Pixels: Dolls

The doll “thing” started up in a virtual chatroom, or avatar chatroom, called the Palace. There you can walk around in 3D surroundings while chatting, and the doll is supposed to portray you (or the inner you…). Things have escalated since then, and drawing Dolls is perhaps one of todays biggest fads around the Internet. People make their own dolls from scratch or by using others bases (naked and hairless bodies, sometimes even without facial features) – or they use dollmakers.

It’s also common to adopt other people’s creations for display at your own website – with a link back, of course!

There are lots and lots of Dolls styles. The first dolls were called skaters and were kind of sloppy dressed – and for a long time the main categories were reckoned to be:

Lately, with all kinds of doll styles, they are more commonly divided into small, medium and large depending on the body size, and sometimes also divided by the shading techniques used (tool shading – using blur, smudge, dodge, burn etc. – or “pure” pixel shading). While some dolls are pretty kitsch – preppy teenage girls with huge faery wings, glitter and all – more and more brilliant dollers are surfacing, showing off their amazing techniques of colouring and shading.
Read more about Dolls/Dollz at Wikipedia.

Here are links to a few dollmakers to play around with:

If you want to give it a go making your doll from scratch, here are some fantastic sites for bases – as for tutorials check out Xandorra’s Dolls Tutorial Search Engine! Also take a look at Blue’s palette tutorial.