At about the 10th custom I'd created I reached a point where I had so many ideas running around in my head that I just needed to get them out. If I'd been smarter I'd have sat down with my sketch book and just sketched them out and set them aside to work out at my leisure. But I was far too excited about customizing for that, I wanted to see my ideas come to life and I wanted to see it right away. This, of course, means that the customs I created at this time ranged from ok to meh to holy crap I can't believe I'm signing my name to this.
Daisy Chain, for example, falls into the "ok" category. She was made of a bait Seashell with bad stains and discolourations on her body and puffy paint in her hair. The body repaint is not my best work (the fact that I never sealed her has not improved the quality of the paint job in the years since.) I probably should have ripped out her original hair and rerooted her, seeing as it's rather dry. Instead I just took the shortcut of cuttng out the puffy paint. But I still love the interconnected TAF design of her symbols. I actually love it so much that I'll most likely recreate this custom at some point in the future.
Falling into the "meh" category would be Stardust. The original sketch for this pony wasn't bad. Very little about her execution, however, went well. She was made from a Streaky who had a drastic haircut, symbol rubs, and some discolourations. She was my first attempt at dyeing a pony, and it didn't go well. I used a container that was too shallow, which resulted on her sitting on the bottom, which resulted in splotches of dye on her body rather than a nice uniform colour. Well, she was going to be a TAF pony anyway, we'll just cover those with her symbols. Ah but the symbols...too impatient to paint the details on then add glitter, I once again turned to shimmer gel pens. Well, they turned out pretty well, but not without a lot of smudging and touching up prior to (and during) the sealing process. Her hair was donated by fakies, resulting in crusty dry hair. I do like the colour, however.
Finally, as an example of the "really not great" category, is Valentino (I should point out at this juncture that my camera is quite forgiving of these customs.) Obviously, Valentino is a reimagining of the Hasbro white baby Valentine pony. He was made of a Steamer with serious pony cancer, regrind, and other body discolourations. His hair was also extremely dry and frizzy, but his body was rock hard and, at the time, I was not equiped to deal with removing and rerooting the hair. He was given a full body repaint (which actually turned out not too badly) but here was where I made my mistake. I dyed his hair red
after the body repaint. Naturally, this lead to blotches of dye getting on the nice, white body. Some I was able to remove, but some stained. That's why Valentino's symbol has an extra little pink heart over the big red one. Other stains are still fairly obvious in person.
Valentino, and in fact the whole Valentine family (
Valentine and
Li'l Hugs & Kisses,) were a bit of a wake up call. I realized that I was rushing too much through the customizing process. It's no good rushing to see the finished product when you're not happy with that product because you've rushed too much. After this brilliant realization, I began taking more time with my customs, planning them out better and working slowly. Just as I was beginning to think maybe customizing wasn't for me after all, things started to turn around.
More on that next time...
(see more of Elf's early customs on her
DA page.)
Elf
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