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Introducing Emi!

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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!

poll by twiigs.com

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.

Meet Ivy, the first in my new paper doll series!

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Click for larger version with gown (PNG); click for PDF version with gown. Click for larger version without gown (PNG); click for PDF version without gown.

Welcome Ivy to the paperdoll blog family! I’ll miss working with Sylvia and Iris, but they aren’t going anywhere, so you can always go back and look at them and their clothes. With the new scanner, I really needed a change, and I was getting enough requests for new dolls that I wanted to do something about it…

I have big plans for this model of paper doll. The base doll is actually bald and faceless – that means I can draw hair and faces separately and add them on with Photoshop, making it easier to have different options. I’m also drawing the doll itself differently this time. If you look at Iris, she was traced off of Sylvia, and that meant that it was easier to introduce mistakes – the paper shifted, it was difficult to see, and I drew some lines differently – so parts like the arms and legs are different. If I did a third doll from the same shape, she would be different from both Iris and Sylvia in some annoying way and it would be harder to fit even more dresses. This time, I have a very faint outline of the body, and the doll is colored right on top of that, meaning that there should be less variation between dolls. So the upshot: it should be easier to make different skin tones, hairstyles / colors and faces. I wonder if you can see where I hope to go with this someday? Well, there’s a lot of work to go between here and there…

The other big change is that I’m going to start offering PDF files of each drawing. For those of you who just like to look at the pretty pictures online, it won’t make much of a difference, but for those of you who actually print things out, using the PDF file instead of the PNG will guarantee that you’ll always have the right size, and the quality should be better as well. (It also means you can zoom in really close and look at all the flaws, but trust me: print it out and it’ll look smashing.)

I like her a lot, and I hope you all do too. I look forwards to making her many lovely outfits!

Sylvia, my new paper doll, with green halter dress

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Click for larger version; click for the doll.

I’ve been thinking of returning to paperdolls for some time now. There’s a lot to re-learn, but I think I did all right… the dress is somewhat quick and dirty, but as usual I labored over the doll for a few days. I hate doing the dolls!

She doesn’t have a name yet. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. But I think again the format will be the “paperdoll blog,” I really enjoyed doing that before. Maybe no one reads the words but me, but I like having the record of my temping days.

Edit: Sylvia is her name.

By the way, this is the start of the new paperdoll series with Sylvia and Iris (and whoever else comes next); if you want more of my paperdolls, click here for my old paperdoll blog!