Today we'll go over outfit design, tabs, and themes. Our "lesson" doll
is going to be a generic fashion doll, so that's our theme.
Material list:
Outfit templates
Paper, pencil, eraser
Pen, archival pen preferred
To begin with, have your outfit templates ready to go. I have 2 pages
of full-body templates, 1 page of just tops and 2 pages of just
bottoms. I'll have 4 full-body outfits & 6 mix-and-match outfits
when we're done. To make the top & bottom templates, I trace out
the appropriate area on the doll and that's it. No need to include more
really.
Sometimes I'm feeling super inspired and the costumes
just come out easily. Sometimes I need a little inspiration. I have a
fashion book that I frequently reference for inspiration:
9Heads: A Guide to Drawing Fashion.
It's a pricey book but full of helpful illustrations and tips for
modern fashion drawing. I also like to look at books about the history
of costume. These are easier to find and most libraries have a couple
of books that would qualify.
After you draw your outfits, add tabs to secure your outfits to your
doll. I typically place tabs at the shoulders and waist so that the
outfit stays in place, and then I add tabs to any other places that
might need extra securing. I usually just use a rectangular tab but
there are two other methods I use: something I call a tuck tab & a
hat cut-out.
A tuck tab (outlined in red) is a tab that I outline in a dashed line to
indicate that it is placed behind the doll NOT folded over the doll.
In this case, I felt the collar needed extra securing that a regular tab
couldn't really manage. When I color the tuck tab, I'll make it the
same color as the neck. That will help it blend in with the doll.
To make a hat (or sometimes a wig), I use a dashed line to indicate that
the hat has an opening cut into it. I also added a tab to this hat to
help secure it to the doll's head. When adding a cut line for the
opening, make sure the line doesn't completely cut the hat in half. The
cut needs to be long enough for the head to fit through, but shouldn't
extend all the way to the edges. Double check this when you get to the
coloring stage.
I try to have a plan for each of my dolls.
Sometimes the plan is as simple as creating a "fashion doll", like the
doll we're working on. Sometimes it's a bit more elaborate. For
instance, I wanted to create a doll about careers, so I made the Grow-Up
Paper Doll.
I needed to decide how many pages I wanted, which careers, and how to
best represent them. I settled on 3 sheets of watercolor paper (which
could be further broken up with one outfit per page later on in an
editing program) and then I selected the careers I wanted to represent.
One
very simple theme I tried out was a one-page angel doll. I've since
added a new page to this doll around the holidays every year.
And an elaborate doll I created was a Goddess paper doll. This doll
took me several years to complete but once it was, I loved it so much
that I self-published it (more on publishing to come in a later
lesson). The key to publishing this was meeting a minimum page limit
and I had to plan around that.
Before we move on to different coloring methods for paper dolls, we're going to backtrack just a bit and talk about alternate transfer methods. We'll cover photocopying, carbon paper, and charcoal transfer.
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