Doing Friday’s round up made me feel a little guilty. The poor C Pose guys just haven’t gotten as much love as the others. A big thank you to Nicole who kindly gave me a suggestion for some ancient Greek inspired attire for them. This is clearly not that, but I do like the idea and I think I will begin exploring it.
This is, instead, Carlos getting some generic medieval fantasy attire that fits right in with this outfit and this outfit.
I was never 100% keen on my first version of Carlos. Something about his chin kinda bothered me… so for my second version, I solved the problem by giving him a beard. Confession- I love beards. (Within reason, there’s a critical line between a well groomed beard and a mess that is gross.)
Color scheme wise, I really wanted to avoid colors I’ve used before, so I went with this sort of sharp olive green and dusty blue thing. I actually really like these colors in general and I think they look especially nice with Carlos’ skin tone.
Of course, there’s always the black and white version you can color anyway you like.
Meanwhile, if you love the blog and want to support PTP, I do have a Patreon page for donations.
Today’s Printable Paper Doll Inspirations: Goatees
As anyone whose been following this blog for a while knows, I have mixed feelings about men’s clothing and male paper dolls in general. I am trying to learn to embrace the things that male paper dolls have that lady paper dolls don’t have.
One of those things is facial hair. So, today I am experimenting with facial hair by giving Xavier this dashing goatee.
Beyond that I feel like this is a kinda uninspired set of men’s fantasy clothing. There’s nothing wrong with any of it. Each piece is fine, but I don’t see it and think, “Wow, that was creative.”
Of course, I have to remind myself that not every paper doll has to be perfect. Perfect, I often say, is the enemy of Good.
Frankly, my favorite part of today’s paper doll is the sword. I think that came out pretty well.
If you want to give Xavier some other fantasy clothing I think this set or this set would look pretty cool.
There’s a wonderful line in Into The Woods where Prince Charming says, “I was raised to be charming, not sincere.”
Well, I prefer my fairy tale prince paper dolls to be sincere, thank you very much. Hence why I named today’s paper doll, A Sincere Prince.
Over the years, I have drawn a few different “prince” paper dolls (no relation to the rockstar) and I think of them as coming from different fantasy worlds, much like I think of my Princesses as coming from different fantasy worlds. Mostly, I group them based on vague time period associations.
So, today’s Prince Marcus has a sort of renaissance feel to it while Prince and Gentleman was more 18th or 19th century and Marcus the Warrior was more Anglo-Saxon or Viking inspired.
Picking out colors wasn’t that hard. I knew I didn’t want to use green. I tend to use a LOT of green in male paper dolls. I don’t know why, but I do. Anyway, so once I decided, “no green” than it was just a matter of picking some fun colors. I have done a Green Prince if you’re interested.
I’m a bit belated on today’s post. I managed to fall into that trap where I have a good bit of material ready, so I tell myself, “Oh, I don’t need to work on anything. I have time.”
But time has a way of flitting off when I am not paying enough attention.
Anyway, I hope everyone enjoys today’s fairytale prince 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.
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