This tutorial goes overviews my personal method of dolling, it is by no means a complete tutorial or the only way to do pixel dolling, it is just a compilation of the way I do things and my personal opinion. I hope that it may be of some use to you.

Step 1: Choosing a Base

Whether you are dolling an original creation, using an image for inspiration or putting in an entry for a dolling contest, the first and most important step to starting your doll (besides knowing what you want to doll) is picking a base. You have to take into consideration what you are dolling, not only what pose would be appropriate, but also the style of the base and size of the base. If you intend to doll something intricate with alot of detail you will probably find it easier to work on a larger base, while simple dolls are more suited to smaller bases which keep them from looking bland. Also, if you personally pixel using a 4-step pallette it's best to choose a base with a similar number of steps, 4-5 is best, if you go over 5 steps the base will end up looking too realistic and your clothing and hair will look out of place, 3 or less would make the base look bad in comparison to your shading. Always keep base size and step number in mind along with pose. Also keep in mind your personal dolling style, if you are the type of person who dolls "big hair" then a base with a large head would suit you better, if you doll with hair close to the provided skull then it's best to choose a base with a smaller head so that your hair doesn't look too thin or flat on an overly large head.

For the purposes of this tutorial I have decided to create a doll based on this image, which is a ball jointed doll created by Uyuchagongbang at http://milktea-present.lil.to/ Since there is a medium level of detail needed, and also because the base was intentionally created to resemble a ball jointed doll in the way the face is pixelled, I have decided to use my Pinnelau base.

Step 2: Preparation Edits

After choosing a base, I often find it a good idea to do minor tweaks to the eye color and skin color of a base (provided it is allowed on the base you use) to suit what I am dolling. In this case, I've used an altered light pink pallete to change the skin color on my base. It is best to change your gif to RGB color mode before you do this so that you are allowed a greater number of colors to work with, when you finally save your doll most editors allow saving your gif as an "exact" pallette which will allow you to retain the RGB colors you used without altering them. If you are using Adobe Photoshop then this step can be made very simple by using the fill tool with the use all layers, anti-aliased and contiguous boxes unchecked, this will allow you to fill in each shade on the current base with a new one, efectively replacing one color for another.

Step 3: Clothing

The first thing I usually do when working from a reference image is set up my screen so that I can see both my reference image and the base I am working on at the same time. If you use Adobe Photoshop it is also usually a good idea to keep your tool bar, history tab, layers tab and swatches tab at hand. I like to use multiple layers when I do pixel dolling that way if I decide I don't want an object or want to change the color of an item later on it is easier on me since it is seperate from the other objects on my doll. I keep my history tab visible so that I can undo any actions or missteps I choose. I also keep my swatches visible which displays the various color pallettes I use more often. If you have Adobe Photoshop then it is a good idea to keep a running list of swatches of your color pallettes. If you do not use Adobe Photoshop then it is always a good idea to paint a bit of each of your favorite pallettes onto a seperate file and save them so that you can pull it up later if you need to. This is what my screen looks like when I begin:

I usually like to start out with the clothing, usually starting with the top of the outfit then the bottom, accessories such as gloves and shoes and finally any head accessories (though sometimes I wait till after the hair is finished for those).

In this case our doll will have a tie on hat, low-waisted dress with petticoat, neck, and waist ribbon made of lace. As I mentioned before, I like to start off with the bodice/top of an outfit and work my way down, so I will start with the top portion of the doll's outfit including the sleeves and main dress-top minus the skirt, neck ribbon and sash.

As you can see, I start out with the outline for the outfit, in Adobe Photoshop you can hold down shift while clicking your mouse to draw a straight line. When pixel dolling, it's a good idea to use your pencil tool set to 1 non-antialiased pixel. It is not important what colors you use at this point, I often create an outfit with one of my clearly defined pallettes and then fill-replace the colors with another pallete once it's finished to change the color to what I would like. In this case I am doing the initial drawing with my 'storm blue' pallette. Here, I have used red on my doll to seperate the cream colored linen pleats and areas of lace on the reference image from the blue fabric.It is a good idea to use seperate starter pallettes for items like this so that you do not confuse your border lines or inadvertently change all your lines when you color-fill them later with your final color.

After the outside lines are drawn I like to use the fill tool to fill in the outfit areas with my next lightest color on my pallette, this is the darkest color of your fabric. It is a good idea to make sure all your fill areas are closed and that your lines don't have any extra pixels adding to thier thickness. I usually find these areas on corners where i've connected two lines. Your lines will look cleaner if you make sure they are always 1 pixel in width and that there are no stray pixels, the exception to this being when an extra pixel is needed to accentuate a corner or line that does not show up well against the surrounding colors.

After that I use my 3rd color to fill in any areas that aren't in shadow and then my last color in highlighted areas.I find it useful to use my highlight color to accentuate the edges of items where the light hits them the strongest as well as on the tip of folds. a useful trick to making areas of color fade into each other is to leave a space at the tip of a line of color and then add one pixel of the color again, it gives the illusion of a fading line when zoomed out. You will notice several of my highlight areas on the shirt use this method if you look closely. Please remember to be careful with your lightsource at this point and remember to leave shadows where folds are and in places where two peices of fabric overlap. I would suggest filling in your main fabric color this way first and then working on the lace and pleats. You will notice i've replaced the blank red areas where the lace was with a lace pixel pattern instead. Once all the shading and highlighting is done and I am satisfied with the lighting and line work I use the fill tool to fill-replace them with the appropriate set of colors. In this case I don't want my doll to be exactly like the reference picture so i've opted to use something other than cream and sky blue. In this case I've chosen a light blue and turqoise. It is not unusual for me to change these colors a third time later on in the final stages, but for now this will do.

