Hello.
Personally, I don’t like Rochelle’s colour theme and her HUGE eyes when she’s a doll design I would have loved otherwise. I don’t like the blue-green highlights in her hair, and her usually too-bright pink lipstick. I’m not that big a fan of pink, so her pink accessories are a hit and miss with me too. But I bought Rochelle because I saw a custom which had looked pretty good. While staring at the custom, I noticed the cracked details on her wings. As I was staring at the cracks on her wings, just like that, I had a character all thought up to go with Nikolai and Sasha. (It helped that I knew she was available at the local TRU too.) I bought her weeks after fleshing out the character Royce, and only managed to unbox her earlier this month. =)
Boo.
When I’d bought her, I was still bothered by her huge eyes. But after staring at her in person for quite a bit, her eyes kinda grew on me. *laughs* BUT the pink lips and light-brown eyebrows definitely have got to go. I’m not even sure why she has brown eyebrows when they could have gone for grey. *_*
Royce is blind, and I intend to redo her faceup so that she has closed eyes. It’s too bad I can’t keep her as she is though. I had hoped her hair might be okay, since it’s troublesome to make a wig for the ears, but there are bald spots around her ears. -Bad- spots.
According to our story, Bein did a bad job attaching weaves to Royce’s scalp. =D
Rochelle’s hair is also greasy/sticky. I’ve read that it’s from the glue in the head, but I’ve had no luck washing the ick out of her hair from the advice given. And with the humid heat of my place, I have a feeling the glue will keep oozing out of her head. -_- As I have no choice but to scalp her, I’ll don’t feel too bad customising the whole of her. The bad news is, I don’t really know what I want on her head. *laughs*
Okay, let’s just do a quick “first impressions” review. =D
Out of the box!
The whole basic Royce set is sooo lovely. I could have gone for the cheaper Scaris Royce, but the basic one had such a pretty outfit! I did think it was strange that while the skirt was so pretty, the top was plain cotton. It doesn’t feel like they match well material-wise, but overall, I really like her outfit. And her accessories are adorable! The black handcuff, the earings and the necklace. Really lovely. =D
Cute bag and lovely shoes!
Her shoes are sooo lovely! I was so glad they’re not pink! =D The delicate pink socks paired with them are lovely though. =D
Her little pet is cute too, and I liked it, which probably helped justify the price a bit.
A stone griffin!
He’s all rubber instead of hard plastic. He was quite clumsily glued together, but you don’t really notice the shiny bits of glue unless you’re up close. =) The detail is so lovely.
Oh, and here’s her beautiful cracked wings. =D
Cracked!
The CAM Gargoyle has no cracks on his wings. The cracks were what inspired Royce to be a “faulty” gargoyle.
All in all, I could have been perfectly happy with basic Rochelle if it weren’t for the icky hair and bad rooting. I know I would have had a harder decision of customising her if it weren’t for the hair issue. =D
A little info about Royce:
While on a trip, Nikolai and Sasha came across Royce. Royce was a stone gargoyle, like Sasha, who had been given life. She doesn’t know who her creator is; she had been told she was useless because she couldn’t see, and was abandonned. Nikolai felt sorry for her and took her in. He was the one who named her, and gave her a more normal form. Nikolai adores his Royce and makes sure she has pretty dresses to wear because he likes looking at pretty things.
Royce has very strong magic; she managed to immerse her magic into the stones of Nikolai’s castle, and it’s become an extension of her. She is able to use the castle’s stone to help sense things, especially the location of people within its walls.