This tutorial is designed to be used with Paint Shop Pro ver. 7 from Jasc.com. By following it you will learn how to make your own cartoon doll base body from scratch, so to speak. It is assumed that you have a very basic knowledge of PSP when starting this tutorial.

For this tutorial I am using a picture of a pin-up model in a nice sitting pose. I am not offering the picture for you to download since it is not mine to begin with, so you will have to find your own on the web or scan one from a magazine. I am not copying the picture in question, I am just using it to get a rough outline of a nice pose.

But now lets get started!

1. Open up the picture that you want to use. A picture of a naked or seminaked person is the easiest to use, and with the entire figure visible.

2. Using the crop tool crop away all excess space around the human figure.

3. Now we are going to resize the image to give it the right size to work with. If you want to use your finished doll in the Palace she can be no larger than 132 x 132 pixels. However, if you don't want to use her in Palace you are free to decide for yourself. Dolls come in almost any size and shape these days. I like to be able to use my dolls in the Palace so I make them no taller than 132 pixels if the figure is standing at full height. This one is sitting down so I will only make her 110 pixels tall.

4. Image>resize and set the height to 132 pixels (or whatever you choose) and make sure the 'maintain aspect ratio' box at the bottom is checked to get the right width set automatically. This is what my image looks like after resizing it:

I know it looks small and that it's difficult to see any detail, but don't worry, we'll magnify it when we start drawing.

5. Now make sure your image is 16 million colours by choosing colour>increase colour depth>16 million colours. Don't worry if the option doesn't show up, that just means that it's already at 16 million colours.

6. Have the layer palette open and double click on your layer, name it and choose 'ok'. Your image is now a raster layer.

7. Layers>new raster layer. Name the new layer, perhaps 'doll' and choose ok. Click on the new (top) layer once to make it the active layer. Your layer palette should now look something like this:

8. Now set your foreground colour to black and then choose the paint brush with these settings:

9. Magnify the image and start drawing the outline of the model. You don't have to do it precisely, and if you think something looks strange you can modify it slightly. Draw everything that you can except the head. If you have difficulties seeing what you have drawn or need to look at it without the model behind it just turn off the visibility on the bottom layer by clicking the tiny glasses that you see on the layer palette. You can also draw some lines while the model is invisible. Just make sure that you first click on the top layer in the layer palette to make that layer active so that you are drawing on that layer and not the bottom one. This is what my outline looks like with and without the model behind it:

Notice that I didn't finish her hands and that I didn't even attempt to draw a head. I will do this later while shading.

10. The shading is the next part. You can choose to copy the shading that is already on the model. But I don't want to do that. I feel that this is like copying too much and I don't want to copy anything but the actual pose. To make the doll entirely my own I will draw my own shading using the style that I normally use. My shading technique is not very complicated and it is not as good looking as that of some other doll creators. It is very simple. I use three basic colours, the darkest one for the outline, the lightest one for the skin colour and the middle one for the shade.

11. Now you can start by turning off the visibility on the bottom layer, then click the top layer once to make it active.

12. Now change the black outline that you have drawn with the darkest of the three shades that you want to use for the skin of your doll. Please, go to our colour editing tutorial # 2 to see how this is done (the link will open in a new window).

13. Fill in with the lightest tone that you want for the skin.

14. And finally, draw along the outline with the medium tone, making the shade thicker than just the one line where you think it is appropriate.

You might notice (well, if it is visible) that I haven't finished the hands yet. Hands can seem quite difficult to draw, and they are impossible to copy from a picture like this. But the thing to remember is that cartoon dolls are very small and the hands can look good even if you don't add a lot of detail. Just a few lines with different skin tone colours where you think the fingers should be can do it.

15. The head of cartoon dolls is larger than the head of normal people. That is one of their charms. :o) For the head you might want to make just a simple oval shape. You can look at other cartoon doll heads to see how they are shaped, or you can make your own. Not too small, not too large. Then just shade it like the rest of the body. This is what my finished doll looks like with head and hands roughly drawn (I have also drawn a face on the doll but that is purely for illustrative purposes, you can draw the face exactly as you want):

16. Now your doll is ready to be saved. Delete the bottom layer on the image and save as a psp file. That way the image is easy to open whenever you want to alter it in any way.

You have now created your own cartoon doll base. I'm sure that if this was your first time it took quite a while, right? And you probably made some mistakes along the way. There are three things to remember whenever you make a cartoon doll base this way: 'patience', 'practise' and the undo button. All three are important!

(This entire tutorial © January 19th, 2002, Guðrun Jacobsen)