Now we can move on to the skirt. I've decided to do the skirt next before I bother with the lace ruffle at the shoulders or the bow at the hips because the bow and the lace collar are going to require the same color pallette and can be done at the same time, since the skirt, like the blouse is under the waist ribbon it makes sense to do it first and then pixel the ribbon over top. I use the same basic methods to outline and color the skirt, adding a lace pattern at the bottom for the petticoat. If you have difficulty drawing these type of skirt folds then I would suggest looking at my folds reference in the bases section.

Now the only part of the outfit we have left apart from the hat and whatever stockings or shoes we want to add is the neck ruffle and the waist ribbon. At this point i've also decided I like how the bodice and skirt turned out and have merged the layers including the lacework and petticote into a single layer, in the future if I fill-replace the colors it will replace the appropriate colors on the skirt and bodice at the same time.

Technically since both the waist ribbon and neck ruffle are made of a tulle netting or lace, it would be a considerable chore to detail them as the lace on the skirt and sleeve of the dress were, to simplify, it's a better idea to do them as solid shapes or to do them as a solid shape at partial opacity (if you have adobe photoshop and can change layer opacities). In this case, I have chosen to do them as solid objects. At this point it is also a good idea to add the shadows cast by the waist ribbon,neck ribbon or skirt. I've also decided to make my neck ruffle and waist ribbon a different color than the pleats and lace on the dress to make them stand out a bit more.

Now all we have left to do is the shoes, hair and hat. Which conveniently enough, I am going to do in that order. I've noticed alot of people make shoes harder than they have to be. In this case, our reference image doesn't show what shoes or stockings the original ball jointed doll has. I've decided that some simple little dress shoes would be fine, just like the rest of the clothes I'm going to start out with the lines, then fill in colors 2, 3 and finally the highlights. I've found that the easiest way to do shoes is to follow the outline of the foot for the most part, cut across the top of the foot a ways past where the toes would be, curve up for the heel (if you can see that much of the foot on the base you use) and for the sole of the shoe, leave a 1 pixel space and then draw a line that mirrors the bottom of the shoe you already lined in, for a thick-heeled shoe just add more pixels in that space widening the sole, when you are finished, it should look like this:

I've decided not to do any sort of tights on this doll so now we can move to doing the hair, which will need to be done before the tie on hat if we want to get it positioned correctly on the head.

Step 4: Hair

When doing hair I like to start off by doing the bangs and hair immediately surrounding the face first and then work on the hair in the back and then lastly any stray strands. There are many ways to pixel hair, my own method varies a little from doll to doll, for smaller dolls where it is harder to see detail I often only draw the outermost ouline and then use the shading to define certain clumps of hair more than others, on a larger or medium doll like this one I prefer to draw in some of the clumps with an outline. It is particularly important when doing the hair to clean up your lines, since hair is so fragile and fine it looks strange if your lines are thicker than they should be and it is a good idea to zoom out often to get an overall look at your work. Also, since this base had a large head in proportion to the body it is best to let the hair rest further out from the head than it really does in real life so that the hair doesn't look like it's clinging to the skull tightly. I find it is effective to draw hair with large and small clumps intermixed. Hair is not perfect and never falls perfectly straight, it tends to look more accurate if you allow certain clumps of hair to pass in front of others weaving them together rather than just drawing straight lines all the time. For this step I have also increased the size of my canvas area to 300x300 pixels to give me room to draw the hair. In the picture below I've filled in the shadow color as well so that you can see the lines clearly.

Next, we need to fill in the 3rd and highlight colors. So long as you keep your light source in mind and remember to place your middle color wherever there is no shadow and your highlight colors where the hair is most effected by the light (particularily where it curves) you should have no problem filling in the colors.

At this point I like to add a few stray strands of hair, the loose strands at the edge of the hair where they meet the transparent background will be the outline color of the hair, any stray hairs that cross in front of hair only will be the highlight color or an even lighter color, this makes them easier to see.

Once that is done, all that is left to do on the hair is to add a shadow where it crosses the forehead of your doll and make any color adjustments you wish to make. In this case, I chose to fill-replace the brown I had been using for the hair for a slightly redder brown.

Step 5: Finishing Touches

At this point all we have left to do is the tie on hat and any color changes and clean up work we feel like doing. I like to do hats and head accessories on a seperate layer from the rest of the dolls so that I can adjust where it is positioned on the head if i need to without having to fiddle with the hair, the hat itself follows the same basic rules of the clothing, outline first, flood fill the shadow color, the third color and then the highlights. I like to leave embellishments such as the flower and lace on the hat for last so that I can get the basic hat structure in. Below you will see a close up of the hat as well as the finished doll. I've decided to make my hat the same color as the dress to make it fit into the doll's design a little better.