I’ve finally settled on characters for my last story line, although they’re months and months away from joining the cast.
Like most of my doll decisions, I got them on the way to getting something completely different.
I’d been looking for another cast member for my “Up Above” story with the sisters in the tree house (even though I am already over the mandatory 4-doll limit on cast members in that storyline :)). I so much liked the idea of the girls having a distracted-but-loving father that I spent ages looking through doll photos trying to find him.
The problem is that it’s very hard to find someone who looks like an adult in 1/4 scale, much less a male someone. In ball-joint-doll land, 1/4 size dolls are mostly teenagers, and the adults are all in 1/3. That makes zero sense to me because a 1/4 scale doll comes up to just above the waist on a 1/3 size doll, making the size comparison much more like adult to 6 or 7 year old. I did find a few male dolls who looked around the right age, but none of them really clicked. Somewhere in my search I fell in love with a female 1/4 doll who could maybe pass for a parent.
Here she is, from the Mydolling site:
And that got me thinking about them living with a mother, instead of a father. That change would alter the storyline – a father can be distracted-but-loving. A mother with the same characteristics would be considered negligent. This particular doll looked very, very sad, so maybe she’d just been through something awful??? But, I didn’t want another very very sad storyline – not with my Camellia doll having caused the death of her husband. There’s only so much tragedy one can take in doll land, and I want none of it in the Up Above story. So, probably no Mydolling Heeah for my cast, although I still love her face.
Anyway, nothing was quite working, and then I got my Aasta doll and the storyline wrote itself. (I know I’m drifting off from the 1/3 scale story. I promise I’ll get back to that after I rave a bit about Aasta).
Of all of the 1/4 dolls I picked, Aasta (from Supiadollz) was always the one I was most certain of. She has a direct expression which connects without needing anything. The few I’d seen online just seemed magical. Anyway, once she got here I could see that she seemed older than the other dolls, but still young enough to be a just-barely-adult sibling. And that created an obvious storyline, with her taking care of the two younger siblings. What happened to their parents? No idea, but I’m sure it was something lovely, like a rapture.
Here are the three sisters together in their (Our Generation) car:
And I’ve finally managed to give them names – this time with a tree/forest theme. Aasta, the oldest, is Willow. Amy, the middle child, is Olive. And Strawberry, the baby, is Fern. I love having a doll named Fern – it reminds me of my mom reading up Charlotte’s web (which she always had to have my brother Mark finish reading because she was crying too much by the end).
OK, diversion over – back to the 1/3 dolls.
So, in my very methodical way, I looked at every single doll from every single doll company I could find. The number must literally have been in the thousands. And I noted every company that made a doll I liked in any size – 1/6, 1/4, 1/3 and then animals. And, though I did not find a male doll I liked in 1/4 size, I did find some I very much liked in 1/3 scale. But, the 1/3 size, especially the few male dolls I really liked, are just crazy expensive. Like, close to $1,000 expensive. And I don’t even have a storyline – just a whim to get a doll.
On my umpteenth round through to find some male doll I could get, because now I was really in love with the idea of creating a storyline for a male doll – I stumbled across a cheap-er doll experiment at Granado. Granado makes crazy beautiful dolls, most in the $800 to $1000 range. But they’re doing this experiment with using vinyl instead of resin and stretching it over a jointed (but not ball-jointed) body. And, because it’s vinyl, it’s significantly cheaper than the rest of their dolls.
Right now, there’s a single sculpt in their vinyl Vindoll line. And, even though it’s not my favorite of their sculpts, it’s just a million times nicer than any other male doll in that size at a fraction of the price.
They don’t have exactly the doll in this picture – mine is Udell but in the tan color. The tan Uranus doll is very similar, but a little more chiseled in his face.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/doll-granado/32898449542/in/photolist-UsUHBT-RA8cL8-RLHTs6-UJLPs4-QURs8R-RDZQcJ-QLq6L6-S889Th-SC13ZN-RqK9db-TzKvu3-RbcWXz-RZBzsD-RQnYSw-SeN52d-R9w6ea-Qe8BME-Qg9oRA-QeK5Aj-Suwsi8-RaDcWq-RbVogM-UGKhEN-UnjmPs-R3J3o9-RDX6fF-RL9ZAa-UNQ3jd-Rg1FQG-Rj5G4q-S6Cnu6-RkK4RC-RkqpjW-S9rzN9-R3H1vY-RcY4t7-QcRmj3-SgJ3Gu-RfyCwm-RmL53W-QiCvUz-RVpaos-R5okB1-QWdKLh-R2bSfs-R6R4Mv-RhsVwp-UVGUS4-RjaKiX-Rcfog2
This is an experiment for Granado – I’ve seen one of their models in motion, but they’re just in production right now and I’ve no idea if their experiment is going to work out. I hear from their feed that their designer is pretty much living the factory trying to get everything right. I guess we’ll find whether or not it all works out in the fall, when the doll becomes available.
Because I liked the father-daughter type storyline that I’d been planning for Up Above, I’m getting a young-looking SD doll to go with Udell. Here she is from the Dollmore site:
SD dolls are so big (the male doll is around 26 inches) that it’s going to be almost impossible to give them any accessories. I’m certainly not going to build a room (although I may build a window). I have a few chairs in the right size, but that’s about it. I hear pet furniture works, so I may end up getting a bed or sofa, but not much more So, I suspect they’re going to spend an awful lot of time outdoors, or in largely darkened rooms where you can only just figure out their surroundings.
Given those constraints, their adventure is going to take place in a kind of in-between world. They’ll spend a little bit of time in the real world, and then much of their time in a fantasy world, with the young girl being a wizard in training, and the adult either a father or a teacher. The story is called In-between (to go with my Up Above and Underfoot theme) and it likely won’t launch until next year.
And that, I hope, is the end of my storylines for awhile. Once my doll adventure story reaches its conclusion in a few months, I’ll cycle between the four stories each week:
Underfoot: The adventures of 1/6 scale dolls living in a 1/1 scale world (next week’s adventure)
Up Above: The adventures of three sisters (and a few friends) in their treehouse and beyond.
In-Between: A wizard in training leading a seemingly normal life when she’s not off changing toads into princes, or whatever it is that wizards in training do
And My Doll Adventure where we’ll continue to follow the Daisy, Rosie, Camellia and Lily’s story once they all find each other.