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Did you miss Part I?
In May 2006,
the finalists for the CWC Blythe Beauty Contest were announced. After seeing the other entries (and recognizing
Cherry Merry), we were honored to be among such amazing Blythe artists. I felt like we had already won - even if we didn't get a prize, Gentle River was going to "walk" the red carpet in Japan! (Paul contends that he knew all along that we had a winner, Christina and I were always skeptical as we "never win anything."). We wanted so badly to go to Tokyo to see the show, but just couldn't get the time or the funds together. Luckily, Christina had planned a trip and would represent us at the show. She got to meet the other finalists and their dolls at a pre-contest luncheon, finally walk our Blythe down the red carpet at the contest and give a presentation in front of the rather intimidating panel of judges! We waited back home for the results. We checked our messages at the crack of dawn the day after the beauty contest and found this in our box from Christina:
6.22.06
Hi Guys,
We won!!!!! I just got back!!!! Its still sinking in, we got the prize money, the trophy, the 5th Anniversary doll each and our doll is going to be made!!!!*L*
I was completely shocked, Paul was proud for being right (;) ), and we were both bouncing around and cackling like crazy fools. (It still seems a bit surreal when I think about it).
After celebrating for a bit, we started thinking about the production doll. We figured, "okay, they have the Blythe we made, they'll just look at her and make the production decisions based on her." Not so! From June 2006 up until now, we have been working back and forth with CWC on all the tiny details of Gentle River!
First was the decision of what headmold to use. Radiant mold hadn't even been seen by the public yet and they needed a decision from us quickly. We were sent a box of dolls to choose from - an SBL, a Darling Diva (white skinned RBL) makeup prototype, and a normal skinned RBL head. We all fell in love with the more Kennery face and quickly decided that Gentle River should be RBL.
One big detail that we knew right away would be very different from our custom was her hair style - sausage curls would be impossible to create at the factory. We looked at all past Blythes with cute curly hair and decided on something between Candy Carnival and Fancy Pansy's styles. Long bangs with short, at the shoulder curls. We also got to choose which style of fringe - fanned out and thick like Tweedly do, or wispy and thatched like Velvet Minuet. We of course chose chunky fan-bangs since that's what the original Gentle River has.
Original Gentle River wears red and white striped socks with oxblood maryjanes (Paul handpainted the original ones with tiny gold buckles). As everyone knows, Blythe's legs stain very easily, so CWC is cautious about using dark colors on the legs - especially red. In order to keep the red stockings, they needed a liner, thus making her feet too big for normal sized maryjanes to stay on (they were going to use the standard licca MJs, which we love). Instead, alternative footwear had to be designed. We decided upon tall hiking boots, somewhat similar to Doc Martens, but different enough to make them look at home in an enchanted forest.
The big impact pieces of River's outfit are undoubtedly her crocheted hat and applique'd overcoat. We all pushed as hard as we could to have these pieces come out as true to Sar Sar and Christina's original pieces, but the layered dress took a big hit in production. The issue of staining came up again on the sleeves of her dress, which are red and white polka dot. Matching the fabrics used on the original dress also posed a big challenge - Christina mixes so many wonderful fabrics together that in the end, after changing all the fabrics for production, this piece changed the most. We were all impressed though, by the embroidery and crochet samples CWC produced of the other pieces.
In Gentle River's story, she has a pet deer named Lemon Butter. Producing a pet to go along with her would have exceeded the budget, so CWC offered to produce Lemon Butter as a Petite Blythe. We felt like we were back at square-one designing a new doll! we passed a ton of ideas back and forth - from the normal deer head + fur suit, to sculpted plush outfit with faux hind legs, to a little girl in a dress and deer hood. We had to be careful not to make her look too much like the other animal-suited petites (and there have been so many!) You'll just have to wait and see what we all agreed upon...
Another major design choice that was hindered by a future Blythe release was River's gorgeous burgundy haircolor. We were informed that we couldn't get the haircolor we wanted because of the
Ultimate Tour Blythe that would be released right before River. We had to decide between something much browner and something much redder. Just for a little suspense, I'll let you guess which one we chose. ;)
Since original River was an SBL, we had to create a prototype head to show her makeup colors, and so that they could create a lip stencil for the final doll (holy cow, as the girl who "just paints lips" this was probably my favorite part.) That was the most stressful lip paint I have ever done! You can tell my hand was shaking. Paul also had to re-cast some of her eyechips, since we only made a limited amount of chips for our custom.
Everyone at CWC and Team Sibley were pushing for the finished doll to be reasonably priced. Since the original custom had such a large ensemble and crocheted pieces, we knew we would have to scale things back but keep the most impactful items we could. The original parts list included: dress, pinafore, coat (all with embroidery and appliques), bra, bloomers, lined stockings (red stripes would stain) maryjane shoes, hiking boots, dress-form, crocheted hat, silk tophat, purse, doll with custom chips and glittery pull-ring. If they had gone ahead and included all this stuff, the doll would have had to retail at over 20,000
yen and CWC would have taken a loss.a decision was quickly reached to eliminate the less important items like the dress form, extra tophat, mary jane shoes and fancy underwear (such a shame too, gentle river's original underwear hasn't ever been seen!).
When we started working on our contest doll, I had wanted to make an official looking Blythe box to send along with our contest doll to show that we had put thought in to a final product, but we ran out of time and had to ditch that plan. We were so pleased when CWC gave us the opportunity to design the box art for Gentle River. They basically told us to send them some ideas and they would use them if they liked them, and if we couldn't make it work, they would design one of their standard cute boxes. We fully took advantage of their offer and made a very elaborate pitch with 3d models. They ended up liking the design and we got to lay out the final box. (we got to work with the blythe box template with the picture of the kid choking on the small parts on the back and everything). I can't show you the finished art, but you can see three sketches that Christina drew when we were planning it out. You can probably tell by the design of this website which one we ended up going with. It's a darn good looking box if I do say so myself.
There were a handful of details to work out that we hadn't even imagined they would ask our opinion on - stand color, trading card picture and text, how she should be posed in the box, whether her eyes should have holograms or fancy pupils, eyelash style, tattoos, box style... It'a amazing how many details have to be worked out for a single Blythe doll! You'll just have to wait and see what we chose...
Gentle River has been announced for the end of May this year, and will cost approximately 18,690 yen.
I speak for everyone on my team when I say that this past year has absolutely opened up my eyes to the way modern Blythes are made. It is so easy as a consumer to say that you aren't happy with a product, but to work so closely with all the minute details changes my perspective completely. It was tricky enough getting the four of us to all agree on every aspect of the doll when we had very few limitations. Factor in a whole company of creative people, Factory equipment, international marketing considerations, deadlines, budget, licensing (fabric and such), staining, and every other issue that might pop up... what I'm getting at is that it's amazing that CWC produces Blythes with the frequency that they do!
I just want to say for the record that the success of this doll has no financial impact on anyone on Team Sibley, so this article is not at all a sales pitch. We haven't yet seen the final Production sample (we're supposed to see her this week, and are expecting nothing less than a beautiful doll) so anything could happen. We hope you like her and the little details that went into her conception, but we understand that everyone likes different things and that no production doll is going to make everyone happy. I know I will probably buy two GR's - one to keep in the box and one to customize just the way I like her.
We've already prepared ourselves to not take anything said about the final doll personally. Give her your best shot!
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After a little break (life, you know...), I'm happy to finally have made some changes around here.
