Doodles… How Paper Doll Sets Begin!

One thing to start off with before I forget, I set up an email service that will email you when the site updates. There’s a place for an address in the sidebar.

During the January polling period, several people expressed interest in seeing more of the nuts and bolts of the paper dolling process. Eventually, I hope to write a full tutorial, but that’s a very time consuming process and I need to think about structure. In the meantime, I thought I would post some of my thumbnail doodles.

I carry a half-sized lined notebook (the lines don’t appear on the scans… I’m not sure why) in my purse and often doodle designs in it when I’m planning a paper doll set.

These designs are for a future Flock Fairytale set based on Cinderella. The Brother’s Grimm version in which she goes to three balls, people chop off parts of their feet and there are lots of birds.

Birds are a major players in the Grimm version of Cinderella, as they assist her in a variety of ways. I wanted to feature birds as a motif on one of her ballgowns. Since the paper doll set will be magnetic, each gown needs to have a bodice and separate skirt for mix and match options.

The bird gown was the idea that started the whole set, so it got several pages of doodles as I tried to figure out the placement of the shoulder mounted birds, so they wouldn’t look dead or like they were about to attack her or something.

Cinderella also needs servants clothing. I wanted to keep with my “steampunk/neo-victorian” fairytales theme, so heavy soled boots, leather garters and patched stockings seemed typical. If the ballgowns are going to be very “girly”, I wanted the servant clothing to feel a bit more like Victorian street urchin wear, or maybe a reject from the cast of Newsies.

I’ve been hesitant to post doodles like these before, because I doodle a lot of paper doll sets that never get made. Still, I’ve scanned some sketchbook images that never got posted or finished, so I think that’s okay. Would people like to see more of these?