Thursday, December 8, 2016

December Angel Paper Doll - Day 8

Every December, I create a new paper doll series and one of the goals for that series is always innovation.  What can I learn, what can I do differently with an experimental set that I don't normally do in my "every day" paper dolls.

Today's post looks fairly simple but I tried to tackle some technical challenges.

Right-click to download and print

For today, I created an Egyptian inspired outfit. In part, it's also inspired by images of Isis where she's sometimes depicted with wings.  The dress itself is straightforward, but with the collar and hair I needed to try some new techniques.

In Illustrator, shapes are created using fills and strokes that utilize bezier curves.  I use the term shape to really mean any part of an image not just regular, geometric shapes.  Let's take a look at the collar: to create the collar image, I drew a curved line and applied 3 different stroke styles.  I played around with dashed lines until it looked right. I then expanded my lines and changed to fills of the resulting shapes.  It sounds more complicated than it was and I think it saved me some time overall.

The other thing I want to look at is the hair.  Braids are a pain in Illustrator.  I've followed tutorials for created braids, I've tried creating brushes for braids.  I feel like I've tried everything & I'm still not quite there yet.  For this hair, I wanted a stylized, boxy type of braid like you would see on Egyptian wigs.  I created a brush that worked fairly well.  I still have some kinks to work as as far as creating braids, but it's getting closer!!

Check in again tomorrow -- there's more coming up!

4 comments:

  1. Braids are a pain, aren't they? I feel like I have mastered "one" way of drawing braids and I have no idea how to draw them other than my one way.

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    1. Braids are tough. I can draw an ok braid on paper but the trick with Illustrator is creating a brush. It's never quite right but each iteration gets a little bit better....

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  2. the fact that there are a lot of beautiful egyptian paper dolls out there has always curtailed my own desire to make one, but every time i see yet ANOTHER beautiful egyptian paper doll, i get inspired again. this is super lovely.

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    1. I've made two Egyptian paper dolls over the years. This one and Isis in my Goddesses paper doll book. They have exactly the same costume! I loved Egyptology as a kid and I think if I'm ever going to do a full-on Egyptian paper doll I'll have to devote my life to research first! It would need to be as perfect as I could make it!

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