Second shot of the Ariel head now with more definition. The lips have added detail and the brows have been added. I asked the artist to throw some red up at the top so I could look at how the coloring matched. She didn't have anything bright red, but you get the idea. So while the head comes back it will be time to construct the outfit. I've decided that I am going to do tail, mostly because it's the most iconic version and seriously if you had to pick - mermaid or human, mermaid is much more exciting and interesting wouldn't you say?

I'd also like to take a little time to discuss this mold. When you are collecting My Twinn Dolls and you first hear of over 44 molds, it can be a bit daunting and a lot of time the pictures are not helpful, so I'll give a little bit of information and thoughts on this mold. The Ariel mold is a common mold. What does that mean? It means that it is readily available and easy to find when shopping because they made a lot of them. With that said, I feel like there is a reason why that is the case and it's not because no one likes it and wants to get rid of them. This mold is extremely nice as a child mold. The eyes are an appropriate distance apart - not to close together or too far apart (although there is an Ariel mold sub-named Melissa where the eyes are a farther distance apart). She has a nice long face with a slightly more pointed chin than some of the other molds. She has a nice nose and detailed ears. This one I'd have to say is a #1 skin tone because she is very pale and I chose this one because I wanted a very contrasting skin tone against the bright red hair. I think what I enjoy most about this mold is that everything is evenly spaced so she feels very balanced in her features. And no they aren't all like that. For instance the Denika mold has the same eye spacing but the nose is shorter and the lips are wide and thin and placed in close proximity to the nose. Denika also has a short chin so all and all it makes her face look like everything is pulled in rather than spread out. So it's definitely interesting how much difference there is in the molds. I think this is another special thing about MyTwinn vs. American Girl. It seems like American Girl has tons of face molds because their Truly Me and JLY dolls are numbered past 100 and they have the historical doll lines as well. But in actuality as of 2024 there are only 13 distinct face shape molds. What is making up that 100 is that they are just repeated in different skin types or hair colors or eye colors and numbered. More about that in a separate post, moving on.

Another thing we will be waiting on is the hair. In anticipation that when I am through with this, it will inspire many more to make Ariel My Twinn dolls, I designed an Ariel wig. Now I think it should be noted that most available designed wigs utilize a very simple bright red single color wave wig. In fact, I even had one a while back. It was as you say, basic and I eventually let it sell out because it really just wasn't unique enough and I knew I wanted to design something better. I wanted to design something with much more wave and inspired a little bit more on a vintage long Hollywood style often seen on Rita Hayworth. I definitely want lots of long wavy locks of red hair sweeping down and finishing in some lovely curls. We will see how that turns out, and a sample is already in the works for me to review when it is finished so stay tuned on that.

The outfit is another matter. I often try to combine the luxury of adult fashion with couture children's wear and I'm often inspired by artists and other designers that do really elaborate children's wear. The problem always is with dolls that there is almost an invisible ceiling of cost in creating anything and sadly that prevents me from creating a lot of what I want to create, because usually I am usually given a budget of under $100 to create doll pieces, and well that just doesn't give enough budget to really elaborate projects. Well, I've determined to make this Ariel a showcase piece because I don't have any limits and I really just want to put my art out there without any restrictions so that I'm free to create what I like. So I'm going to create a tail piece with all the bells and whistles as it were. How long will that take me? It's going to be a while lol. So there will probably be many follow-up posts to this post as I work on it. Stay tuned!