the Fillies drastically, not just repaint them. So most likely more of my future customs will end up with wings and other major changes.
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Last Edit: 26 May 2013 21:32 by Eph.
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