My first attempt at a simple custom; need help with manes and tails

[h2g2guy]

Let me start off by saying this:  I'm relatively new to MLP, and I'm VERY new to customizing ponies.  I've read and watched so many tutorials online for making a custom pony, and decided to try my hand at it.  It didn't go very well, so I'm looking toward you all to hopefully give me some constructive criticism...and I know I need a lot of it! 

My goal was to make a more-or-less show accurate Rainbow Dash without needing to remane her.  Therefore, my test subject was a G4 Rainbow Dash.  Though I was trying to keep it simple by not painting her or remane-ing her, it turned out to be much more difficult than I expected!

The long version of the story:

Spoiler

After soaking her in a very hot bath, the head came off more or less easily.  I don't have the tools to remane her, so I decided to keep it simple for my first attempt.  I figured that I'd just cut and style the red, orange, and yellow parts to make her forelock (I guess that's what it's called?), cut a little of the green for her tail, and dye the rest of the green to make the rest of the colors for her mane.  The parts of the red, orange, and yellow that I cut off would go into the tail.  After cutting and styling, she looked GREAT, and there was much rejoicing. 

To get ready to work with the tail, I used a very pointy nail file to cut around almost the entirety of the neck plug.  I left the bit at the front of the neck glued on, as per some advice I had found on a YouTube video. 

The first issue came when preparing the tail:  I didn't have nearly enough length in the red hair.  But that was something I could deal with; I knew that as my first custom, this wouldn't come out exactly as I wanted.  After bundling all of the colors together and sticking them together with hot glue (huge mistake #1), I got it squeezed back into the body and coming out of the tail hole.  This, again, came out better than I could have imagined (though I wish I had taken the time to separate the blue from the purple in the original tail).  After a quick shampoo and conditioning, it fell perfectly into place and looked wonderful. 

Back to the head.  I found a blue fabric marker and started coloring the green hair on the mane.  This worked out decently, though it ended up looking more aquamarine than blue.  Again, no matter, it's not gonna look perfect the first time, anyway.  I let that sit to dry overnight. 

The following morning, in adjusting the tail, I pulled just a bit too hard on the short red hair and yanked all of it out (huge mistake #2).  Taking the optimistic route, I figured that when I went out to buy a purple marker that day for dying the rest of the mane, I'd just pick up a red one for the tail, too.  There was too much orange in that tail, anyway. 

I bought a set of rainbow colored Sharpies (huge mistake #3).  They seemed to be exactly what I was looking for:  permanent, vibrant colors, and when colored onto the hair, it produced colors that matched almost exactly the original coloring!  I was ecstatic!  After rubbing the hair with paper towels and my fingers to make sure that it was entirely dry, I set her down. 

A few hours later, I came back, discovering to my horror that the orange hair that I colored red had left stains on her body, and that the green hair I colored purple had stained her face!  But it was completely dry, I told myself.  Testing just to make sure, I ran the hair between my fingers:  no stain.  I rubbed it on a paper towel:  no stain.  Since the body was already ruined, I tried rubbing it on the body again; lo and behold, the supposedly dry ink rubbed right off!  And there was no getting this off:  aside from the fact that I had no acetone handy, it got all over her cutie mark, which I don't by any stretch of the imagination have the skills to recreate.

At this point, I turned to experimentation.  What if I shampooed the hair again?  Sure enough, the bowl of hot water that I used to rinse the hair after shampooing turned the same color as the hair I was washing.  Not only that, but a lot of the color actually came out of the hair:  the coloring was no longer nearly as smooth as I had made it!  So much for permanent ink!  (An aside:  I could be wrong, but when I did the same test on the hair tinted with the fabric marker, there was no color bleed.)

Finally, I wanted to see how difficult it would be to get the head back on.  After crazy gluing the plug back onto the neck (without any significant sanding or filing, I should add), and after about 10 minutes of drying, I heated up the head with 15 seconds of a hair dryer on low, making it nice and soft.  But when I tried to push it on, the glue gave, and the plug slipped into the neck!  I tried this several times, each time using more glue and waiting longer for the glue to set, but I just couldn't get the head back on. 

Now I have a light blue/blood red pony body with a rainbow (minus red) tail and a light blue/purple pony head with a rainbow mane.  And she looks so sad 

I just realized that my story is far, far too long.  If you're interested in the long version, read above; maybe there are some things I should be asking that I don't know to ask.  Otherwise, I've boiled down the story to the questions that are currently swirling around in my mind (all talking about G4 ponies):

• Should I dye the hair on the pony, thereby avoiding the tedium of remane-ing her when she really doesn't need it, or should I resign to buying doll hair and that tool online?
• If I dye her mane, how do I do so?  What kind of dyes work well on MLP hair?  Also, how do you go about securing the hair for the tail when you can't double it up with a washer?
• If I instead replace her mane, what's the best way to go about remane-ing a pony?

Thanks so much for reading through all this, and thanks especially for any advice you may have to offer.  Of course, if you have any general tips for newbies like myself or anything at all to say about how I'm attacking this project, I'm all ears.  Thanks again!

[Griffin]

Aww don't worry, mistakes happen to the best of us.

Sharpies or any kind of markers are not good for pony customizing. Either they don't stick, or they bleed, or otherwise may ruin your hard work. For dying, you need fabric dye, I think most people use RIT (for bodies as well as hair). The powder kind, apparently the liquid kind won't work as well, if at all. (I myself haven't dyed a single pony so my information is solely based on what I've read here...)

Rehairing is actually not hard at all. For a rainbow mane like RD's it would probably be easier and quicker to rehair than to try and dye strands in several colours. G4s don't need much hair, so you could try asking if someone here has leftover hair in the colours you need so you wouldn't need to order full hanks from Dollyhair. I use the needle & thread method but I guess most customizers prefer the tool, it's the quickest way to rehair.

