doll line visual novel

wip of my personal doll line concept 「EDU-HIGH」, planned to become a visual novel one day. sideblog of @dumbassery-demon.

[edu-high]

attempting to make the current cast in gacha life as an easy way to do some color studies without having to redraw everything why are there like TEN BLACK HAIRSTYLES out of OVER 500 CHOICES. i'm not even looking for anything complicated!! just a grown out buzz cut!!!!! and they have a million straight and wavy buzzes and side shaves and all sorts of bullshit but no. not curly. that's too hard for their entire team of artists apparently.

[edu-high]

they're coming in alphabetical order, one at a time because i don't have much energy rn, so here's Abby's color palette! the lightest parts are supposed to be a rose gold, but that's really hard to convey with a single flat color, and her pants are meant to be pink-dyed blue jeans, so they turn out a bit magenta. ofc these are subject to change if i decide anything else looks better when I draw her "box art", which is gonna be my next project probably after I get all four's colors in order.

[edu-high]

here's Jensen, the hardest so far to make in gacha T~T (I made all the characters colorless first, and am now filling them in like a coloring book- Teri and Wanda exist, they just don't have colors yet). My laptop also seems to hate him, desaturating all his colors and removing any traces of purple, so hopefully the fade to purple in his eyes and galaxy leggings show on other screens, and he stops looking so ashy.. either way, it'll be fine when i draw him, so whatever. I tried recalibrating my monitor a few times to no avail, he looks fine on my phone screen though :(

[edu-high]

attempting to make the current cast in gacha life as an easy way to do some color studies without having to redraw everything why are there like TEN BLACK HAIRSTYLES out of OVER 500 CHOICES. i'm not even looking for anything complicated!! just a grown out buzz cut!!!!! and they have a million straight and wavy buzzes and side shaves and all sorts of bullshit but no. not curly. that's too hard for their entire team of artists apparently.

[edu-high]

they're coming in alphabetical order, one at a time because i don't have much energy rn, so here's Abby's color palette! the lightest parts are supposed to be a rose gold, but that's really hard to convey with a single flat color, and her pants are meant to be pink-dyed blue jeans, so they turn out a bit magenta. ofc these are subject to change if i decide anything else looks better when I draw her "box art", which is gonna be my next project probably after I get all four's colors in order.

[edu-high]

attempting to make the current cast in gacha life as an easy way to do some color studies without having to redraw everything why are there like TEN BLACK HAIRSTYLES out of OVER 500 CHOICES. i'm not even looking for anything complicated!! just a grown out buzz cut!!!!! and they have a million straight and wavy buzzes and side shaves and all sorts of bullshit but no. not curly. that's too hard for their entire team of artists apparently.

[edu-high]

some thoughts ive had about making these characters dolls, in particular their body types:

fashion dolls have a very glaring issue that playline dolls don't. when a doll is made more for play than for style, they can be whatever shape you want, but fashion dolls all have the same body type. There's good reason for this, it's so that all the dolls can mix-and-match clothing. And the reason that they're usually super skinny girls is because it's much easier to articulate thinner dolls- it's super easy to just build a skeleton with skin over, and it's more complicated to create a rounder, fleshier body type out of hard plastic in a way that doesn't make it look broken when it bends.

for EDU-HIGH, technically i could just say that they're fictional, and it's fine, and i can draw whatever body type i want, paint some doll joints on, and call it good enough. But, they are meant to emulate an actual fashion doll line. For that reason, the dolls will mostly have one body type, with a second or third variation for older or younger characters that would not be able to share clothes effectively with the main dolls (think gen 1 MH's standard, Little Sister, and Big Sister body types).

but! this isn't to say that the characters themselves all have the same body type. For the most part, yes, they're all dolls cast from the same mold and will be mostly the same, but if these characters were actual humans instead of dolls:

Abby would be tall (like tall, 6 ft at least not counting her wedge heels) and boxy, not skinny but not fat, and pretty flat.

Wanda would be short and stocky, broad with both fat and muscle, a larger chest. She has an inch or two on Jensen, though.

Jensen would be fat. Like, actually fat, not "chubby", i'm talking 250+ pounds and not from muscle. He's a little short, 5'4~5?

Teri would look the closest to the dolls' build, maybe a bit thinner.

I try to think about what their real body types would be when designing the dolls' clothing. Abby has flared, tailored jeans to try and emphasize curves she doesn't have, Wanda has tall shoes and short-shorts because there's not room on her legs for longer pants, Jensen has a big, baggy sweater that would disguise some of his natural curves as the wool's folds (a technique I often use irl), and Teri's clothes are ones that just fit the doll plain, if a bit loose and flowy because of her skinniness.

If I have the energy, I might make a drawing showing how the dolls would look as humans with their true body types, but for the majority of the EDU-HIGH series and art, they're all gonna have the same doll's build.

[edu-high]

first character design posted specifically to this blog: Teri Booker, the lead of the History subject representing those overdecorated girls' history notebooks!

her spiral motif is inspired from a notebook spiral, but also I wanted to give her the anime pervert glasses.. she's a fujo ok. she ships historical figures and draws fanart in class. i said doll line i did not say KIDS' doll line she can be a freak. she is also weird towards her classmates. But her friends allow it, and she's actually the highest scorer in her grade because she studies her subject so hard (heh), so she's well-known amongst the school just like the other three leads!

she's not the "first" element of her subject like they are, because 1 what the fuck is the primary event of history and 2 i do not want to pull a Hetalia; even if i were an expert i would not want to humanize historical events because there is no way anyone could make something like that entirely inoffensive, respectful, and propaganda-free. history is complex and sadly cannot be condensed into one cute girl.

