Using Paper Doll Templates

 In the post last week, I shared some paper doll templates I'm working on. It's something I've wanted to do for a while. Blank canvases and pages scare me a lot more than they used to and these seemed like a fun way to tackle that. 

This week, I put them to use! One I'm using for a project that isn't quite ready yet. The other is the paper doll at the end of the post. 

After sketching out all of the pose parts, I went into Procreate and lined each part individually. Each arm, leg, etc, was lined and placed on its own layer. It was tedious but didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would. Everything needed to align correctly so that I'd have a closed shape at the end of it. Once I lined the sketches, I popped them into Photoshop. 

I'm not a fan of Procreate's selection, move, and rotate tools. No matter what setting I use, the image ends up blurry. If I need to do any of that I either plan on re-drawing it or do it in Photoshop. That's what I did here - instead of re-drawing each arm, I flipped and aligned them in Photoshop.

 

Here are all of the various layer groups, named in a way that made sense to me. I ended up with 27 possible poses because the downward arm has two hand options. 

On the left, all of my layers turned on. On the right, lines are colored to show the separate layers.

I really, really wanted to draw a doll for this week but I had NO inspiration! I've been playing a lot of video games lately (mostly Animal Crossing). My husband just started playing a card game called Balatro and it looked kinda fun so I grabbed the mobile version for me and the kids to try on our phones.  

We're all addicted now. We talk about it at dinner. We discuss runs and strategies. It's an obsession! 

 These are my sons, sitting head to head playing and comparing strategies! 

And it occurred to me that jesters and jokers would make for a fun paper doll. I don't think I've done anything like that before! 

Here's my jester! As always, click on it for full resolution and right-click to save and print. Everything will layer over the dress except for the shorts. I'm not sure I'm crazy about those and may rework that before I color it.

Let me know what you think! I'm hoping to have the color version of this ready for next week...if I can pull myself away from the game....