I finally completed Episode 3 of The Secrets of Woodside:
(check out the tabs above for all the episodes and more information about the story)
This was really fun to make and came together much easier than my first 2 Pullip music videos. Notice that I said "easier" not "quicker." These are time-hungry little monsters! There are a few things I'm not happy with, but I had to let them go and post it. Hopefully my videos and photography will improve with time. Not all episodes will be music videos, but I really enjoy this format, so many of them will be.
I thought I would post some of my favourite pics from the episode as well as a few BTS shots and info for future reference.
First, some photos in the woods:
I didn't realize how lovely Suri's new eye chips look with her stock wig until I saw this pic.
Shooting multiple dolls in a single shot is not my favourite activity. Shooting multiple dolls in the woods with bugs crawling all over you, is definitely not my favourite! In my desperation to get Ally to stand, I leaned her on a branch and made it look like she was trying to climb over it. Poor Ally is not the most coordinated girl.
This is my first mother-daughter shot of Nikki and Rae. I love their new wigs and eye chips!
The look so sweet reaching for each others' hands. I hope Nikki is enjoying this time with Rae... I feel an angsty adolescence coming around the bend for little Rae!
These next photos are not the greatest but I thought they'd be fun to feature here on the blog:
Ready for a new look
I wanted Suri to have a makeover in the story. Not only because I have a new wig for her, but because meeting the Woodside girls represents a turning point in her healing. My daughter's American Girl Vanity worked fine as a prop, as long as I had the dolls on very tall stools!
"Don't worry, Suri, I know just the right new look for you!"
You can't see much of it, but Suri is reclined in an American Girl salon chair. I'm actually holding Suzette's legs with one hand while I take the photo with my other hand!
Dal Vendettina loaned us her cape for the photo shoot.
Our first glimpse of Suri's new hair comes from her own perspective. What do you think? Does she look pleased with it?
I hope I don't regret those beautiful curls! They look like a lot of maintenance, but so far, they are soft and smooth.
Finally, I'll post some random fun shots from the chorus of the song. Since this post is extremely photo heavy already, I'll save my BTS shots and reminders to myself for next time in a separate post.
Suri and Nikki
Ally and Suzette are roommates
Wait! You're in the wrong order again!
When you get 4 dolls all lines up and looking at the camera, and no one's heads are flopping, and no hands are on backwards, you don't care about the order of the numbers!
Mother daughter hugs! Hang on tight to her, Nikki, they grow up fast!
It's been over a year since I've added a doll to my collection, and Dal Vendettina with her beautifully colourful face-up was calling my name. She arrived today. Here are some pics of her unboxing and first photos.
She came in a really cool Tokidoki box
Even inside the box, her beauty shines through
She is supposed to be a villain...
...but even her cape and mask can't make this sweet thing look evil
I didn't have my photo area set up what way I normally do, and found she didn't photograph well. I can't tell if it was my photography skills (or lack thereof), or if it's her eye chips, which although incredibly vibrant, are a little flat.
Here eye chips are a beautiful vibrant blue, with large pupils
Meh. These photos don't really do her justice. Check out the video:
I recently re-styled Suzette (my Pullip Io) and wanted to take some photos of her. The restyling of Suzette was actually the result of a failed re-styling of Luna. This is what Luna looked like originally:
Luna in 2014
I had a character in mind for Luna- a free-spirited, fun-loving, distractible, impulsive gal, who has moved around a lot and held a lot of different jobs. I wanted her to have a natural Bohemian style. I created a Pinterest board for her style, which you can check out here:
And this is what she looked like after her makeover:
Luna in May, 2015
Now it turns out, although my idea of Luna's character suited a Bohemian style, her face-up really did not. I found Luna's pink and blue eyeshadow was too flashy for the earthy look of her clothes, and I thought her faceup would be better suited to a completely different style. So I thought about changing her style, but I was set on the character having this style. I thought about changing around characters but I have several characters in mind, and a complicated domino effect happened inside my head as soon as Luna was knocked out of this character's spot. I felt overwhelmed and flirted with the idea of abandoning my story (The secrets of Woodside picfic/music video series) altogether.
Then I discovered Lilcurly and her YouTube videos which explain how she styled each of her Pullips. Coincidentally, I also noticed she had a thread over at Dollchemy which detailed her process for re-styling one of her dolls. She and her beautiful dolls totally inspired me to get back into styling my characters! Instead of creating a moodpboard like she did, I just created Pinterest boards for each of my dolls that will appear in The Secrets of Woodside. Once I had my boards all set up, I realized that I could switch Luna and Suzette's characters fairly easily, leaving the character I loved with the Bohemian style I loved.
