Monster High Ghoulia - A Warrior Goddess Doll Custom (Part 3)

A slight change of plan...

Ok I'll admit it - when it comes to ideas, I'm a bit of a magpie! This means that sometimes (often) when I'm in the middle of making something I change my whole angle...

What happened? Well, instead of Ghoulia becoming an interpretation of the goddess of war Adrestia, she's turned into something a bit different...

From this...

To this...

So what happened? 

If any of you have ever heard of Warhammer, you might know what I'm talking about when I say that Ghoulia turned into a Daemonette of Slaanesh.

And if you don't know Warhammer, you might think 'A who of whatnow?'

So, Chris and I have dabbled a bit in painting and occasionally playing with Warhammer miniature figure (I know, nerd-alert!). But they do some really cool fantasy creature designs and I suddenly thought, 'Wow, wouldn't one of these miniatures be cool as a bigger doll, in my own interpretation of their designs?' So that's what happened.

But what is a Daemonette of Slaanesh? Well, you've heard of the four horsemen of the apocalypse: War, Death, Famine and Pestilence, right? The Warhammer story has its own version of these made into the 4 gods of Chaos: Khorne, Tzeentch, Slaanesh and Nurgle.

Slaanesh in this universe is a god of hunger, not for food but for pleasure and hedonism, and the daemonettes are the sort of lusty creatures that could convince a person to give in to absolute pleasures. A bit like a siren I suppose, but way uglier - so I wanted to make mine more beautiful.

And lore aside, I just think the concept is really cool - a mix of sexy, fierce and dark, with black, rich purples and silver. Plus lots of swirling symbols, which is what I tried to achieve with the carvings into her armour. This part wasn't easy and took me ages - all the black symbols and shapes you see on the armour aren't just painted on, but carved in.

Apoxie can handle being carved and sanded, but nevertheless it was a fiddly task. I'm really happy with how it turned out though, so I think it was worth it.

I also added some thin leather straps because I didn't want to just glue the armour onto the body. So the armour pieces are partially removable, if you were to unslot the hand and knee joints. But I'd rather just leave her limbs where they are now!


What did I learn on this project?

The main thing I learnt is that heavy, cumbersome heads can be pretty tricky to deal with! Despite the spiral being sculpted around a polystyrene base, it's still pretty heavy and this poor girl can't stand up without some extra support. I probably should have introduced a wire running through the neck joint to help her head pose more reliably, but hey, always trying new things means always learning new things! ☺

If you enjoyed reading this, let me know! Have you ever tried sculpting off a doll head or making armour pieces? What materials do you use? Share some love with a like or a comment below!