@bbeyondnatural
Okay, so I’m not going to post yet about how B and Mally interact but I wanted to show you the concepts I’ve done for my BB doll and show you my Mallymkun doll (and Idol Mallymkun himself for comparison).
To briefly explain the dolls themselves, they are Blythe dolls, which are fashion or 1:6 scale dolls that generally fit in with Barbie-like proportions when it comes to accessories. The thing that is unique about any Blythe doll though, aside from the bigger head and eyes, is that a Blythe doll's eyes can be closed, switched out and opened by the pull of the two strings on the back of their head. They have a total of four different eye sets to each doll and the direction of the eyes can be different for each one! This makes photographing them a lot of fun, especially if they are a custom doll, because many custom Blythe doll makers use A-Zone's Pure Neemo body, which allows for some dynamic posing.
So, that's the basic run-through of what a Blythe doll is. But there is one more extra-special thing about my Blythe dolls in particular. Because of the basic face sculpt, Blythe dolls are female or feminine about 99% of the time. Mine, however, are guys. So far.
Anyway, to give you a photographic example of what these dolls look like, this is my Mallymkun. :)
So you can see the proportions and the changeable eyes. ^^ I design the dolls and the eyechips but BlytheDreams on Etsy paints the dolls, prints the images, makes the resin eyes, styles the hair and puts the doll together for me. The eyes you see here on Mally on the left are his "Drink Me" eyes, featuring the bottle that Alice drinks from in order to shrink down and get into Wonderland/Underland and the eyes he's using on the right are his "Welcome to Wonderland" asymmetrical eyes. It's difficult to see the details, so I'll tack those eyes on right here.
That set was inspired by the dynamic that the character shared with Alice during the Mad T Party show at DCA...
And the inspiration for the face sculpt I had BlytheDreams create?
Yep. Pretty self-explanatory. He'd often make that face before instigating shenanigans with the group.
Anyway... ON to BB! BlytheDreams doesn't do WIP photos, so all I have at the moment are my concept images.
First, there's Beyond Birthday with his first set of eye chips, his canon Shinigami eyes based on the illustration in the novel... Also, there are little easter eggs and references all over the outfit the artist will be making for him, as well as a few on his face. :) Try to guess them all if you want! I went for the "is it strawberry jam or something else...?" vibe because I noticed that other people with custom BB dolls don't seem to have been doing that since like 2009 and well... That was around the time I first wanted a B doll, so I stuck with the look he probably would have had then. Also, the song lyrics on the back of his shirt? They're from the song, "Blue" by The Birthday Massacre. I think it might be a song about a relationship with a two-faced person, but it carries strong themes of creeping darkness and duality that also match eerily well with BB. Plus... I wouldn't know the band if it hadn't been for BB existing and I really started to like them after seeing a BB fan video set to that track back in 2008/2009.
I used screenshots that I took myself of Naomi Misora and Lawliet because I wanted a direct anime reference in one of his eye sets and at the time, I hadn't yet had the idea I was going to have for his second eye set...
So... As you can see, his second eye chip set is based on Misa Amane's Shinigami eyes from the anime. Also, yes, there is a photo of me in cosplay as Misa from the live action films in these eyes. That's another thing about my Blythe boys, they all, as far as I know right now, will have a photo that I took, a photo of myself or a photo of someone I loved in one of their eye chip sets. In this case, this was me with someone I loved who also was into Death Note. I felt Misa's eyes would be a good fit for that photo, since her arc has the theme of loving without actually being loved in return. The photo also determined which direction the eyes would go in for me. The person I'd loved was on the left side of the photo and the past is usually depicted as being "behind" a person, so I wanted these eyes to make him look like he was looking a bit off to the left and behind himself.
Next, there's the first fun/cute set! :D
This set had several inspirations! The first was that after getting Mally and seeing him in person, I quickly realized his pink "Drink Me" eyes were my favorites to photograph. They just have this nostalgic glow to them in photos that I adore. So I wanted to try another shade of pink this time. The second was that while I was rereading my copy of The LA BB Murder Cases, I noticed something that high school me had underlined: "This is murderously sweet...". It was Naomi's comment about the amount of sugar that B adds to coffee when he makes it. High school me had underlined it, somehow, in connotation with MisoBirthday (Naomi x B). Since my memories also inspire my Blythe boys, I didn't want to leave that piece of myself out. Plus, I realized that I could write the word "Murderously" in bloody red text on the pink iris and it would stand out really well. I also realized that I could create an image of a jar of strawberry jam pouring that same color into the pink of the iris, mixing it together and that on the jar's label, I could write "SWEET" to finish the quote. Thirdly, I had also remembered that B mentioned enjoying cute things like Akazukin Chacha, so I wanted a vintage-inspired, "kawaii aesthetic" strawberry somewhere in his design. Something that almost had the look of a Sanrio piece from the 90's but not quite. Why Sanrio? Again, it has to do with my memories. We had a Sanrio store at one of our malls when I was a little girl in the 90's that my mom often took me to and one of my favorite toys that I ever got while there was the Hello Kitty strawberry icecream cart/stand. So the strawberry I drew here is influenced by hand-drawn Sanrio art, that icecream cart toy and... red apples. Actually. The icecream cart had a slight apple shape to it, so when I drew this, I leaned into that because... Death Note.
Then, finally, there is the last eye chip set. I loved playing with asymmetrical eyes on Mallymkun, so I decided to do that again, but this time I also wanted to play with false eye shapes. A Blythe doll has a predetermined circular eye shape that cannot be changed. However, you can work within those dimensions to create the illusion of a differently shaped eye. So this is what I did.
At this point, I had started to feel like there weren't enough skulls involved or enough strawberries. So I combined the two for the left eye (his right eye but on our left when looking at him). I also felt like I needed practice drawing a more realistic skull and took that chance but when it was done, I felt like leaving the eye sockets empty didn't sit right somehow. I'm sure I likely don't need to explain the crosses to a fellow DN fan, but I would be willing to if asked. It's a bit like the foot drying bit. Symbolism. Plus, I wanted something that would look a bit more gothic and that seemed perfect. Finally, there's the right (his left) eye here, which is all about the aesthetics of 2005-2009. Death Note fans online going crazy using that one gothic font that featured L's insignia, paint splatter style hearts, drippy pastel goth knives and drawing literally every anime character in the Lucky Star anime art style just because you could and it made everyone look more adorable.