Best of luck, I'm sure whatever you do she'll end up looking good. And even if not, take it as a learning experience - you'll only do better next time!

[hopelessfem29]

Im a newbie as well and i to just finished my first custom after extensive research both here and through counteess google searches in my experience useing a rehairing tool atleast for me was much easier than the plug method most use ,i dont have the patience to make hundreds of plugs and with needle and thread pull them through one by one , like you im not sure i like my first custom either, i repainted her 4 times because i didnt like how she was turning out, i bought hair from a thriftstore to redo her it was a great shade of purple, not sure what it was there was no actual pacaging but was nylon hair, and in the end i didnt like the look of it , (done useing the plug method) so  i  pulled it out thankfully i hadent glued it , as for the doll hair tool i wasnt about to spend 10 to 14 dollars to by one  so i went and bought a huge pack of needles and just cut the eyes aat an angle my self with wire cutters, they do break easy i learned , but cut a needle at an angle across the eye preferebly and embrodiary needle and stick the sharp end in to a dowel or a pencil eraser and wala rehairing tool,  i ended up useing emdroidry thread for her hair perfect size for the plugs (i customized a large g3 rarity unicorn) and best of all sooo many color choices i used some metalic thread i had and i love they way it came out , i also used spray paint to paint her with once i decided to rehair her acter my first go didnt turn out well cause the paint bled through the tape i used to cover her mane and tale, if you use super glue make sure its not the cheap stuff use krazy glue , the cheap stuff dosent hold, i to learned that the hard way... i made a lot of mistakes and will gladly help you any way i can...just pm me . best of luck hope my long winded explination helped.
PS to remove sharpie use a magic ereaser or a dry erase marker, cover the perm parker with dry erease and wipe witha warm rag the dry erease eats the perm marker, if all else fails doa complete body repaint take a pic of her cutie mark and work from it

[h2g2guy]

Great, thanks so much for all the information!


My mother's been insisting that these fabric markers of hers will work, so I'm obligated to give them a try .  At least I have a willing test subject, and I can try them out and test for bleeding without potentially ruining another pony! 


I really, REALLY would like to use a dying method for my next attempt, because I'd like to have most of the work done by the end of this weekend, and if I'm buying hair, I'll probably be doing so online.  Also, before I ruined the body of the pony, this first attempt looked simply beautiful!


But thanks to both of your suggestions, I think ultimately I'm going to make another RD by rehairing in the coming weeks.  I have very little creativity, so recreating something that I know and love would be easier and more fun than me creating something of my own at this point!  Besides, I need some practice with this stuff!


hopelessfem29, it's nice to hear from another novice pony customizer!  I'm leaning away from the tool method at this point, simply because I don't want to be playing around with too much glue.  I'm not a huge fan of mixing hair and glue, especially after my first attempt at a tail! 


One other question for you guys:  How do I go about reattaching the head?  This is one bit that's been puzzling me, and I've had significant trouble with finding a tutorial on the subject!


Thanks again for all your help.  And if you (or anyone else!) happen to think up more tips for me, I'm still all ears!

[SummerSkye]

Ok, I *just* finished my first G4 custom tonight and learned to rehair this week so...

One other question for you guys:  How do I go about reattaching the head?  This is one bit that's been puzzling me, and I've had significant trouble with finding a tutorial on the subject!

Bc of the swivel mech in there, this was really a pain in the butt. Had to cut it out to get a new tail in there and then sand the heck out of it to get to sit back in there properly. Hot glue didnt work at all so I super glued the inner piece then just popped the head on. I still want it to be able to turn.

It's so worth it to learn to rehair. Its SO much easier than I thought and actually a great thing to do while watching tv. G/l and no sharpies!

[h2g2guy]

Excellent, thanks for the info!


I really do want to learn how to rehair, and I certainly will be doing so in the next few weeks, but I'd really like to have a decent finished product that I can call my own 'creation' when I return to college this Sunday, and I doubt I'd be able to get the hair in time. 


I feel like I'm willing to try a new hobby now because I have a bunch of free time, and that if I don't have even a mediocre creation of my own when I get back to the college grind, I'll have no impetus to continue.  There's no way for me to say to myself that I have the ability to get something done.


On the other hand, if I have my own little Dashie staring me down every day, I'll be able to prove to myself that I can accomplish something, which is all it takes to keep me going! 


But I digress.  Actually, I digressed a heck of a lot. 


Thanks again for the advice!  I'm looking forward to trying my hand at rehairing a pony.  And I think I'll pick up a tube of super glue for reattaching the head; based on my experiments, krazy glue doesn't have NEARLY enough sticking power!


Oh, and hopelessfem29, I got your PS.  I totally forgot about that method of getting rid of permanent marker, but I thought that was just for whiteboards or other similar surfaces?  Oh well, worth a shot anyway!  I'll let you all know how it goes; thanks again!

Post Merge: March 09, 2012, 09:34:12 PM

No time for a long post right now, but I wanted to keep you three updated:


As expected (and as you all mentioned!), the fabric markers were USELESS.  Though they did dry very quickly, and didn't stain the pony, they'd wash out entirely with just a little shampoo!


So I picked up two new RD's and started doing some rehairing...and after just 16 plugs, I'm totally addicted to it!  The only complaint that I have is that knotting donor hair from a mane is SO TEDIOUS due to its short length!  (Also, my thread keeps breaking, but that can be remedied with...er...stronger thread or wire  )


Thanks so much for all of your suggestions and advice!  I can't wait to get back to work tomorrow!