I always feel like I can never really fully evaluate a doll till after I've painted it and restrung it. So now that all that is taken care of, I can mention a few points about these 2. Also fair warning: I'm very picky so there are a lot of little things that really bother me and there are very few doll body sculpts that I really like a lot.
First off, Socrates, my Antares: I looooove that face and unfortunately I don't have a proper wig for him yet. The one I want for him won't arrive till late January with an order I have from RingDoll. So he should look a bit better with his proper silver/grey wig once it gets here. Most people seem to prefer Sabik, but the Antares sculpt is definitely my favorite and having him in person certainly enforces that.
His body however.... -_- Ug, the anatomy is sooo off in so many places it's crazy. I think that in order to make him tall they stretched him out in parts where they shouldn't have, like between the bottom of his thigh muscles and the top of his knee caps. And the space between the bottom of his chest and the top of his stomach. The sculpting of the upper arms was so off that I wasn't quite sure what to do when I was blushing... if I should try to correct it some with color or what. The extremely skinny legs bother me the most. I don't like whole body being so skinny over all, but wearing clothes he should be fine. But those skinny legs... they are shaped so that the legs curve too far backwards and that looks terrible to me. It would have been nice if the legs were at least a bit thicker mid-calf and didn't bow backwards so far.
One good thing about him (at least I think it's good) is that he's very light. In spite of his height, I think he's even lighter than my Iplehouse SID Lee.
Mao, my Bellatrix on the other hand is VERY heavy. You'd think 2 totally different companies had made these dolls. In contrast to the male Mecha Angel body being too thin in many areas, the female body is too stocky and could stand to have much better curves. The knees are too thick, her feet are too small compared to the rest of her body (I think both male and female have the same feet). Soom's female sculpts are always too long between the top of the hips and the crotch area. Wrists are a bit too thick and manly. The inner wall of the bottom of the upper torso is too thick which makes the mid-torso joint not look or work very well.
For some reason, her face looks droopier from a straight on view to me than it did in the advert pics. But when I look at her from other views she looks better.
I had wanted Bellatrix in normal but Soom told me that she was only available in Tawny. The pictures are not true to her color irl, but the tawny is pretty orange/pink, a little more on the orange side. Maybe she'll yellow to something a little less vibrant later. *crosses fingers*
I know I did a lot of criticizing, but I do love the 2 still overall. I think they will both look fantastic once I get outfits all sewn up for them.
But here's a few shots of the two post-painting but pre-sewing:
