We had another local meet at Teeleidi today. I didn’t take much photos at the meet itself, since most of the time was spent talking and eating/drinking tea. Most of the dolls were on another table because the dishes filled the one we were using. But we did take the traditional group photo and then spead out to the garden to take some photos of our own dolls. xD
The bigger dolls were hanging out on the side table while we were conversing. Yami’s hand was slowly edging sideways, lol.
Some of you might’ve noticed that my domain was down for a while. This was because some very bored hacker had exploited an old form I had on my page and gotten to my site that way. I got the site back up and running, but unfortunately I had to restore my blog from an older back up (from September) and I lost some content. Most notable the newest story, which I very unluckily did not save on my computer. For the first time ever I wrote it straight into the blog, instead of my computer first. I’m going to have to re-write it when I have time (though it’ll be slightly different), as well as try to remember what photos I’ve posted since… August. Luckily there isn’t that many of those because I haven’t been very active, but it’s still extra work. Sorry about that and bear with me while I try to get this back up to date.
Bored hackers hack random doll sites, lol?
Edit/ Hah, managed to restore the story from google’s cache, but the other entries’ commentary and comments are gone for good, I’ve only reposted the photos for now.
I ordered Withdoll’s Dark Vera in their new pale brown skin tone back in February with a 3-month layaway. A first time I ever used a layaway on a doll purchase. I don’t usually feel comfortable buying something if I don’t have the money saved up, but it was Withdoll so I felt a little more at ease sending the payments piece by piece (since I’ve talked to them a lot). I spent every month scraping up the funds for the next installment and kept pushing back my plans to get the rest of the stuff she needs: mainly eyes and shoes. I managed to get her a wig, but it still needs a lot of work although I’ve already straightened and cut it.
Withdoll shipped her like a week after I’d finished the layaway so I really didn’t have time to get her anything. But here she is, still incomplete, but so lovely!
I attended a doll meet on May 28th, and I guess it was officially a BJD meet, but DDs and Azones kind of took it over. I didn’t take many photos because the time just flew by. I had intented to take nice shots from the other owner’s dolls too, but I should’ve done that _first_ because I then got stuck taking photos of Kiyori in the tree (posted those already). But anyway, these are the few general photos I took (mostly of the group photo) and the few Yukihi photos I had.
The attendants were: myself, mizya, Pihlajakoto, Turre, Sweetneat/Milly and Kesakeru.
DDs and Azones galore!
This meme has been going around and I was avoiding actual things to do, so I finally did it as well. I loved that the questions are a little different from most memes. :3
Werewolf – How has the hobby “transformed” you?
In a lot of ways, but some of it’s probably also because I’ve grown with this hobby. I started this in my teens and I’ve been at it for 10 years, so things are bound to change. I used to make up stories and draw, but once I got into dolls I switched to photography. I use the doll characters as inspiration for stories that I write as photostories, text and as RP with mizya. So, basically the hobby changed the way I express myself. Though, I still draw and paint from time to time. I also really got into sewing through this hobby, before it, I had no interest to make clothes.
Something came to my attention today that I thought I should talk a little bit about. Sorry in advance for the slightly negative and serious entry this time. This is kind of a hard entry to write, but I’ll try my best to do it properly.
___
This morning, I was browsing the internet and ended up at the FB page of someone who takes custom orders for doll clothing and spotted something very familiar. Even from the tumbnail it was clear to me whose design it was because, well, I have made several of such outfits myself. I wondered why it was there and opened it up for a closer look, which actually made me more upset.
My outfit design had been used to create an outfit for another doll. It’s sligthly altered but it’s still clearly the same style, shape and colour (kind of combined from three of my outfits). This is one of the designs that is quite personal to me, because it was specifically made for mine and mizya‘s characters. I designed it with inspiration from Noblesse (manhwa) but worked very hard to make it uniform-like and yet not base it on existing outfits that I know of.
I contacted the seamstress, and the matter is resolved on that part. She’s apologized and the images have been removed from her portfolio online. She should’ve never accepted the commission but mistakes happen. It’s done, it’s happened, it can’t be changed anymore. Please, no blame on anyone anymore.
