2023 note - please appreciate how much hunting I had to do on the new and totally unimproved Twitter to find the original tweet thread wherein I did this...lol.
This was one of the first things I did creatively after being rescued from Roanoke...make a new head for Sim. It was partly just because well...I wanted to, and partly to explain to a friend online how I did it in the first place. Also I just like to take things and make them smaller every now and then. So the world got a mini recreation of the TV head from 2020.
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| "Perfect fit", you say? I can't see anything! |
It all starts with my hoard of tiny cardboard boxes. Luckily I save these things when I find them, assuming I'm not making more of them when I'm bored. In this case, I had an array of Boxy Girls boxes to choose from, as well as potentially the TV-shaped box Danboard came in. That one's more of a console TV size, though. The smallest size Boxy box won the contest.
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| We all have that one pair of scissors the public at large are allowed to touch. |
This is basically all I needed for the construction, and the acetate was optional - I ended up not using it for this one. Not pictured are things I added: toothpicks, PVA glue, and some tissue paper.
Much like with the original, I traced around one of the sides onto a piece of cardboard (a cereal box) and cut five or six squares. Since these were going on the inside, they didn't have to be exact. They all got glued into the inside of the box to shore it up.
I cut the pointy ends off some toothpicks and liberally glued these into the corners and seams for more strength.
Measured against the general size of the neck knob (at this point Sim was on a Duchess body, but the knobs on those and Monster High are about the same) and carved into the bottom of the box.
I'd left the top flaps open specifically for this part - sketching out and cutting the screen hole. It didn't have to be pretty, because I was putting a facing over the outside anyway, and still going for that cartoony look the original had.
I sanded around the edges a bit...not that it made much of a difference, lol.
The screen surround didn't have to be perfect either - the key thing here was that it was slightly smaller than the initial hole, to accommodate the material I'd be using for the screen itself.
In the original, this was a large piece of acetate. I could have easily done that here, using the same method to curve the plastic, but instead went for a piece of black felt. This I cut large, glued to the back of the cardboard piece, and then stretched so it would curve outward. I then watered down some glue and used that to stiffen it on the inside. The return of Felt-Tech (TM).
That piece got glued to the front of the box, and then I just tacked the final piece of cardboard on the top to seal that up. I laid on a few layers of tissue paper papier-mache to smooth things out, and scraped out the mouth-grille under the screen. Dropped a couple more dots of hot glue on there for knobs. These ones don't turn.
The aerial in this case is just two pieces of wire bent around a short scrap of toothpick. That got mounted in a blob of hot glue on the top of the box, and I added the classic antenna knobs to the top. They're poseable :D
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| I think the naked bottle is burnt umber. |
Same basic drill as always. Base-Wash-Drybrush. These are all the colors I used for this one. Mod Podge to seal the whole thing at the end.
And there we go. Mini TV head, in under 24 hours.
All her little emoji pieces still work just fine due to the felt adhesion properties - even her glasses. How Sim feels about this is irrelevant. She's me, so if I like it, obviously she does. It's certainly less obnoxious than her original head, and with the added antennae, more expressive.
Now I have to do this in two more sizes.
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