CARTOON-DOLLS

Cartoon dolls are also called Pixel dolls. Cartoon dolls range in sizes form high to low pixel. These cartoon dolls are mostly use to display in websites. The dolls are generally human figures or animal figures. This doll making is also called dolling. Some people use it for personal interest but it can also be used for commerical purpose.

Year 1995 was said to be the year when first cartoon doll showed up. The first dolls were simple and small in size. It is said to be of few pixel and hand drawn. The idea of these dolls must be inspired by the paper dolls. Earlier the dolls are cartoon like in appearance so it was named cartoon dolls.

Doll makers followed the old method of making paper dolls. They used the provided base of doll and clothes and made it with its own combinations of clothes to made their own dolls. Many people who do not want to create their own dolls followed this trend and it was become very popular soon.

Today there are a lot of websites that are dedicated to dolling art.

Now the artist feel the need of display of art work so to fulfill this requirment artists who draw computer dolls made a dolling forum and shared their artwork and experiences. These forum often organised the events in which the members participate and share there artwork.

Graphics programs like Microsoft Paint, Abode Photoshop and Paint shop like software used to create these dolls. Bases of these dolls can be in many forms such as outline of human figure or not human like figure, it can be with or without face or in multiple skin tones. Bases comes in different sizes and style. All doll makers do not make their own bases. They used the base of others offer for free use.

Shading Techniques

There are two main ways to create and shade their dolls: pixel shading and tool shading. Some cartoon doll makers mix the two, for example, tool shaded hair and pixel shaded clothes. The effect is not normally a good one, and most knowledgeable cartoon doll makers tend to shy away from this practice

A. Pixel Shading

This method uses a set amount of colors, with gradients created manually through dithering. Clothes, hair, skin, and anything else on the doll are shaded by the use of a set palette. How many shades make up a doll palette is a matter of personal preference and style. Shadows and highlights are added gradually to give the effect of a gradient. Cartoon doll makers have the ability to create life-like shading effects without the use of tools. This technique is most commonly used by beginners, who use the free program that comes with their computer, MSPaint. Some cartoon doll makersl use other programs to pixel shade, like Paintshop Pro or Adobe Photoshop.

B.Tool shading

With this method, the artist employs a drawing program such as Adobe Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro to create their cartoon dolls. Tools in these programs, such as blur, blend, dodge and burn are used to create shading. Although this gives a smoother, and often more life-like effect, it can pose problems when the dolls are uploaded to the web, as most dolls are saved as GIFs which can only handle up to 256 colors. Because tool shaded dolls often have more than 256 colors, they are usually dithered and the result can change shade or appear grainy or noisy.. Cartoon doll makers may refer to this as being "attacked by the GIF Monster." Some pixel artists believe that tool shading is easier than pixel shading but realistic tool shading can take years to perfect.

Some dollers only accept pixel-shading as a true dolling method. However, doing so holds more true to pixel art, instead of 'dolling'