Magic Wiki Dress #1: Purple Gown with Black Tulle Skirt and White Shift

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Wikipedia was never as fun as my Magic Wiki Dress, at least for me anyways. I loved watching things shift from dinosaurs to masquerades back to dinosaurs, and so on. Brian was at Recent Changes Camp 09, a conference at wikis, this last week (which is what inspired the post in the first place) and he reported that Ward Cunningham, the inventor of the wiki, said at the “Creation Myths of Wiki” session that for a wiki to really work, “you have to believe that not done is better than done.” A perfectionist like me doesn’t always get that, but I feel like I did while watching the wiki get edited. I could let it go all year and see what people come up with — and I definitely want to draw some of the other outfits it produced. But to make things simple, I gave it a deadline this time, and this was the last outfit that got posted before noon on the 21st. I don’t like how the sheer purple part turned out, I forgot all about the gloves, the silver scrollwork turned into black scrollwork somewhere along the line and I took some artistic license on the shift, but I think it turned out pretty nicely! It was definitely interesting to draw…


Esmeralda’s Red Dancing Dress (Disney Princess Jewels Series Collection, Liana Remix)

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So Esmeralda got two votes from my call for non-Disney princess characters to draw in the “Jewels” collection style (and I’ve been convinced I must do something with Hyacinth Hippo, incidentally, but not today), so that makes her the winner. I decided that although I like her normal outfit, it was too practical to princessize, so I looked at the dress she wears to dance. In truth, my version is still not glitzed up enough to be a proper part of the Jewels line; if I was sewing a real dress, the proper next step would be to hand it to a team of 7-year-olds along with sequins, laces, a Bedazzler and ropes of pearls and let them go nuts. (I still can’t find any pictures online of the Jewels version of the Disney Princesses, so click here for a scan of my Kleenex box, showing Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Belle in full Jewels regalia, if a little water damaged. Now, you’ll see why I say mine is too plain — and why I think Sleeping Beauty is wearing a Venus fly-trap.)


Princess Garnet’s White Gown from Final Fantasy IX

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Brian finished Final Fantasy IX recently, and since I’ve always loved the gown that Garnet a.k.a. Dagger wears at the beginning and end of the game, I just had to paperdoll it. For cutting this one out, it ought to work to cut the sleeve around the ends, and then both arm and sleeve go above the skirt. I am tempted to do a “Fancy Gowns of Final Fantasy Games” series…

Once again, Verithin pencils to the rescue with those vines. I love those things.

Don’t forget to vote for the mermaid tail for next Monday:


Oz’s Female Form From The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

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After the eighteen hour exercise in class consciousness, eternally frustrated romance and parade of death that was North and South (I tease, I tease — actually I really enjoyed it, but it was somewhat hard to take at times), I thought that perhaps I would enjoy something lighter. So I’m now listening to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. Of course I’ve seen the movie, but I’ve never read the book before. I wasn’t sure about the paperdolling opportunities — Dorothy is too young, the Good Witch of the book is Munchkin-sized — and thought that I might be doing a Wicked Witch of the West outfit from this one. (And I may yet do so…) But there’s a part where Oz appears to the Scarecrow as a beautiful fairy, and the description says that she “was dressed in green silk gauze and wore upon her flowing green locks a crown of jewels. Growing from her shoulders were wings, gorgeous in color and so light that they fluttered if the slightest breath of air reached them.”

Now, after years of paperdolling, I cannot possibly read a paragraph like that one without thinking “Bingo!”…

So here is my interpretation of Oz’s female representation. I must confess, too, that if this hadn’t shown up I’d be drawing one of the Emerald City court ladies. I haven’t drawn anything green for a while, and it’s my favorite color!