Another starter doll

I just happen to come across these images for another tutorial for a first doll. So if you read the First Doll Tutorial I published here, this short tutorial on making a little blue dress may also be helpful. If you are a more experienced doller, this tutorial is kind of pointless. Sorry.

Base by Apitchou

Outline

Making an outline means that you draw the lines of the outfit, or the hair. It can be important to make the outline clean, which means exactly one pixel wide. This helps make the doll look sharp and well-defined. Sometimes, on corners, it can look okay to have more pixels bunched up together, but it should not look as if it is a messy thick line.

Floodfill and shade

Once your outline is complete, do a floodfill of the outfit. The dress is pretty formfitting at the top, but should still show some folds and wrinkles. On a small doll this is quite tricky to do. Also note that the dress is an odd shape, and that you can see part of the inside of the skirt behind her left leg. The inside of the skirt should be darker. You could use roughly the same shade as the darkest colour used to shade the doll.

Lighter colours

Figuring out where the lighter colours go is the next step. Keep in mind that things that are closer to where the light comes from, should be lighter in shade. The parts furthest from the light are darkest. Make sure this is always consistent. If you have the light coming from the left, make sure that things on the left of the doll are lighter, and things on the right of the doll are darker. Don't switch these things around, unless you have a good reason.

Picking the shades

You can work with pre-made palettes. There are lots of sites offering them. This helps because you don't have to worry about picking the right shade of the colour to make a dark shadow or a highlight. But if you like to make your own palette, try picking the right lighter or darker shade of the colour you are working with.

Palette

For this dress I did not make a pre-made palette. You can see the shades of blue I used next to the doll. The contrast is not vert high. It is always good to experiment with different shades and contrast, and find out what you like best. Some materials are shinier than others, some more dull. The level of contrast you use can define what kind of material the outfit looks like.