Apology For Being MIA For So Long + Dolly News!

 Hello There!

 

    Goodness, my last post appears to have been last year... I am sorry it has been so long but so much has happened. I've gotten a new doll since then, for one thing. For another, I've gone through two hyperfixations since and... I also lost my father to cancer. I never made a post about it as far as I can recall, but I received the news that my father was battling Stage IV cancer back around December 15th of last year, maybe earlier. I tried my best not to focus on it though, especially since it still looked like he would make a recovery. He sounded and looked pretty good, all things considered. Admittedly, despite that, I did start to feel like time and people I loved were slipping away... and I had an idea to help myself cope with that feeling. I was browsing Tedsby when I saw this beautiful little doll. I bought her on sight and soon learned that she is a type of doll known as a Blythe. 

 

 

Blythe dolls are dolls which feature an eye mechanism that allows you to close, switch and open their eyes with a gentle tug on the strings attached at the back of the head.

    Photos do not do her justice. However, I have no photos of her that I have taken myself because of an incident that occurred when she arrived. Her eye mechanism got a little jammed in transit and I had to get her artist to show me how to open her head to take a look, which resulted in me buying some utensils that unfortunately partially scarred the doll and left metal flakes I could not remove... I may eventually have to sell or donate her to make shelf space, unfortunately. But anyway, back to what I was trying to say. This little doll gave me a wonderful idea to help myself cope with what I've been going through. Because of her, I began investigating a little into the Blythe doll collecting hobby and discovered that there was a whole culture surrounding the customization of "fake" Blythes. The dolls that people create from a Blythe base can be extremely beautiful! Many artists paint them with very lifelike colors or carefully work to create interesting sculpted expressions. 

 

 

A few wonderful sculpt examples, featuring the artists' names.

    I realized that I could start having Blythe dolls created for me based on my own artwork and that I might be able to also talk an artist into making some of that artwork into custom eye chips for the Blythes as well. Not only that but they could be characters I grew up loving and those custom eyes could feature photos that I either took myself or photos that were taken of me and people I loved. It seemed like a nice little way to express myself through my doll collection. However, getting my first custom Blythe doll was a little bittersweet... My father surprised me with a thousand dollars for Christmas and at the time, it did not fully sink in that it might be because he might soon pass. I did figure that he might be thinking that, but nothing made me feel like it was going to become a reality anytime soon at that point. I also figured I likely was not going to get much more than just that if he did pass, so I decided to use it to have a doll made that was somewhat inspired by a happy memory I had that involved my whole family together. At the time, I had reignited my interest in a fandom that I used to be in about a decade ago now, a fandom which I had gotten into in large part because of that happy memory. That fandom was... Disneyland California Adventure's Mad T Party.

 

 

The Mad T Party, a rockin', whimsical cover band based on Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" (2010). 

 

    My family's first Disneyland trip was back in October 2013, during the heyday of Mad T Party's popularity. I remember it was not a very fun trip overall because my parents had their friction, and I was having mine with my then-boyfriend who went with us. However, that did not stop our night with the Mad T Party from being an absolute blast. All four of us were jumping around, smiling and acting silly to the absolute jams they were performing up on that stage all that evening. Regrettably, I did not manage to get a photo of us all together in that crowd. But I did record a video of one of the sets from that night and that video revealed something to me that I had almost forgotten after all these years- the first reason that my favorite character became my favorite in that fandom. As it turned out, he had spent that evening singling me out quite often, and I happened to catch some of it on that video. I then recalled that I had spent a good chunk of that evening wondering if I actually thought he was cute or not. It was difficult to tell with my imperfect eyesight from a distance. All I knew was he really shredded and his antics were so funny and entertaining. I felt hooked on the character. Also, my then boyfriend took notice of what was going on and became so jealous, he was grumbling all the way back to the hotel later that night, which was pretty funny. Especially considering that I deliberately stuck by him, not wanting to make it worse. 

