i'm especially happy with the gemstones, which are made of transparent worbla & colored with markers. i've made crystals like this for a doll once before, and it was nice to do a design that revolves around them.
🪐more novis!!!! I LOVE THEM!!! and i NEEEED to draw them way more!!!!! today this is una verse from orbit beach collection, i love to draw swimsuits so i just can't ignore these dolls🐠 (actually there was not very many series in all this brand, maybe i can draw at least all my favorite doll releases...)
aaaand the version without background + just line (and refs)
Hey, I found a beanie boo that I liked the design of but I can't stand those giant uguu eyes. Do you think it would be possible to replace them with smaller safety eyes akin to the old beanie babies? If yes, do you have any advice?
I was gonna answer this in a normal way, but then I got curious about trying it for myself and thought I might as well demonstrate!
So, I went and picked up a guy from the supermarket. The selection there was pretty barren today but I found a decent test subject:
Eye replacement procedure below!
(First of all, to my friend who loves beanie boos, I am so sorry for this lmao)
So! First I opened up the closing seam on his back. However, I found an extra mesh barrier inside! Clearly this is to prevent bean escape since this is the most likely seam to accidentally pop open through play. This would be a bit annoying to work around so I just sewed it back up and went in the back of the head instead…
Opened and unstuffed the head…
…And turning it inside out to get to the backs of the eyes. Whoa, these plastic washers are the biggest I’ve ever seen!! Cutting through them will take some work!
Please be very careful of your fingers cutting through these!! Be careful not to cut the fabric around the eye too, but mostly be careful of yourself!
Anyway grrrrrrr attack attack slice slice grrrr
They’re out! With a little glue I think the washers would be able to hold on perfectly well again. I’ll keep these eyes to reuse on something where they’ll be a bit more proportional!
The washers on these eyes are particularly cup shaped, fitting around the back of the eye and holding the fabric tightly against them. Now that the eyes are removed, this has left imprints on the fur!
Plenty of brushing and rumfling will help to fix the creased and flattened areas of fur, and wetting the fur or gently steaming over a hot cup of water should help too. It might take a little time!
(Also, I did make a little cut in the cheek while removing a washer, oops! No worries, that can be stitched up.)
Now we can try on a few new eye styles! Restuff the head for now so you can see how they’ll look.
I have a few sizes of solid black, from teeny dots to absolute tbh creature…
These blue eyes were a little scary… no thanks!
I even have some glittery ones like the original, but smaller! Pretty nice actually!
And even some googly eyes hehehe!
But my favourite eyes were some basic 9mm black ones! They are placed a little funny here, but the position will change a little bit…
The holes left by the original eyes were very big, so a couple of stitches are needed on each one to tighten them up to fit the new eyes. I stitched the top outer corners, to move the holes down and inwards a bit. If you wanted, you could even sew them closed completely and make new eye holes elsewhere!
Unstuff again and pop those new eyes in!
Restuff! You might actually need to add a little extra stuffing, as the fabric not being so pulled around the eyes any more will mean it is a little ‘baggier’.
Then sew the head closed again and that’s about it! The fur is still a little creased around mine, but I’ll keep working at it and it should become less visible.
To add a tiny bit more shape to the big round head, I also did a touch of threadsculpting. I ran a thread from the corner of each eye to below the chin and back, just pulling the eyes in a tad more. You might decide you don’t need this!
*sigh* look gang, I love Mira. I really do, she’s my favorite Huntrix, However she’s got 3 dolls coming out soon & she’s gonna get lots more.
Jinu only has 1 and we want the Saja Boys! Considering Mattel’s bias against boy dolls we need him to win this vote.
That’s not my opinion either the creator flat out said it.
I’m asking respectfully for you guys not to be meme lords for once & vote for Jinu.
Sleeping bag Mira while hilarious, can very easily be customized and replicated meanwhile, demon Jinu’s delicate screening, unique colors and tiny intricate details are not so easy to repeat.
One of the worst things about the modern doll industry is the lack of fashion packs from every doll line besides Barbie. In the 2000s and even in the earlier 2010s you could go anywhere and there would be fashion packs worth purchasing that felt high quality and worth the money. Now all they got are the same dog shit quality Barbie clothes at every other big box store.
I'm mainly bringing this up because I wish I could change my LDDs clothes, but I can't find any modern doll brands that would fit them. Even if I did find something, I wouldn't want the doll that comes with the clothes. I just want doll clothes. And I certainly don't wanna buy them off Amazon.
