The Chimera-fication of Poppy

Poppy continues to be the most representative doll of my whole collection in my eyes - she's got the eyeball, the colorful aesthetic, a distinct personality, and probably the heaviest mods of the whole crew, given that she started life as a plain ol' Gretel47.

...But recently, I've been wanting to go beyond pure cyclops with her. And since I enjoy documenting the process anyways for the entertainment of my various Discords, it seemed only fair to show off my plans here, too!

First, what's already been done:

Poppy's base head is a Gretel47 with an eye mod I started and then pretty quickly messed up, as I was new to customizing. Some time later, I revisited the head, chopped her eye out even further, and created the cyclops:

Her eye is paper, and it will probably be paper until the end of time. Turns out making an eye that big outta resin or clay is nearly impossible! The LASHES, on the other hand, were easy to find. They're beaded lashes from the local Halloween store. I go get some more every year because I love em for my doll projects. Poppy's using a full one, which further proves why finding an eye is hard. Her eye's even bigger than mine!

Some months later, after some dealings in the resin community that led to me trading a tiny for a Dear Mine kitty and some extras, I ended up with a pair of Dear Mine magnetic wing option parts, which soon spawned an idea that gripped me and refused to let go: Poppy phase 2.

By the power of Milliput, the wings became ears! And by the power of acrylics, a thick gloss coat, and copious amounts of MSC to restore the matte look, the ears became...not ugly!

I stopped painting them just before the Milliput/vinyl boundary line, just to ensure that I wouldn't overpaint and get black on her actual face. With a wig, you wouldn't notice unless you're looking for it!

 

...Which leads us to shortly before the present, when I found Rbitdoll's custom Kemono hand parts for MDD. Soon to be Poppy Phase 3:

They're slightly oversized on MDD, at least from this picture by MituiKuni on Twitter, so I'm hoping they'll look okay on her DD wrist pegs.

The goal is to take a pair of flesh DD pegs and mod them to have the magnetic connector that these hands use out of the box, with some Milliput and a magnet. That's the easy part. The hard part is figuring out how I wanna paint them. Polka dots of course, but whether I want them dyed black or left fleshtone is still up in the air.

And THAT led to me deciding that Poppy's no longer a cyclops. The ears were already pushing it, but PAWS? With that many animal parts, she's becoming a chimerical abomination...so let's embrace that! Phase 4!!!

Chimeras traditionally have snakes for tails, but I decided to go with a more botanical look for Poppy:

The same black with polka dots look on her tail, now with flower petals and a plant monster on the end! Specifically, the head of Dream Valley's Tea.

I've already ordered both Tea and a jeton armature for the tail - I found some in black that should be just the right length and width! With these two pieces and some silk flowers I'll have my tail, but the main issue I'll have to worry about is weight. Hopefully a sufficiently large magnet will keep it on Poppy's rear, even if I have to take it off to pose it! Attaching Tea's head might also be an issue....but I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

More soon!

I love your bold custom projects, it's so cool to watch your dolls develop!

Updaaaate!

Poppy's paws arrived, and it turns out it was much easier to thicken the pegs i was given rather than try modding DD pegs. Some superglue and sandpaper did the trick!

A mockup of the color scheme... to keep it consistent I decided against dots on her hands, as they're pretty much only on her face and any black bodyparts she has. I might change my mind later. I had to think pretty hard on what I wanted that fourth color to be, given that she only uses three for most of her markings!

Painting...I'm grateful my gloss sealant also hides brush markings. I'd go insane trying to hide them otherwise. 😅

(See how the paw pads are removable? Genius!!)

Some gloss, and...completion!

The green blends into the blue on the paw pad, but whatevs. I liked the shade a lot on her claw, so I'll live with it!

With the paws complete, I could turn my attention to dotting the tail...

I left a couple segments alone, as that's where I'm putting the pliers to snap them together. No need to worry about scratching paint you didn't apply yet!

Once they're all together, I'll do a coat of MSC on the whole tail and slap a 20mm magnet into the wide end. HOPEFULLY it's strong enough to hold it up. We'll see.

Attaching Tea's head is still a conundrum. I plan on doing the well-known resin trick for making a wrist joint (put nail through base of joint, cut off sharp end, apply S hook to nail), but the narrow end is not narrow enough to fit the neck joint of the head. I'm gonna try making a little egg shaped bead out of epoxy to support it a little better - it should be hidden nicely once I bring in the silk flowers, and the stability is needed for sure.

TO DO: Dye and paint Tea head, make epoxy "bead", locate silk flowers, test tail attachment strength

Until next time!

Poppy's so unique! She tempts me to try a cyclops mod myself! (Or chicken out and buy the parabox one lol)

@tinydollproblem The Parabox one won't be as big as Poppy (she's 40cm), but you'll get a nice 11cm with that one! I admit I've been tempted by it a few times myself for a tiny Poppy, but I'm not sure I could bring myself to do this many mods again. 😂

Speaking of, I never finished the saga! She's been done for weeks.

I successfully managed to dye the Tea head black, and even dyed the separate tongue red! Unfortunately trying to keep the dye from getting to the teeth didn't work out, so I ended up painting those when I added polka dots to the head:

I solved my bead problem without epoxy! Hilariously I had a plastic bead in my stash that fit perfectly both ways and even had little divots already drilled into it so it could have polka dots too! It looks so good I ended up skipping the fake flowers idea.

The head's still a little loose despite my best efforts - I'll be hot glue sueding it eventually when I get the time, but it works well enough for most poses so I'm not in a hurry.

The magnets work pretty well - I ended up moving the one on Poppy to inside the vinyl for aesthetic and better grip purposes:

I had to glue it in place with vinyl glue. This tail was so heavy that it caused the superglue I used first to fail!

The vinyl glue worked much better, and with a little posing and balancing...

Tada!

Unfortunately the jeton has rather limited posing at this size, so the tail sticks out in the back pretty far before I can make it go straight down. I later lengthened it with more jeton so I could get my original vision of having her tail actually hit the ground:

Overall, I'm pretty pleased! It looks like a tail, has the characteristic weirdness of Poppy, and stays on well, even if it's a little looser than I'd like due to the weight of all that plastic. I can't use it to support her like a stand, but it's a nice little extra piece to pose with the rest of her!

And most importantly, even it has a flower theme, thanks to these eyes from CSLInspirations. 😆

Her tail turned out so cute!!! I can see why you don't want to try to make a tiny ver. She true was a labor of love, but worth the effort! I adore her little head tail with the flower eye. Reminds me a little of a chain chomp ❤️

Love this girl soo much. She's so fun!

That's so cool! I love all the mods you've done on her. The tail especially looks awesome. She's got so much personality!

THIS IS SUCH A COOL DOLL!
I Love how Loud her design and colors are!
Genuinely such an amazing design and i think all the mods you did came out perfect!