Make a doll in Paint Shop Pro

This tutorial will show you how to make a good looking doll in Paint Shop Pro. The first trick I can give you to make a good doll is... SHADING! Keep that in mind when you make dolls. It's the only way you can make your doll look real.

1- First, open a base you'd like to work on. I chose a base from Mufflonen. It's easier to make good looking dolls on big bases.

2- Then, be sure your image got 16 millions colours. If not, you'll only be able to make dolls with very few colours. After you done that, change the size of the canvas. Make it big enough so you have a lot of space to work on. Don't change the size of the image!!! It's gonna change the way the base look. Just change the size of the canvas!

3- Now, your image should look like this. You see that I have enough room to make her a big dress or something like that ^_- If it's not looking like that, you did something wrong. Go back and try to find what's wrong.

4- Now, add a new layer. This is where we'll make the clothes and... shade!

5- Be sure the new layer you just made is selected. Then, draw the outline of the clothes. I'm starting to make her a red tank top.

6- Then, you fill the piece of clothes with one color, that is much more pale than the outline you draw.

7- And now... Let's shade that tank top!!! Click on the little hand you see at the left.

8- Then be sure this tool is set to darken RGB. And put the settings so the bursh is not too big for your doll and so the opacity is not too high.

9- Now it's time to shade! But before select the inside of the piece of clothes with the magic wand so you don't darken on other part (like if there would be pants, you wouldn't want the pants to have a red shading!) Now you're ready to darken. Just think of how the piece of clothes would look like if it was on a real person. It may be hard the first times but I was able to achieve this after only 2 tries.

10- Now it's time to lighten this a little bit! Keep the same "little hand" tool. But this time, change it to "Lighten RGB". Put highlights on the clothes just like you feel.

11- Now, the only way to make this look "real" is to put a little gaussian blur. Don't deselect your piece of clothes. Make some gaussian blur (I put 0,75 of gaussian blur). It's going to look like this... Great isn't it?

12- If you think it still look a little artificial (because of the outline of the clothes), the thing is you have to darken this a little. Make sure only that piece of clothes is stil selected. Now, go in Luminosity and Contrast. And then play with the Luminosity until you feel it's okay. The doll now look like this...

13- Now, make her pants with the same technique. You can also make her shoes or socks, or even let her with her foot bare. I made her some blue pants and black socks with little yellow dots ^_^

14- And now, the hardest part of the job... hair!!! Hair is usually very hard to shade. But with the little technique I showed you (the "little hand") it's way much easier. I was very bad to make hair before. The hardest thing is to draw the outline. All you need to do is train to get better to do that. If you work hard, you might get great results. So, my doll's hair is gonna look like this... I draw the outline and filled it with a lighter colour.

15- Now, we shade! We use the same "little hand" tool as before. Just keep in mind, for shading the hair, that the hair that is behind might be darker than the hair that is on front. To make it look even better, put her lighter and darker streaks everywhere. Everybody knows that, if your hair is not dyed, your hair is not the same colour everywhere. Take me for example. I'm blond, but I've got lighter blond streaks and even dark red streaks. But it's all natural. My Irish blood tend to give me a red head, but the sun is always lighting my hair. And it's the same for everybody. Don't be afraid to exagerate. So now, my doll looks like this...

16- So, that is really ugly don't you think? But again, it's something gaussian blur is gonna fix! Gaussian blur is one of my favorite function. It fix a lot of things... ^_- But you have to be sure that, your hair is selected, but that the selection doesn't go too near the face... you're going to have the side of her face blurred and we don't want that. So, with a little help from my friend gaussian blur, here's how my doll look like now... Hope that tutorial helped you!