Aroln
My very first jointed doll was based on my character Aroln.
The main issue with building up his body was in creating the joints to move in the right direction. So, everything began with research on handmade jointed dolls and sketching out the needed shapes. I already had a good design for the character himself as he has been in development for a couple of years by then.
None of my original sketches for Aroln survived, but this image of my tools and supplies with the disassembled doll has made its way to today. When assembled, Aroln is 21 cm (8.4 inches) tall.
There are 19 to 20 joints in each of my dolls.
1 in the neck
3 in each arm
3 in each leg
Sometimes there is an additional one in the area of the ribs
The limbs are connected to each other and to the body with a looped elastic cord, which runs from each foot to the head (2 loops) and from hand to hand through the chest (1 loop). The feet, the hands, and the inner part of the head have little metal hooks to hold the ends of the loops in place and keep them flexible enough.
The hair of each doll is made out of loosened silk ribbons, which are thoroughly brushed with a toothbrush. Each “strand” of loosened ribbon is melted on one end, allowing it to stay in one piece, and then glued in layers onto the doll’s head.
The faces of the dolls are painted with special baking paints, nail polish is applied to the eyes to make them shiny. Clothes are sown to each doll’s size by hand or with the use of a sowing machine. Small accessories like belts, shoes, armor, swords, etc. are also made by hand out of various materials from additional baked clay to scraps of leather and fabric.
Aronath
My second doll was based on my character Aronath, who is the son of Aroln, so I made him to be a size of a 4 or 5-year-old child in comparison with Aroln.
Aronath began with a colored sketch as I did not have a full design for his young self. Then I made a small line-up of his doll and put together the aluminum foil base to make the body and the limbs hollow to allow the elastic cord to go through freely.
With Aronath I introduced to my doll making the 20th joint, which separates the body into two and makes it even more flexible. It was important especially because Aronath is a doll of a child, so his body needed to allow bending in various ways.
Another notion introduced with this doll was curly hair. It took a little more time than straight hair but was much more fun to make. To make curly hair out of loosened ribbons one must roll the “strands” onto sticks of the diameter desired for the size of the curls, wrap them into aluminum foil and boil them for 5-15 minutes to make them stay curled. The length of the boiling determines the springiness of the curls.
After putting the hair on the doll I give it a haircut. Aronath’s was one of the easiest because it had to resemble curly disheveled hair. This doll is only 10.3 cm (4.1 inches) tall, so it was extra hard to put together the clothes for it.
However, the desired effect was achieved, and Aronath turned out the way he did due to many unexpected accidents.
Filnara
My third doll was based on my character Filnara, who is Aroln’s second wife (not the mother of Aronath) and who made the perfect addition to the family of dolls. All of these dolls were made for my sister, who is a fan of my work.
This doll became the perfect combination of my earlier projects because elements of techniques used in both Aroln and Aronath were applied here.
While I used body sculpting techniques very similar to those I used in Aroln, and the hair was very similar to that of Aronath. However, the diameter of the curls was bigger.
While Filnara is much bigger than Aronath and is 17.5 cm (7 inches) tall, her clothes were quite detailed and no matter how much I tried made her look manlier than I desired. Yet they fit Filnara’s character well enough due to her being positioned as a “tough woman.”
For Filnara I got a set of toy pots and pans to put in her bag since she was a great cook and carried her supplies with her even when she was on her journey. This way Filanara ended up having an additional accessory. This improved her balanced quite a bit.
Once all three dolls were complete, I made a small photo shoot of them as a family with a set-up of a small fireplace, some toy pots on it, and with a colored blanket as a background.