Nothing complicated about it for me, that is a very firm no. It is not okay to use generated images for anything, but especially not for selling a product or anything else that's monetary.
You've probably heard this before, but in case you're new or want more information, let's get you caught up. Generative ai is not ethical, not in the way it's trained, nor in the way it affects our planet. The machines used for all of the AI stuff require so much in the way of resources. It's to the point where entire towns and some small countries are facing real problems with water shortages, water pollution that makes things unsafe to drink/grow crops/take care of basic hygiene, air pollution, noise pollution, and light pollution, because of ai data centers (the places where the machines are run and trained on all this data). It has actively made some places unlivable for people, many of which don't have the option to just move somewhere else. When your technology is producing results that actively harm people, it's really hard for me to get into it. And that's not even getting into stuff like ChatGPT and how it's actively hurting people's mental health/causing skill degradation. That's not strictly generative ai, and it's complicated, so I'm gonna let someone else handle that topic, but know that it IS a part of the large ai web of problems.
Besides that, most of the images and media that generative ai is trained on are not things the people and companies that make them have the legal rights to use. Most of that data is stolen, taken from artists without consent, violating contracts, copyrights, etc. As someone who is an artist and has been honing my craft for most of my life, I have a real issue with people trying to replace us with machines, especially when it's all built on theft, and the machines don't even do a good job. It makes you look cheap when you fire a bunch of employees and replace them with machines for something like art. And in some cases, it also makes you look lazy and incompetent.
The Corpse Bride Skullector doll that Mattel put out? Prime example. The box art looked atrocious, and that's one of those dolls that you would keep the packaging on, because she's built to have the box as a part of her display. You are taking a character and movie beloved by millions, and you can't be bothered to do your research or ask the copyright holder for a brand kit or stock images to be used for this purpose? Like, this could have been done in a couple of hours in Photoshop with way cleaner results that would have had fans cheering. This could have been kit bashed, photo manipulated, illustrated, this could have been literally anything else.
Dolls are an art form, they take time to make and thoughtfully put together. Now that I've spent some time as a doll customizer, there's a lot I've learned about dolls. Fabric lays differently on them than humans, so designing outfits and layering takes some real skill. What your materials feel like, how much they shed, how they attach, their textures, their sculpting, it's all a PROCESS. A machine doesn't know that though, it can't think about those things and account for them. It can't make meaningful choices about the art, because it doesn't know what a choice is.
It makes me not trust how your doll was designed when I see generative ai on your packaging. It makes me inclined to believe that you aren't creative and are just pumping out products, because you think your audience has less intelligence and will spend their money on slop. That's not a good feeling. That's frankly insulting to me as a consumer.
And it's doubly insulting when it comes to play line dolls, things meant to be loved by children as their primary audience. Children's toys are a valuable tool for their development and growth. They teach them all kinds of things, from motor skills to creativity and imagination. A toy that's meant to stimulate the imagination should have real imagination put into it. Children deserve better. Frankly everyone deserves better, but the children especially deserve better.
So yeah, I'm not into giving you my money for tiny plastic people when you can't be bothered to care about the real humans who buy them and how your choices affect them. That's uncool. I expect better.
Oh--in regard to possibly printing the patterns, Mandarake lists the magazine dimensions, and we can use those to determine print size for the patterns...roughly.
Random samples find Dolly Dolly listed as:
• 280mm x 215mm
• 280mm x 210mm
• 285mm x 225mm
• 280mm x 220mm
So we can probably assume 280mm tall is good
Random samples of DollyBird are:
• 300mm x 220mm (this measurement set appeared twice in the sample)
• 300mm x 215mm
• 305mm x 215mm
so we can probably scale DollyBird at 300mm tall
I'm going to experiment with printing a pattern eventually
Patterns designed for Barbie bodies from before 1999. This one should be read in the order of Japanese books, which seems like back to front to westerners
This next one is American and requires an Internet Archive account to check out. It's crochet, from 2002
In this fabulous fashion collection created by an acclaimed knitwear designer, you'll find more than 75 fabulous patterns, invitingly illust
A little more text-heavy (interviews with designers) than the other Japanese doll pattern magazines
pattern doll blythe clothes
doll pattern clothes
Spanish language, very late 80s/early 90s
Barbie patterns doll
I've exhausted the search terms I can think of for now
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