Archangeli shared how she created the fantastic armor for her Dollfe Dream Sasara Kusugawa that took 2nd place at Anime North’s Doll North Masquerade
When Volks announced last December that they were re-releasing Dollfe Dream Sasara Kusugawa from ToHeart2 I was hoping that they would release her Valkyrie version. Since they didn’t, I did it myself ;)
I patterned & created the armor from scratch over the past few weeks. Everything was made to fit the DDdy3 body perfectly but still have flexibility to move & pose the doll. There are a few things I want to edit (the way the skirt hangs bugs me and the white sleeves aren’t puffy enough >_<“) and I do plan on making her shield & halberd later this summer.
The armor is made using Worbla. Worbla looks like this before priming. It’s a thermoplastic that’s infused with glue so it bonds to itself. I didn’t need to use any kind of special adhesives.
I used aluminium foil to protect the doll parts from my heat gun – and also to prevent glue residue from sticking to the doll while the Worbla was heated. It looks like I’m baking weird cookies :P
Worbla has a bit of texture to it, which is why you should prime it and then sand it to get a nice smooth finish. Thank goodness for my rotary tool and my dust eater fan (LOL – I use these for my nails usually! Good to have another purpose for these tools!) It took between 5-12 layers of gesso to get a workable surface for sanding. I was literally waiting for paint to dry @_@”
Everything was then painted with Vallejo acrylic model paints. (The same stuff Volks recommends for their model kits and Chara-gumin kits now). I like that it’s water-based & non-toxic, and extemely pigmented. Sometimes one coat was all I needed for complete coverage, which is amazing. With craft store paints I always need 2-3 coats! I was working on a deadline so not waiting for paint to dry was really helpful. Vallejo doesn’t make the exact blue I needed for most of the armor so I had to mix small batches at a time as I went. Since the paint dispenses in drops it was quite easy to measure out what I needed.
I used their Liquid Gold paint to get the beautiful metallic finish. It’s a non-toxic alcohol based paint that required constant stirring to keep the pigment particles in suspension but I’ve never found a more beautiful gold paint!
Here are all the armor pieces – everything is separate because I wanted the doll to still be able to move and pose.
Special thank yous to Puppy52 (chun) for helping me find the perfect fabric to use for the bodysuit & to xoHimitsuox for reference pics of the back of the armor and the late night motivation!
I’m so pleased to have won 2nd place in the 1:3 category at the Doll North doll masquerade yesterday! (1st place went to a beautiful recreation of Sesshoumarou from Inuyasha.) I wasn’t expecting to win anything – I just wanted to show her off and spread the Dollfie Dream love!
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Congrats to Archangeli on the win and many thanks for sharing her work with us!