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originz 1

updates 9/28/03

i only have one rule: with all images on this site, please do not direct link to them ... download to your own harddrive, then upload to your own webspace. a linkback is nice but not required. enjoy!

short story long ...

it was a dark and stormy night ... just kidding, it was just a regular night, in late 1995, on the Palace's main "Mansion." sitting around with friends. i was getting bored with the same ol' same ol' "photo of a hunk or babe" or "really badly edited cartoon" avs (avatars) that everyone was wearing. a lot of my friends were making animations, like a photo with blinky eyes, or avs where you had to keep switching macros to animate them (as in, 1 was a face, 2 was a face looking right, 3 was a face looking left, and so on). it was a very creative environment!

a quickie explanation for those who haven't been on Palace or made props: Palace avs are based on a 132x132 grid, broken up into 44x44 pixel "props." so you can have up to 9 of these props and make a nice big av, which is what everybody was doing. even me. i always used Photoshop and the "m&m palette" to edit my avs, then surrounded them with that 100% green that's so ugly (but is so easy to get rid of!), copied and pasted 'em into my prop bag, and used the eraser and held down the control button to erase the areas of green. ta da, nice av.

the basic 132x132 maximum Palace grid
showing the nine 44x44 props.

a 5 piece doll: 1. head, 2. torso, 3. shirt, 4. jeans top, and 5. jeans bottom ... showing how Palace avs are "layered."

one night we even decided to make a GIANT Sylvester the Cat, by 3 people each wearing 1/3 of him, so it was 396 pixels tall, and scared the bejeezus out of everyone who came in the room! then everybody started doing that and it got boring.

the next fad was to make a big 132x132 square that was all black, or different colors, and get everyone in the room to wear it and make a big "quilt" so when new people came in the room, they couldn't even see the room. the wizzes kicked us a lot for being so pesky. but that got boring too.

so basically, i was getting really bored, even though i had only been on the Palace for a month or so. i had already made some of my own cartoons into avs, so i had started drawing cartoons to fit the 132x132 square. but one night, in December 1995, i drew a cartoon "Barbie" ... but i made her goth, cuz i'm goth. i made her fit into three 44x44 props, tall 'n skinny, just like a Barbie doll. i made her fit 3 props so i'd have 6 left to put skirts, tops, stockings, etc. on her. well ... everybody loved it!!! but they wanted her with different outfits. and i love editing for other people. but i am also LAZY. i didn't want to keep making a new prop in Palace each time, so i started using Photoshop layers for some of my editing. for example i made a leather jacket and jeans in Photoshop as a layer, by drawing them on *top* of the Barbie body. then i copied them into my prop bag and "dressed" the doll. at first i kept getting it wrong but using the arrow keys i finally got her outfit to fit right. and i started giving her away so people could make their own outfits. here's a pic of her in a top, skirt, and stockings:

the first "doll"

the little goth Barbie that started it all ...

i drew this in December 1995.

then people asked for a "Ken" ... by this time, people were making her some outfits of their own, but she needed a man! i can't stand Ken dolls, so i made him as a cartoon goth guy standing there in big black pants that were getting in style then, and i was too lazy to draw hands so i put his hands in his pockets, and i was too lazy to draw much of a face so i gave him long hair in the front. again, i gave him away, and a lot of people edited him. so basically, the first skater/sk8r doll was this scribbled dude right here:

the very first "skater" doll.

i drew it in March or April 1996. they weren't called skaters yet, though.

(the first doll had no hand showing, this is the 2nd one where i added the hand.)

i didn't make him clothes in Photoshop layers like the Barbie, i just changed his clothing colors in Palace with the fill bucket. (i honestly thought the tall skinny doll would get more popular!) a friend had edited him into a skater guy wearing Adidas stuff, and she asked me to make him a matching girlfriend, and the Barbie i'd made just didn't look right standing next to the guy. so i flipped him, added long hair, boobs, pretty much it's the same body but edited to be a girl. i made the pants prop shorter so she would be shorter than her boyfriend.as you can see, her arm turned out really weird, so did her hip, but this was in the early days remember! if you did any doll av at all it was new and wonderful, it didn't have to be perfect. anyway, i did her hair to look like mine. she even has a little shading on her body, i was learning to do it fairly well by April/May 1996. my friend edited the doll below to be a blonde wearing Adidas, to match her guy edit. i think i made her hips look funny when i shortened her, but oh well, it caught on and became the trademark "slouchy look" of the skaters.

this is one of the first girl skater dollz, although they still weren't called skaters yet. she is from April or May 1996. (the first skater girl was goth and with big jeans like the guy above, with this face and hair.)

i made another girl doll, this is about May 1996, i wasn't happy with my slouchy girl doll, so i made a more realistic body, i took my time and drew her in Photoshop,and took a long time getting her "just right." i kept the basic face angle from the "skater" doll above. i also started shading everything, because i had more time. (unfortunately i didn't create any more guy avs for a long time, so she didn't have a boyfriend, but those who edited the "skaters" made the guys taller, so she finally did have a boyfriend!)

this is the first "prep" doll, from summer 1996.

although i wore a lot more goth avs than prep avs, i got requests for avs like this, so i have more of them.

the reason her arm is behind her is: i couldn't get it to look right on her hip!! i didn't learn to draw tiny hands until later. also it made it easier to make her skirts and pants ... in Palace, to have a hand that shows, you would have had to either 1) make a separate hand prop to layer over it, losing a prop, or 2) make a hand-shaped "cut out" in the jeans or skirts, which just looked stupid and was too hard to match up. i did eventually make some hands to wear "over" the clothes, if i wanted an av to be holding a flower or a sign.

i did nothing but edit requests for a while. hence all of the prep variations out there. (where have all my black and Latino and Asian dollz gone??!! i hope the people that requested them still have them, because i didn't save stuff i was editing!) then i got sick of making preppy dolls, and i went back to making goth girls. everybody was making "couples" avs and i wanted my girl not to have to rely on a guy and stand alone, so i re-edited the legs and added a hand and a left arm. but used the same basic body. you can see this body in one of the "flared jeans with one foot to the side" stance of dollz today, someone edited this old one to create that great-looking pose. (if it's you, email me!)

this was my return to creating goth dollz after getting sick of doing prep edits for people. do you know how boring it used to be to make mesh in Palace edit? but it was worth it!

this doll was drawn with clothes and all, she is not layered like the other dolls.

... and the rest is history!! well actually there is a LOT more history, some more original things i created including a sofa and a bed, and the very first "tiny," so go on to originz 2 >>

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