When I've looked, twice already for an artist to make a daki I've found it incredibly hard to find one willing to make something both high quality and willing to do nude for one side, I understand why they do that limitation but it makes it impossible to give them my business as with a daki, both sides have to be done by the same artist.

There was a point where I was Photoshopping some full res daki samples from Gelbooru, but I lost those when I accidentally wiped my hard drive. It was going so well too, I had finished one side.

Now I think I'll either wait for someone to recommend me an artist, when I also have the income to spend, or end up drawing my own in a few years, when my skill has improved to my own satisfaction.
I've little to no digital colouring experience and my computer sucks so bad input lag from my tablet is an issue.
Suffice to say it's a long way to go in any direction.

I finished a drawing just now.

Someone made me a picture for free and an artist mailed me a keychain of a design he made because I couldn't purchase it overseas.

I've only had a daki of my waifu commissioned but sometime soon I'd like to get a cute picture of her drawn for Christmas.

>>19044
That's a nice artist you found, and the daki looks pretty good! How much does the full daki costs?
My waifu does have some official dakis but they're really expensive and hard to find, so I'll probably get one made once I'll be able to save a bit more money.

>>19049
$80 for a two sided daki. It was $70 at first but went up because of some additions/changes I requested kinda last minute.
I spent a -lot- of time looking for artists and most I've come across were pretty horrible (you wouldn't believe how much furry shit you gotta wade past.). There's two popular artists on deviantart with lots of daki experience that are often recommended but one's expensive as shit $300+ "tonee89", and the other "kimmy77" which is much cheaper but their artwork looks very half hearted and lacking of detail. Also came across a dude called "kahookashii" who was good and did daki before, but he was trying to price gauge me and told me it would cost $300 in spite of the info on his commission price page indicating that it should be half that. Oh and close to a year ago I found a great artist (eventh7) who would have been absolute perfect. They agreed to do a daki for me at $90 and said they'd send a sketch after a week. I checked my inbox every day for months before eventually giving up and starting to search for a new artist...
oh and yeah I messaged them a few times but they ignored em. They still draw though, saw they posted some new stuff like a month ago. I think they decided to stop doing commissions.

I've got two custom daki covers. Both double sided, paid around $150 for the pair of them. I also paid for an art commission of her in a wedding dress for our anniversary this year.

One thing I'd like to do some day is make a custom Nendoroid of her. I made a list a while back of current Nendos that I could use to piece together one of her. It'd be a nice little project when I have the money.

>>19051
Frankenstein's waifu?

>>19053
You could say that. Nendoroids are designed to have changeable parts, so it wouldn't be too difficult, aside from painting.

>>19051
Awesome

This was the final result. It's been done for a while but felt like doing some minor edits and cleaning up a few little errors here and there.

Looks great.

>>19094
And the other side. In retrospect the resolution/dpi is a bit low and the art is a little rough but over all it's not half bad I think. After this experience I think I've gained a new understanding and appreciation for why many daki artists charge like $300 for their works. Hopefully it wont look too bad when printed out.

I was thinking of getting it printed here.
http://www.hobbyheart.com/custom-made-dakimakura-hugging-body-pillow-cover-p-6.html
If there's better/cheaper alternatives I sure don't know em.

You made a good artist choice, it looks really good!

>>19096
I ordered from Hobbyheart some years ago, but the stitching was not that great. Might be better now, though.
I was satisfied with
http://www.dakimakuraharem.com/custom-dakimakura-body/175-custom-dakimakura.html#/material-modified_2_way_tricot
but I guess you're not from Europe, they can ship from France.
I also ordered cheap covers from different vendors from Aliexpress (the ones for like 20€), all of them quite good for the price, none had bad stitching. I believe some of them would do custom covers, as well.
But you should to be careful when ordering 2-way covers, mine (one from Aliexpress and one from taobao) had strong smell, I guess that was formaldehyde, couldn't wash that out and had to dispose of the covers.

Whelp, it took a while but it finally showed up today.
Image was placed on it a bit off center to the bottom but otherwise it didn't come out half bad. probably should have gone with a better material too but whatever it's fine.

>>19425
and with the pillow inserted.

>>19425
What type of material is it?

>>19425
>>19426
Wow, looks a lot better than I expected! Might look for a personal commission, myself.

>>19428
I think it's peach skin, but it's a bit shiny and not sure if peach skin is supposed to be. I was considering 2WT but wasn't sure if it'd be for the best.

>>19429
Thanks, although I did have to do a fair bit of work on the image I got with the help of a buddy to increase the restitution and clean up some jaggy lines and some general sloppiness. Which is why it too so long to get the thing made. Just something to keep in mind.

>>19430
Be careful, with peach skin the image can wear pretty badly. But it's really soft. I think it's supposed to be a bit shiny like that. 2 Way Tricot feels more latexey.

Post edited on 22nd Jan 2016, 7:24pm

>>19426
looking super cute

Got a few commissions of her done since she has very little good looking art from her source material. Most of them were bad. because I was pretty inexperienced and dumb at the time about commissioning artists

That one is the second one I got done. For pretty cheap, mind you (like $5) but the artist ended up disappearing and scamming a friend of mine, albeit not for much, so that's that

It's been half a year since I got nothing commissioned of her, mainly because I live in a place it's very hard to get money online, so everything I have (~$200 of virtual game items that I flip every now and then) is very limited and started from scratch. If I could regularly get money online I'd get a lot more commissions, also finding the right artist is very hard. Not the end of the world since my visualizations of her have evolved beyond realistic expectations, but still

I have a figurine of her, and it is quite beautiful, but I didn't even unbox it after moving two years ago. I imagine Nozomi by my side daily, I talk to her, I can see her beautiful smile... At this point I'm not even sure if I need that figurine. Guess I should put it somewhere nice though.