 

    If, by now, you're curious to know what character, I'm talking about, it was... Drumroll please. That character... 

 

Was... 

 

The...  

The Dormouse from DCA's Mad T Party band, sometimes also referred to by the Dormouse's name from the 2010 film, Mallymkun.

Dormouse!!

    

     So. What I decided to do with the concept for my first custom Blythe was this. I generally prefer to get dolls of characters I love from things I'm into, with a few exceptions from time to time for OCs of mine that I like, so I had BlytheDreams create for me a doll of Mallymkun, which I will reveal later in this post, that would feature a still taken from the video of that evening in one of his four eye chip sets. I also wanted him to reflect how much I had enjoyed being in the MTP fandom while it was active, so each of his eye chip sets had a theme that was inspired by something from the show itself. The first set was this.

 

A bright pink-purple ombre colored eye with heart-shaped motifs surrounding an overturned glass bottle tagged "DRINK ME" and spilling liquid.

 

     
 

    This first set of eye chips features a pink and purple color palette that makes the blue of the liquid spilling from the glass DRINK ME bottle pop and is filled with an adorable heart theme. The DRINK ME bottle symbolizes Alice's entrance into Underland/Wonderland while the hearts and the color scheme allude to the way that the MTP Dormouse often reacted to Alice. On the surface, it can symbolize the love I felt for the show as a fan, which I really like. But it was actually inspired by a certain moment that took place on that stage between Mallymkun and Alice. During one of the late-run performances, per the usual, Alice was late to the tea party and when she finally made her entrance, this was the look that came over Mallymkun's face on seeing her... 

 

A Mouse sees one of his favorite people.

 

    Fun fact, the colors for that eye chip set were also lifted from that still. I do plan on eventually getting a complete set of MTP Blythes, so these eyes especially will be used in shots with an Alice doll. The next pair that I designed were inspired by his guitar, the neon colors of the lights over the stage, the eye color of my preferred Dormouse performer (admittedly) and the line that would be dropped over the area speakers whenever another set was about to start on stage: "IT'S T-TIME!". 

 

A bright blue eye chip set featuring a ticking clock motif, a guitar shape, a tea theme and a falling mouse.

 

    This second set is framed with a clock-like theme that has odd, curling numbers around the outer rim of the iris and a teacup and teapot worthy of the Mad Hatter's tea table spilling bright, neon green tea. The colors of the tea and the phrase, "It's T-Time" are taken from the colors used in the logo design for the Mad T Party band. The T in "T-Time" is also the Mad T Party logo letter T. With this set, I also played a little more with the pupil shape and decided to go for a guitar and a drum stick layered on top of each other to create the hour hand and the minute hand of the clock face. The time used on this eye chip set, 3 pm, was, I think, the earliest possible time that Mad T Party would sometimes come out to play. Another unique feature of this set was the glowing neon rainbow gradient that surrounds the pupil. There was a whole spectrum of color that washed over that stage every night that the band was on and I did not want to leave that out of my doll's design. Then there's the little mouse, which is based on the design that was used for the wrap on the Dormouse's guitar. Also, yes, I did use a photo of my preferred Dormouse performer inside the pupil here simply because I thought it looked cool. Which sort of connects this eye chip design to the third eye chip set.

 

A blue to pink-purple ombre eye design with a music note motif, framing an image of the Dormouse.

 

     This third set is the set that utilizes a still from the video that I recorded that night. Like the first set, it has an ombre gradient, except this one runs from blue to a more purple pink and like the second set, it has a musical theme with the music notes, features the T from the MTP logo (but reversed this time) and as I have said, it features a photo of the Dormouse inside the pupil once again. This still in particular is a memory of the fun that night, at least for myself, as I previously mentioned. I think my camera caught him picking me out of the audience again in this still. I sort of wish I could have recorded more of the sets that evening because it was quite amusing how he kept doing stuff like that. There was even a point where he tried to silently tell me to put my phone down. I just laughed a little and shook my head. There was no way I was going to give up recording, since I did not know then if I would ever be back for another serving of T. I wanted to remember the fun of that night for as long as I possibly could. Speaking of which, fanart was one of the ways that the fans, the T-Cups, as we called ourselves online, was one of the ways that we used to keep the fun going between shows! As a result of that realization... 

