American Girl Dolls are very boring for non-Americans in my experience since none of us know what the deal with them is other than they look a little creepy
That's very fair. We have some of the stores in Canada, but they all seem very focused these days on the customizable new/modern dolls rather than what I would be interested in redesigning.
(Aside: AGD was suggested by a follower and since I'm on a doll-drawing kick it's swirling in the possibility soup)
I didn't have American Girl Dolls or Monster High dolls growing up. I love dolls but AGD were way too expensive and Monster High released when I was "too old" to be gifted dolls (I got books instead and I'm not mad about that). This means that most of my interactions with these brands is indirect. My friends had AGDs and I watched a lot of OOAK doll content for a while where MH dolls are very popular. So I thought I'd poll you guys and see what kind of things you are more drawn to.
What have I learned so far about AGD? (aka what am I thinking about illustrating for.) American Girl Doll started as an interactive history learning doll line. The idea was to create a character (girl age 9-11 ish) who lived in America during a specific time period and use her day to day life to teach kids history. I watched an AGD designer's interview and how they tried to make the dolls as historically accurate as possible and this had my gears turning.
What would I do? I am thinking about a "where did they go?" sort of continuation. Each of the dolls (maybe not Felicity, she's been retired twice on purpose) would be redesigned with a sort of "what would they look like as a young adult?" Age them up, use historical fashion, have some fun with it.