I'm planning to make her sister one day based off a textbook, she'd be named Tessa. It'd be fun to have a "big sister" body type like Monster High did (Nefera, Clawdia..)

anyway, pervertgirl doll. i like her very much. don't expect me to be completely sfw about my characters lmao sorry

[artistic-antagonist]

boy doll! i like it when dolls are boys and absolutely nothing about their design changes. Jensen Gassa is Hydrogen, and he's probably one of the most directly inspired by people at school so far- he's actually named after a guy named Jensen I used to know, and one of the girls in my career skills class has that same slightly grown out buzzcut. His sweater design is something that's also super popular at school (even if I think it's kinda dumb, but it works too well for this character), and instead of the randomized numbers that that shirt usually has, I put in the information for hydrogen. He's also the only one so far without an EDU-HIGH logo somewhere on him. Maybe I'll work it into the treads on his sneakers!

[artistic-antagonist]

Two things happened to me today: I watched Mean Girls for the first time, and I saw a very cute girl on my way home from school who had sandals and a dangly belly-button piercing.

Here's my concept for the EDU-HIGH student based off the letter A, Abigail "Abby" Abbott.

[artistic-antagonist]

ok so im working on a concept ive had for a while (what if one of those themed highschool doll lines' theme WAS highschool) and i can't decide on which hairstyle to give this character (shes based off the number 1)

should i do the single anime bang (because 1) or go full 80s jock with the mullet. im not making this a poll post because i would appreciate feedback beyond pressing a button + being able to see responses immediately. Help

[demi-demon]

reminder that i have an art sideblog

i cant choose. help

[distracteddaintydemon]

It's highschool. Ask yourself for what kind ov highschool you go (era, place, neighborhood) and then put in as many "reasonable" hairstyles as you can.

Not many thing itches me as much as "highschool" themes consisting solely of expensive risky styles that I know 80% of my classmates could never ever get their parents to agree to and even if they did, school teachers would penalize them for it. I know the definition of risky changes with context, but I really had enough "fashionista subset of incredibly expensive private highschool" collections shown to me as highschool with implication that I should have been looked like that.

If you'll avoid it, your work will automatically become one of the best highschool themes out there.

[demi-demon]

This makes sense, but at my school fashion and extreme hairstyles are actually pretty common. Every day I walk past boys with neon-dyed tousled hair, some goths, some emos, there's one girl whose style I think is really cool because she still pulls off that 2020 "arson" style makeup daily (and her hair is blue!), all while in full decora myself- and even the "basic" styled kids look fairly cute in crop tops, ripped jeans, and full-style tshirts (the kind with designs allll around, not just on the chest). My intention is less "private school where you pay the teachers enough to let you" and more "public school with no dress code and teachers who don't care."

Also- i tried one of my favorite styles that I regularly see at school (long, colored box braids with decorative beads) both flat down and tied up, but I decided that a sporty character needs much shorter hair.

Also I really like the sweatband.

[distracteddaintydemon]

OMG??? If this is all inspired by actual styles from your school then I WANT SO MUCH TO SEE IT when finished!

If it's sportperson then option on the right. One strand over the face gets So So Annoying when it gets wet with sweat or there's wind and goes into your eye and you need hands for something else than putting that hairstrand away

[demi-demon]

Not all of it is directly inspired by things at my school, but all of it is stuff that I think could reasonably happen at school, if that makes sense?

There is at least one hairstyle I'm gonna look for a way to straight-up steal though. One girl I know has microbraids done up in a vampire scene style.

[distracteddaintydemon]

💜💙🩵💚💛🧡❤️

[edu-high]

bringing this reblog chain on Wanda's design over to the EDU-HIGH sideblog now that it exists

i graduate highschool in a month, so i'll have to draw inspiration from my memories instead of my experience.. but i'll have way more time to draw without stress, so, fair tradeoff

[edu-high]

to start off this blog here's the three completed wip sketches i have so far of the leads, Abby Abbott (of the English subject, representing the letter A), Wanda Winters (of the Math subject, representing the number 1) and Jensen Gassa (of the Science subject, representing the element Hydrogen)

the overall concept of this series and these characters is, inspired by those "themed highschool" doll lines (Monster High, Ever After High, Rainbow High, etc), what if the doll line's theme was highschool itself? Each character is meant to be a personification of school subjects or topics (like how each character from the examples mentioned is a personification of a monster, a fairytale, a color...), and they all usually have TV shows that go alongside the lines to promote and explain the characters, but I've always wanted to make a visual novel, so I'm gonna set that as my goal.

currently, i'm working on color studies and some characters from the History subject, since these four subjects are considered the "core subjects" in American highschool (idk how it works around the world, I assume these would be the same except English is replaced by the country's language?), so the primary aspect of each subject will be one of the main characters. I'm not gonna make gjinkas of historical events because I don't wanna make a Hetalia. I'm pretty proud of my History lead concept, actually, you'll see her soon!