Blog Post #1

Hello everyone! Today I would like to talk about two of my favorite hobbies in the world: doll making and video games!

Specifically, I enjoy RPGs (Role-Playing Games). I've been playing video games since the Nintendo 64 days. I was introduced to a little gem called Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time when I was around 5 years old, and everything about it, from the artwork to the land of Hyrule's lore, was irresistibly compelling to me. From the Zelda series, I then moved on to the classic Final Fantasy series. The outlandish costumes of the Final Fantasy series' characters were a feast to my young eyes. I imagined what it must be like living in a world where science fiction and fantasy and melodrama meet, especially in the vein of my favorite selection of the Final Fantasy series, Final Fantasy IX. The costumes in these games were garish, almost silly, yet the storytelling was intense and emotional, and my imagination fed off of that. I wanted to create worlds just like I found in these RPGs.

This desire only intensified when I moved on to more "mature" RPGs, such Baldur's Gate, the Fallout series, the Elder Scrolls series, and even the Sims! These specific games absolutely require emotional and imaginative investment in order to get the most out of them. Baldur's Gate is a game based within the tabletop Dungeons and Dragons universe, and if you know anything about D&D, you don't just play it…you experience it!

This brings me back to dolls and doll making. As a child, my Barbie dolls did not simply go to the mall, go shopping, or hang out in the Barbie camper on the weekends. My Barbies were engaged in an epic saga chronicling a devastating war between the Barbie Girls and the Baby Dolls. Yep…my Barbies weren't veterinarians or babysitters. They were tough secret agents and martial artists (I had to use a good deal of imagination to pretend like my Barbies were doing Kung Fu stunts with their unbendable legs and arms!). And now, as an adult, I can look back on it and think some of the storylines I came up with for this Barbie versus Baby Doll world were pretty corny and silly.

But the point of this is, dolls and video games have both fulfilled a purpose in my life: the need to create and invest in fantastical realms and engage in meaningful tales of glory, love, even simple satisfaction (my Stardew Valley family is quite content making a living off my cow ranch and winery lol!).

The logical idea for me, with all of this love of creating what this world deems impossible, was to become a writer.

I love writing. I've written about a dozen novels…and have never published any of them. I asked myself why I never took the plunge with all of my rough novels, to either edit them or to simply send them in to a publisher and cross my fingers.

The truth is, writing is important to me, and will always be a part of me, but it's very difficult for me to let the real world experience the worlds that I have created in writing. It feels free and wonderful as I write them, but to read them and try to experience them as someone who simply picked one of these books off of the shelf and started flipping through, the experience seems limiting.

What makes D&D and Final Fantasy and Elders Scrolls and all other video games exciting, and what inspired me in my storytelling from them, is the very personal experience these games offer. The emotional connectional and cerebral reaction we obtain from video games is unique to each of us. While we indeed get this same unique experience with books, and while I'll never stop writing, it's simply not enough for me to achieve my desire of creating something magical that is unique to and for everyone.

And that's where my dolls come in. My dreams and passions have evolved a lot over the years, and who would have thought all this fiery passion would settle on doll making? But the truth is, it's not that much of a stretch between role playing and playing with dolls.

Plenty of clay artists have made their personal and financial successes by designing unique figurines shaped by the imagination of a D&D or other tabletop game enthusiast. These figurines help give form to ideas and stories in a player's mind that can only come from his or her own imagination, but to see this given life in the form of a figurine, it's a true delight and only enhances the gameplay of future gaming. Or it's simply a lovely thing to have as a keepsake.

However, I want to delve even further into these unique avatars by giving everyone the option of making their own with simple patterns and cheap, easy materials. I want even beginners to be able to sew a doll that looks exactly like the hero (or villain!) in their mind, to offer sets of patterns to set the mood of a dark dungeon or lovely village. I want to even offer patterns for equipment your hero, villains, NPCs, or whomever can use to increase the world you're building.

The dolls I want to teach you to make are for gentle play, not for children under the age of three certainly, and can ideally be used as avatars for tabletop gaming, as gifts, as decoration, or anything your mind and heart desires.

There were a lot of threads to connect here in this post (*phew*) but hopefully my point came across: By combining my love of role-playing and dolls, I hope to offer you patterns that will delight the loveable, imaginative geek in your life, or yourself! The possibilities will be endless.

I hope you'll stick with me on my journey to better my own sewing skills so that I can deliver a ton of awesome, simple, imaginative doll patterns over the next year!

LuParis