Today’s Printable Paper Doll Inspirations:Akemi and The Lack of Mikhail Paper Dolls
In my more pretentious moments, I think of of the blog as an ongoing art project. It’s sort of a journal of my paper doll activities, plus you can print them out and play with them which is super fun.
In the beginning, I never thought I would draw men. Drawing men is not my gift. Even now, when I look at Marcus 2.0 and Mikhail, the men of the Marisole Monday & Friend’s paper doll series, I see a lot of problems with them. Their hips are too wide. Their arms a little too long.
And yet, I can live with them. Not the perfect male paper doll, but male paper dolls have never been my great strenght. (You want good male paper dolls, go check out Pop Culture & Paper Dolls.)
Like Monday’s Maeghan paper doll, today’s Mikhail paper doll was inspired by an older paper doll I designed called Akemi. Akemi was a fantasy warrior and I think of this version of Mikhail is a warrior king.
Also, in case you missed the news, I now have an Etsy Store! There is a coupon code good for 25% off an order of 4.00 or more until the end of March. Visit the shop and use the code: READER2017
If you’re not in the mood for shopping, then think about supporting the blog by becoming a patron.
Post-apocalyptic fashion is something that fascinates me. I collect photos and idea on Pinterest even if I’m not prepping for a set, because then when I do want something I can go looking for it. So, I have a whole board devoted to Post-Apocalyptic clothing. This is something I encourage everyone to do. After Wenesday’s post about Paper Doll Principles, I noticed a lot of people asked how I came up with ideas.
Someday, I’ll write on that (in fact, I am working on it now), but for now the short advice I will give everyone is this:
There is not such thing as a totally unique idea. Inspiration comes from having easy and ready access to the things that you like. By having a collection of other’s Post-apoolcyptic fashon ideas at my fingertips, it was easy for me to develop my own.
So, I urge you if you are struggling. Collect images and ideas that intrique you. If I ever draw another post-apocalyptic paper doll, I’ve got 188 images to help me come up with ideas.
To continue our discussion on inspiration, here’s a shirt that inspired me, a leather harness, this shirt and these boots. All those pieces inspired this set of paper doll clothing and I am sure if I looked I could find more images that I found that inspired me. I can tell you that the red and blue shirt was sorta a riff on the Captain American shield and came about, because I got sick of coloring things green and tan.
I’m still not totally pleased with his hair. I think there’s something off about the angle.
Anyway, as always, let me know what you think in the comments and if you want to support the blog, please consider becoming a patron.
Today my guy paper dolls are getting all post-apocalyptic in their Mad-Maxian attire. Well, really just one has Mad Max inspired clothing, but Mikhail can share with his friends. (Okay, friend… There’s just Marcus 2.0 right now.)
So, I owe a big thank you to Kitrona who back in my suits set for the guys where I was busy complaining about how I never know what to draw for male paper dolls, she suggested post-apocalyptic.
Duly inspired, I sketched out this set a few weeks ago. It came together fast, mostly because I was out of Marisole Monday & Friend’s backlog with my last post and I desperately needed to get it done or I would have had nothing to post this morning.
Today, the guy paper doll is Mikhail. this only the second Mikhail set. Perviously, he was a knight. Here’s a guide to all the Marisole Monday & Friend’s paper dolls. I know sometimes people have trouble sorting out that series and I totally get it. I mean, I live with them, y’all just have them come visit.
I really should give Mikhail some more normal clothing- for when he’s not struggling to survive the end of the world and/0r fighting dragons, but I find modern guys clothing so boring.
Yeah, I’ve complained about that before. I know.
Last, but not least, I always love to read comments, so please feel free to let me know what you think of today’s guy paper doll.
One of my good friends has nicknamed this paper doll, “Beardy Swordsman!”. I have decided to go with the poll name winner and call him Mikhail. Personally, I was rooting for Mikhail to win and that was my vote. I feel a little guilty because Mikhail won by just one vote and that might have been me. Still, I’m allowed to vote in my own polls, right? I didn’t vote more than once…
I decided to make a knight paper doll as the first of the Mikhail paper dolls, not out of any particularly grand plan, but because I think a lot about the sort of stories you might want to play out with the paper dolls. Back when I was a kid and I played with paper dolls, the narrative provided by the paper doll book rarely worked out as written. With a wedding set, I might decide I actually liked the Maid of Honor paper doll better than the Bride paper doll and she was going to run off with the Groom and the Best Man was actually the older brother of the….
Well, you get the idea.
So, when I create paper dolls I think about the types of stories you might want to tell. Since every doll of a series can share outfits with every other doll of the same series, Mikhail and Marcus can exchange clothes. Now along with being airship mechanics or casual dates, they can also be knights who rescue princesses or knights who get lost in swamps and need to be rescued themselves.
Several years ago, I met a young lady who was four (I think) and who very much wanted to be a knight. I thought to myself, “Good for you.” I drew a knight paper doll for her, but every time I draw a knight, I think of that young lady.
I have done a lot of dark haired guys, so I decided to make Mikhail a blond. Frankly, coloring armor is fairly dull. It is made of steel. It is going to be silver. There’s just not a lot of variability in that. I went with a lot of gold accents on the armor, because I have decided that Mikhail is a noble night and can afford to spend a fair bit of cash on his armor. Plus it broke up the grey.
In a totally unrelated note, as many of you know, I am currently conducting a survey. (At this point, my daily readers are like… Can she shut up about the Survey already?) I would ask that if you haven’t filled it out, please do so. It’s about developing products to open a Paper Thin Personas store in the next year. It should only take about 15 minutes and would be uber-helpful and I’ll send you a thank you paper doll if you leave me your email at the end. (The emails are deleted out of the survey results immediately to keep things as anonymous as humanly possible. So, don’t worry about that.)
Thanks again to everyone whose already done the survey! I’ve learned a lot from everyone’s comments and responses. Maybe at the end, I’ll do a post about some of the stuff I learned? I don’t know… does that violate the principle of an anonymous survey? Thoughts from my readers?
Meet the first Friend of Marcus! He doesn’t have a name yet- there’s a poll to vote for one below. Once he has a name, I’ll start calling him by it. For now, I think of him as Marcus’ bearded friend.
I’ve been wanting to do a knight with armor male paper doll since I added male paper dolls to the Marisole Monday & Friends collection. I waited a while though, because armor is actually rather hard to draw. I do think knight paper dolls make great paper dolls for boys and I am trying to be diverse in my paper doll creations.
I was complaining about how boring men’s hairstyles were and then I remembered- facial hair. Mustaches, beards, goatees, soul patches- There are many fun options for paper doll facial hair. So, this guy got himself a beard.
After doing some experimenting, I think the helmet works best for the printable paper doll if it is placed underneath the armor, rather than on top of it. He’s got a broad sword and an axe.
So I have narrowed my options down to four different names. Help me decide which one I should choose by voting below. The poll is open until Sunday.
[poll id=”11″]
One last thing I wanted to mention- I’ve decided to do a survey of my readers about potentially opening a shop to sell my paper dolls and setting up a Patreon account for Paper Thin Personas. The survey should only take about 10 or 15 minutes of your time. If you complete the survey and include an email at the end, I will send you a “THANK YOU” paper doll within the next week.
