Introducing Emi!

Emi, the new doll. She has light skin with yellow undertones, dark brown eyes and brown hair gathered up in a bun, with bangs and two curls around her ears. She is wearing a sleeveless gown with a sweetheart neckline. The bodice is white satin with a subtle scroll pattern,  and the skirt is sparkly all over and starts off sky blue, then gradually turns into dark blue at the hem. It's gathered into folds at the hips, while the front of the dress appears flat. There's a golden belt with a scroll pattern, and at the center is a magenta gem surrounded by a ring of pearls. There's also a gold circlet decorated with a magenta gem and two pearls.Meet Emi, my third doll! I’m happy with how she turned out, even though the dolls are always a lot more work than I anticipate. She is intended to be Japanese or have Japanese ancestry, and her name is pronounced like “Amy,” not “Emmy.” I’m glad to have her join Mia and Leyla, and I hope to do a better job of getting new dolls out! (One a month may have been overly optimistic.)

One thing to note about the PDFs: I was asked to provide a doll with less revealing underwear, so I put a dress on the base dolls. Most of the outfits will work fine with this dress, and given my propensity for drawing outfits that use a lot of virtual fabric, those that prefer the more modest doll base will probably be able to enjoy most of the things I draw. I made the original underwear pretty minimal so I can do more interesting mermaid designs without worrying that the underwear would show, and any mermaid designs I do will not take the dress into account. Each PDF for the dolls now contains both versions, and I’ll also separate the dolls from the dresses and have them available as Gumroad downloads.

I feel like I want to try to get ahead this month, so that I have posts ready to go before it’s time to post them and I can concentrate on doing something fun for Halloween. It felt good when I was able to do that before, but then a week-long vacation wiped out my buffer. I’ll probably do several dresses in the same theme, to cut down on the research and design time. Help me choose the theme!

Next week you’ll probably see whatever wins the poll, or appears to be winning the poll when I get started! Don’t forget that you can now download combined color and black and white PDFs of all of my 2014 dolls and outfits for free! Also follow me on Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest for sneak previews, paperdoll thoughts and lots of very pretty dresses. If you enjoy my work, I’d also appreciate your support through Patreon.


Red Tank Top and Gray Yoga Pants Inspired By Echo in Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse

Click for larger version; click for the list of dolls.

So Brian and I watched Firefly and Serenity earlier this year, and I completely fell in love with the show. I haven’t yet seen any of Buffy or Dr. Horrible, but when I heard about Dollhouse I decided that this time I wouldn’t let Joss Whedon’s next potential hit pass me by, and I’ve been watching it on Hulu. I watched the first episode with Brian, and the next few on my own (my husband having bailed muttering jokes about “quantum leap with spas” and so on). Just as the hype had it, the second episode was better than the first, the overall beginning was kind of weak and episode six was tons of fun. The show is about an organization (the Dollhouse of the title) that removes the memories and personalities from their “volunteers” and hires them out as perfect human beings implanted with the personality and skills necessary for whatever job the client wants. In between jobs, the “dolls” are returned to a childlike state (one poster on the Whedonesque blog noted that they sounded a lot like lolcats — I has a book! — and I wish I could unread that because now I can’t not crack up at some lines) and spend the days in comfy clothes, doing yoga and eating lettuce. I’ve liked the subtle costuming so far, even if there aren’t the opportunities for fantasy like there were with Firefly.

I think Topher’s rather put-upon assistant Ivy is going to end up being the programmer Topher talked about in, I think, episode four — Topher seems to think that his rival Yuma Takahashi is definitely a guy, and rejects the idea that whoever disrupted the programming could be a girl when his assistant suggests it, but Yuma is a suggestive sort of name. “Yuma” seems girly to me, and there’s at least one actress with the name, but “Yuuma” seems more like a guy’s name; I wouldn’t expect Topher to know the difference. (The captions had it as “Yuma,” but that doesn’t signify much, I think.) Anyways, that’s my contribution to the rampant speculation, and I hope I’m right because I look forward to her smacking him down at some point. (For some reason I can so see a bewildered Topher with a line like “I thought all their names ended in ‘ko’?” A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.) For her to be the person who contacted Ballard seems like it might be too obvious, though.

Edit, April 6 – on rewatching Grey Hour, Topher says, I think, “Yumio” while the subtitles say “Yuma.” Yumio being a pretty manly name, I’m not so attached to my theory as I once was!