There's another thing that brings me great doubt though. A dakimakura. Getting one would be a dream come true, it would allow me to feel closer to my loved one than ever before. But on the other hand, my ultimate goal is to make her fully real in my mind, to create a tulpa maybe. I don't want to rely on items in order to be with her. So I don't know if getting a daki would feel as good as I imagine it to be, or if it would weaken my imagination.

Side 1 sketch of daki I commissioned. Its kind of rough but I think the final product should look good. I should be getting the final on it tomorrow then my artist said he'll start on side 2 which will be her in pjs, it'll be very cute.

>>19762
Side 1 is done, side 2 will be her in pjs.

Put the dont steal on because im paranoid people will take it and print it out

>>19771
It's very pretty, do you mind if I save it?

>>19772
If you really want, as long as no one prints it out as a case im fine with that.

>>19773
I promise I won't. Thank you.

Two years back I tried to get a daki commission with this artist who's skill and style seemed like it would be ideal, but even after accepting the commission decided to stop responding and ignore my messages (as mentioned here >>19050 ). Well a couple months ago I noticed them post some new work and thought "why not?" and messaged them again. As before they agreed to do it, but then started taking longer and longer to respond to each message. So I addressed the issue, and they claimed they were sick, in and out of hospitals and so on for the past two years. People I've talked to say artists do this sort of thing all the time when they don't want to be honest and just admit they're feeling lazy and don't want to work on something. If their story is true though, it makes me feel sorry for them.
Anyways, we worked things out and while it took some time this was the end result. I also made a bit of a mistake before thinking it was $90 for the whole thing, it was per side actually. Guy did give me a discount for the whole two year wait thing though and just charged me $140.

http://eventh7.deviantart.com/art/Commission-Minagi-684243393

>>20525
very nice

I've thought about it, and considering my finances and generally how my lady would make eyebrows raise and judgments form from artists who don't get it; it's not something that I think I'm capable of doing with my present level of anxiety. I've strongly considered getting a 'half-daki' though, so commissioning a torso+head of her, and getting it printed onto a regular sized pillow. This also has the advantage of me not needing to go out and buy a body pillow, and being easier to hide from the judgmental eyes of family that I live with.

Got this drawn recently. Artist is kidakat I believe.

If you're still here yasuo I have this nice surprise for you.

skeb.jp is invaluable if you ever want illustrations commissioned, especially if your waifu is from a series that isn't recent. It's tied into Twitter's infrastructure and consists solely of Japanese artists. You find an artist you like, send a request, hope they accept it at your price point and wait until it's finished. I only use it to commission portraits, but I've seen dakimakura covers on the front page before.

I've recently held some interest in getting a dollfie made of my waifu. Anyone had experience with Volks before?

>>21735
You mean you'll get the parts and send to someone who will paint the face and do the hair for you? I have an odd fascination for BJD myself. Sorry I can't actually help you but I'm curious how you intend to go about it making a custom Dollfie for yourself. I'm guessing getting the parts from volks is the easy part.

>>21736
More like, Volks will be doing everything after I make an appointment with them and give them every detail as to how the dollfie should look. At least, that's the procedure listed on their site. I'm just not sure what details I should give and what stuff I should prepare beforehand.

>>21737
Would you mind posting the link for this? I'm looking at their website and can't find it. I didn't know they make custom stuff themselves, that's interesting.

>>21741
For Super Dollfie at least, the Full Choice option allows you to do just that, but you have to print out relevant materials and bring them down to one of their stores so they have some idea as to what you want. And of course it's also more expensive than the default choices. On top of that, you have to make a reservation with them to go to one of the stores in person, make your order there, and go back 1 to 3 months later (depending on your order) to pick it up in person (and the same person who made the order has to pick it up, so you can't have someone else do it for you). So for us living outside of Japan we also have to travel to Japan twice in the space of three months, if it takes that long.
https://dollfie.volks.co.jp/sd/model/fullchoice/

Dollfie Dream has a similar Dream Choice, but I'm not sure if that option allows you to bring down materials to have the assembly handled by them like that. In exchange however, you can have it assembled within the day.
https://dollfie.volks.co.jp/dd/model/dreamchoice/

>>21742
That's pretty cool. Looks like all you need to do is bring a lot of printed material containing character design references. Just make a folder with tons of pictures I guess. If your waifu is a well known character, chances are there are already dollfies, azone or even parabox customs of her, I think it would be interesting to print those as well. I'm sure you have already looked into that. Pinterest and Twitter are pretty good places to find custom BJD pictures. I've perused maybe thousands of BJD photos on those two sites. Some of those are truly an artistic achievement.

Looks like you'll be on your own for clothing, but that's a small matter if you managed to go through the process of getting the doll done.

Even if you give up on the idea, making a folder of visual material of your waifu is a pretty nice thing to have and I'm sure it's a very comfy project to work on.

Anyway, keep us posted if you ever decide to move on with this. It's a pretty cool endeavour.

>>21744
Unfortunately nope, she isn't. I was hoping for guidance from someone in a similar situation. I guess I can only rely on official art, then.

As for clothing, they have services for this too, so no need to worry on that part. The main issue here is the cost of having to travel to Japan and back just for this, and potentially needing a second trip as well. So I figured I may as well enjoy stuff at Japan while I'm at it. A full fledged trip + the dollfie will set me back a lot.