 

An odd eye chip design featuring a diamond pattern, cookies, cake, a spade, a lovestruck Dormouse and lyrics from "Punk Rock Princess" by Something Corporate.

 

An eye chip design with a green color palette, a garden theme, a key hole and a quirky, smokey spiral design, out of which a little Alice is entering Underland/Wonderland.

 

    The final set of eye chips became inspired by fan-made character art. I drew a curious little Alice making her way into Wonderland/Underland via the key hole after drinking from the DRINK ME bottle in order to shrink herself down to size in one eye and in the other, I chose to draw a little lovestruck Mallymkun watching his Alice arrive in his world, at his mousey size. The Alice eye contains a still taken from Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" (2010), as I am also a huge fan of both that movie and Tim Burton himself. I really could not have this doll made and just ignore the inspirational roots of the band! I would venture to say that most T-Cups, also, were likely Tim Burton fans like myself, as MTP did have some very noticeable notes of his visual design hallmarks. In fact, even people who were not into MTP took notice of it and used to joke that MTP was like a Hot Topic gained sentience and invaded Disneyland. In the adjacent eye, there is yet another nod to what the T-Cups were like and it's a bit of an "If you know, you know" thing. One person once posted on Tumblr that Mallymkun probably loved Oreo cookies and we all, for some reason, felt like that would be so true to canon that we all just ran with it. I felt I couldn't very well do a set of eyes inspired by the fandom's behavior and leave out the Oreo cookie headcanon. But when I finished drawing the Oreos, I realized that adding more cookies would be even cuter for the design overall, so I added Alice's upelkuchen (the little EAT ME cake/cookie) and one of my favorite cookie designs from a phone game I love to play, Dessert Shop Rose, the Chocolate Sandwich Cookie. Finally, a note about the lyrics that I included in that eye. While I do feel like the lyrics could apply to Alice x Mallymkun from Mad T Party, it's actually tied more to the relationship I had at the time that I got into the show. The person I was with once said he would be my "garage band king" if I would be his "punk rock princess" when he first sent me that song back in high school. I used to have that song on loop in my ipod earphones on a lot of school days after that. 

 

    Anyway, that concludes the overview of the eye chips that I designed for my first custom Blythe doll! If you've made it this far, I'll bet you're itching to see the doll himself. I will reveal him after a few more important things about him are covered. The first is that when I approached BlytheDreams with the concept, I sent her several character reference sheets for the doll and she immediately realized there was one detail she might not be able to add. The artwork on the back of his jacket, which, from photos alone, would be a challenge to copy and scale down.

 

The back of the Dormouse's jacket.

 

    Luckily, I was able to offer her a quick and simple work around. I remembered watching a few shrinky dinks videos on YouTube and suggested that she could do something like that if I could provide her with a .png of the artwork that I would draw myself since I'd seen that jacket in a lot of different lighting and angles. She agreed to try it, so I sat down and spent a few days creating this.

 

Mallymkun from Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" (2010) brandishes her hatpin blade bravely.

 

 

    It is far from perfect but I did give it my best. I used several images of the jacket and also consulted some of the remaining T-Cups via Discord to try to get it looking as close as I could. I have to say, going Rococco was genius for retaining the character's female roots while keeping the masculine look. It also does not disagree at all with the Tim Burton aesthetic, I think. In fact, it sort of compliments it. So, that was the first problem we had to solve together before the doll could be created. The next was what kind of expression that BlytheDreams should carve into the doll's face plate. I was a little uncertain of that at first and had to cycle through some photos and video of my favorite Dormouse performer to attempt to find the look that I wanted. There were several that I really liked but I ultimately settled for the face he usually made before starting chaos because I felt that would look the most interesting on a Blythe doll in photos. 