I’m sure this not super uncommon so I’d like to say this, and this is speaking generally to everyone, not to one person:
To avoid upsets like these, the original creator should always be contacted first. If it’s not clear who it is, the design shouldn’t be used. If the original creator refuses to relinquish the design, they should be respected and not sent to some other seamstress to make. That seamstress also should not make it, if it seems from the reference images that it’s someone else’s design (or at the very least contact the original creator and ask if it’s okay to duplicate it).
This is important.
It does not feel good to see something you’ve designed, made by someone else and profited upon. In this case, if I had been contacted first about the design, while I don’t make these particular uniforms for others, I would’ve offered to design and create a similarly themed outfit that would be different enough to be called a design of it’s own. I’ve done it once before.
I’ve included some photos here, just to clarify that this isn’t a case of something ‘generally like it’ or ‘kind of similar’. I’m not overeacting. Continue reading “Copyright, commissions and the like”
I’ve just spent a few days cleaning up my domain. I was running a little low on space, so I took it upon myself to go through my photoshoots and remove anything that could be removed. As a result I freed up 590MB of domain space, so that was a lot of photos. Thousands probably. I should some day go through the stories as well and remove anything that’s not relevant for the story. And the misc/sewing/faceup folders that are full of misc stuff. Unfortunately that’s even more work and this was hard enough for now. I had to remove the links to those shoots from the galleries and update new shoots +make new images for new dolls. I definitely didn’t manage to do this sooner than last time. Lol, this update was long overdue.
BUT it’s done now, and I made a new layout for the site itself while I was at it. I don’t love it, but it works better on my resolution now that it’s centered again. I finally also admitted that I just will never write long profiles for all of my dolls, so I just removed everything I hadn’t written yet from the profile section. Maybe some day I’ll write at least Khepre, Kilbas, Llyr, Sigrun, Sindri and Sigurd, because I have them mostly thought out. Some day.
Unfortunately, some of my older images on forums, journals etc. places I’ve posted them to no longer work. I also removed a few newer shoots which means the images are broken in this blog too. I’ll go through the blog later and remove the broken entries altogether.
That’s it for now. I should do some sewing and painting.
A bit of a different entry, but I got myself a new bookcase/doll shelf combo! I now have almost everyone inside glass doors, so I thought I’d take a few photos of them. I used to have two showcases for dolls and a regular, dull bookshelf, but it was one huge waste of space. All the shelves were evenly placed and many of my books were too small fill it properly, so there was a lot of wasted empty space. I browsed through every furniture store site I could find and visited every local store, looking for a new shelf with glass doors but nothing was right. All the shelves were the wrong size, colour or price. So, I gave up, designed one myself and had dad help me build it. We worked on it together for a few months and it’s now finally done. I have the perfect book/doll shelf combo. <3
I could fit everyone except for Llyr in the three shelves I have. His feet are so huge that he takes up the space of two larger dolls or like 4 small ones (when he sits), so now he stands on my desk gathering dust. (Previously he sat in the old bookshelf.)
This is the new beauty:
I had to size the shelf based on those glass doors because they were pretty much the only ones available separately. However, I wanted the shelf to be bigger than what they would’ve made it, so I came up with the interesting asymmetric design. Of course I could’ve had someone make me glass doors exactly the right size, but those would’ve cost a fortune.
The shelf has a ton of different options for my dolls. A few of the shelves can be removed or changed, so that I can have the minis and smaller dolls stand or sit in many different places. <3
More photos with the dolls: Continue reading “Doll shelves!”
I thought this was cause for an announcement: I’ve updated my main doll page. And it’s only been a little over a year, man I’m good.
I changed the format of the gallery a bit. Hopefully it’s not too cluttered or confusing. There was too much scrolling with the old version so I added some tables and divided the categories into their own columns. :3
Hopefully I’ll update sooner next time, because manually adding 45 shoots, 10 stories and editing profiles took me most of the day.
And so that this isn’t just text; have a Sigurd:
I added a subscription feature to the blog. Once you are subscribed you will receive an email whenever I make a new post. So, you won’t have to check back here manually to see if I’ve posted new content. :3
You can find the link permanently in the Blog tools section in the side bar and on the menu bar above (for now anyway).
It’s still in testing, though, so if you have issues with it, please leave me a message and I’ll see what I can do about it.