This is how Suzette (Pullip Io) looked before I restyled her and changed her character:
Suzette was dressed as Romantic Alice up until now
... and this is how Suzette looks now that she has taken on the free-spirited, fun-loving, Bohemian character:
Wowsers! What a difference!
I love her new look, with lots of browns and turquoise accents. I made a lot of her accessories, which I will show up close in the video at the end of this post. Her pose was inspired by a Pinterest pose I found:
I had a hard time getting her to lean forward enough for her elbow to rest on her knee (notice the floating elbow in the photo above!), so I played around with a few different options, including cropping:
cropped out the floating elbow
and having my daughter press on the back of her shoulder, then cropping out the human hand to the right:
If you know what to look for, you can see Liv's hand through Luna's hair to the right
My husband gave me the idea that I could have used fishing cord to tie her elbow to her thigh, but I had already packed everything up by that point. I do keep fishing cord in my doll photography bag for that very sort of application, so I had a face-palm moment... but I do really like how these photos came out regardless of the floating elbow.
I made her updo using sari ribbon, string, beads, a feather earring, and a paperclip
I made her jewelry using broken jewelry of my own and more scrapbooking supplies
I am a huge fan of Behind The Scenes (BTS) shots of other people's hobbies, so I always try to remember to snap a BTS shot for my blog whenever I do anything, so here is today's BTS:
My usual doll photography area in my craft room (shown in previous blog entries, if you're interested, try searching or clicking the "Doll Photography" label on the side bar) was blocked off, so I set this up in my husband's photo studio. I used 2 kids chairs to drape my fabric backdrops behind my props. The Freudian slippers are not required, lol, but I have to lay right down on the floor to get shots in this space, so I take off my footwear so they don't get wrecked by the concrete floor!
Below is a video showing my new Suzette and taking about my styling process for her.
It's been a long while since I updated here, but I have been taking photos of my dolls again, and wanted to continue to document my progress. I actually found it very helpful to look back on what I had done before, and having this blog up to date has proven to be quite handy.
Today I returned to Pinterest for some posing ideas (see my post here, where I originally had this idea). This time I searched for "photography poses men" in the hopes of finding some evocative poses for Jax, my Taeyang Natsume.
This was the first pose to catch my eye:
Pinned from Vogue UK
...and this is what I came up with:
Brooding Jax
I wanted Jax to be leaning quite far forward for this shot, but I was limited not only by the articulation of his body, but also by his fitted leather jacket and 2 players of cotton beneath it. For the tighter shot below I shone a flashlight on Jax's hair and allowed it catch his right eye a bit. His downward-cast face and the fact that he is looking out of the frame of the photo give him a brooding, withdrawn, melancholy mood.
My second posing "Pinspiration" came from this pin:
...and here is my photo:
Emerging from the shadows
Jax looks a little less sad in this photo, but still rather... wistful? This was a pretty straightforward pose. I leaned his left side against the wooden crate I had as a prop and stood him straight with relaxed arms. I always check his writsts and elbows to make sure they are looking natural before I stake my shot.
My final pose came from this Pin:
Because Taeyang can't rotate their heads up and down, I had to modify this pose so his body and face were pointing the same direction, but I tried to replicate his positioning the best I could. I really like how this one came out. I think it feels quite intimate, due to the close crop (I crop all my photos in camera, not in post-processing) and direct eye contact.
While I had him shirtless and in bed (lol!), I tried a few body-centric shots just off the top of my head, and I like how they turned out. I had trouble deciding between keeping these their natural colour or changing them to black and white. I ended up leaving them natural because it made them feel warmer, which I think helps elicit the sadness I wanted for this photoshoot.
All the photos above were taken with a 50mm lens, shot with an aperture of 4.5, shutter speed of 1/50, and ISO of 200. They were minimally processed in iPhoto only to correct for white balance (due to the yellow walls in my room). I had the overhead lights turned off (there are no windows in my room) and used only the small lights in my "photo studio" to light all the shots from this session.
Pullip Cat Woman arrived today! She is the second doll I bought (the first was Rae) with money from selling other doll stuff (mostly stock outfits). Cat Woman immediately went through a transformation from this:
Pullip Cat Woman in her stock outfit
to this:
Redressed, hair trimmed, bindi added
I wasn't planning to keep her as Cat Woman in the first place, but I could not get her Cat Woman hat on her head, and the gloves looked kind of weird (Pullip gloves always look weird), so I was glad to redress her.