 

Dormouse about to launch into some chaos to surprise the audience.

 

    There was one slight issue for me though at the time. I was not sure I would be okay with having a Blythe doll whose mouth was open and showing teeth, so I had to make one slight alteration to the expression on the character sheets that I sent in to the artist. I kept the look generally the same but closed the mouth. So now, we are one step closer to the doll reveal. This is the character sheet!

 

A front, side and back view of the overall design for my very first custom Blythe doll.

 

 

    I sent in about four of those sheets, each one showing how I wanted his eye chips positioned. But for our purposes here on this blog, I'll only post the one character sheet above. I also really tried to make the character sheet resemble a Blythe doll as best I could, to help with the translation to a smaller scale, though that was a challenge since, at the time of making the art, I hadn't had any experience with owning a Blythe doll or being up close and personal with them. Now, I bet you're really raring to see the finished doll. So, without further ado... Here he is. 

 

 

A hand-painted, artist-sculpted and assembled Blythe doll of Mad T Party's Dormouse character.

 

He even has a 1:6 scale custom of the guitar!

    Oh yes, and there is still one more notable thing about him! The fact that he is actually male! Due to the softness of the basic Blythe face sculpt, Blythe dolls are typically female. Given that circumstance, I think BlytheDreams did a pretty good job making a slightly more masculine face and additionally, instead of using a normal female Blythe body, she put him on a male A-Zone Pure Neemo body. Not only that but he is also fully painted, from head to toe! Many artists simply paint the face and that's it. The fact that Mally here is fully painted actually gives me a lot more range to photograph him in ways that tell stories, which I adore. I really feel like I cannot put into words just how happy I am with how he turned out. Although my excitement at his arrival did get just a little dampened. You recall I mentioned that my father had been battling Stage IV cancer and yes, that was ongoing during the entire time I was commissioning BlytheDreams for this doll. Just three weeks to the day after Mally here arrived, my father lost his battle and in effect, I also learned exactly how much his side of the family actually loved me. It very quickly turned out that Mally here is one of the most precious things that came from my father's passing. He was the last Christmas gift, he is one of my rare happy memories involving my father and he is what I did with the only inheritance I got. So I am also quite protective of him, at the same time I find being with him to be very comforting. For this reason, I also bought him a coffin-shaped carrier that was custom made just for him. I use this whenever I want to take him out and about with me.

 

 

Mallymkun secured in his little coffin carrier, made by DollBlytheEvaUA.

 

    If you've made it this far, thank you. Also, if you have not yet realized what connects my custom Blythes to my coping with the passage of time and loss, it's completely fine. I will just state it plainly right here. They function, sort of, as photo frames. Memory holders made from things I've loved. They also, so far, have their own themes. Mallymkun's is Family. Ironically, the T-Cups also used to love writing fanfiction in which the band was Mallymkun's found family. Anyway, he is just the first. I actually have another one that BlytheDreams is creating for me right now, though not another MTP band member yet at this point. I recently discovered that my teenage love for anime and manga never really died like I had started to think it did in the last decade. It turns out, it might have only been suppressed by all the survival and healing that I was having to do. As a nod to my teen self and to the people I was closest to during those years, the theme of the next Blythe Boy is Love and Love Lost. The character is one that was likely never told it was enough for him just to be himself and he is my first anime doll in years. Curious? I'll give you a few clues then. He may have no canon visual representation in the series that he belongs to, the series he belongs to was wildly popular internationally from 2006 through 2016, his series was hosted by Shonen Jump, he's a psychotic orphan and he loves strawberry jam. No idea still? Well, maybe you'll realize who he is as I post about his eye chip designs and share his character sheets in subsequent posts. ;)