Making a doll
This tutorial was done using Corel PSP X2 but it should work with earlier
versions.
You need to have a good working knowledge of psp and working with pixels.
Don’t forget to save often. I probably won’t keep reminding you so don’t
forget.
This tutorial was written completely by me but a lot of what I'm saying
was learned from doing tutorials at various sites.
Unfortunately most of those sites are no longer working so I can't link
to them for you.
Before we get started, I want to explain how I get the outline for my
bases.
I am not an artist and can't just draw something from my head so I use models
to help me.
For this paticular base I used my niece's young body and an old picture
of my sister and then changed the arms a little.
I draw around the body and resize it to fit my needs.
If you don't have anyone you can use as a model, you can always look
on line for something to use.
A person modeling bathing suits is a good way to go since you see more of
their actual body.
I get ideas for clothes by looking through clothes magazines or sale flyers
in my local newspaper.
A lot of my hair styles come from looking through hairstyle magazines. That
and using an old photo of myself with pig tails.
You can get ideas from many different sources.
Now that you know where to get ideas and how my bases originate, let's get
started.
If you want to use my base, save this outline to your computer and open
it in The Animation Shop. Then export it to psp.
If you don't have The Animation Shop, you can open it in psp and promote
background layer to make it a raster layer.
Then select all the black areas and hit your delete key to put the outline
on a transparent background.
If you would rather make your base from scratch, find a body you can use
as a model and first resize it to the size you'd like your finished doll
to be.
Next draw an outline around the body.
I make the head with vectors, using the elipse shape to get the shape I'm
looking for.
Vectors is a whole different tutorial so I won't get into it now but if
you do my bear tutorial
it might help.
If you're going to use my base, open up a transparent canvass, 300x300.
I like a big canvass although our doll will not be nearly this big.
Copy and paste the exported gif doll outline on a new layer.
Turn on your grid and zoom in to 800%.
Stand on the background layer and flood fill it with white. It makes it
easier to see what you're doing.
We're going to make our outline and base using shades of gray and then
colorize everything to get a nice skin tone.
Set your Foreground to #848284 and your background or fill color to #c6c3c6.
You can use my outline or pixel over it using #848284.
Select the inside and flood fill with #c6c3c6.
Select none and save.
Now for some shading.
Add a new layer and call it dark shading.
Using your outline color, pixel around the outside edges of the doll.
Add another layer and call it light shading.
Using white, draw some lines down the arms and legs and some lines across
the chest.
Add some pixels to the head like I've done.
Stand on your dark shading layer and go to
Adjust
Blur
Gaussian blur set at 1.5.
Stand on your light shading layer and go to
Adjust
Blur
Gaussian blur set at 2.
Now we need to get rid of the transparent pixels on the outside of the base.
Stand on your base layer and select the inside.
Invert the selection then go to your dark shaded layer and hit delete.
Keep it inverted and do the same delete on your light shaded layer.
Select none.
Merge visible
Now to give it that nice skin tone color.
If you haven't saved in awhile, you might want to do that now.
To get a nice skin color, we're going to colorize.
Go to Adjust
Hue and Saturation
Colorize
How you colorize is a matter of taste but I like using 24 for the Hue and
167 for the Saturation.
That's it.
You can save it as a gif or first export it to Picture Tube.
If you have any questions, be sure to stop by my PSP Addict message board and ask for some help or stop by and show us your work.
Click next to do my eye tutorial.