Dollz

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Dollz, cartoon dolls or pixel dolls are small pixelated digital images, generally of people. They are mainly used online as avatars, signatures or displayed as artwork on personal Web pages.

Dolls range in size from being a few pixels high to a few hundred pixels high. Generally, dolls are human, mainly female, figures, although there have been instances of animals being named "dolls"^[1]. Dolls are generally dressed, and come in a wide range of styles. Bases are the template upon which dolls are created—the naked human form with no hair.

People who create dolls are called dollers or dollists. The community is well interlinked because of both message board communities and the concept of "adoption." Adoption is the act in which a doller displays a favored doll that was created by someone else upon their Web site, with credit and a link to the other's site or email. Adoption is not performed with bases.

"Dolling" has become a widespread Internet phenomenon, spawning numerous Web sites, communities, forums, online competitions and other activities. Some dollers sell their digital art commercially and their graphic images are either used as clip art or on merchandise. However, dolling is simply a personal hobby for many.

Contents 1 History 2 Doll-makers 3 Further Dollz development 4 The Dolling Community 5 Technique 6 Bases 7 Dolling etiquette and issues 8 See also 9 References

[edit] History

The roots of this phenomenon are in paper dolls, which are paper figures with a base body to which clothes, hairstyles and accessories can be attached. The first digital version of this concept was the Kisekae Set System, invented in 1991.

The first known instances of cartoon dolls used as online avatars were introduced in 1995 on a visual chat client called The Palace by a Palace user named artgrrl (later known as shattered innocents)^[2]. The first dollz were simplistic, starting from a generic base consisting of 44-by-44-pixel "props" that were hand-drawn in the Editing palette of the Palace program. They were generally cartoon-like in appearance and restricted to only a small number of poses.

At first, these doll-like avatars were called "little people," then "skaters" or "sk8ers." A Palace user named Rainman was responsible for the proliferation of the skater dollz^{[citation needed]}, editing and distributing them by the thousands. The Palace "dressup" script helped in distributing the dollz from user to user, with each user editing the props to customize their doll. Because dollz were generally worn (used as avatars) by younger people, some Palaces started banning their use in an attempt to restrict membership to adults. Modifications to the dollz were called "editz" and contests were held daily on many of the Palaces, with competitions based on style of outfit, color schemes, music themes, or accessories. Eventually, there were entire Palaces (palace chat rooms) devoted only to doll-based avatars.

It is believed that the first "prep" style doll was created by a South Park Palace user who, at the time, was known as "Starr". She created the first prep base from an image of Madonna hitchhiking naked, taken from the book Sex. This doll made her very first appearance among the Sk8ers in the South Park chat, and was passed to a user who made her into a goth. The base was further edited by many other users, and eventually proliferated all over the Palace Chat.^{[citation needed]}

Early dolling sites began to develop around 1997, displaying people's own work, often made using graphics programs like Adobe Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro.

[edit] Doll-makers

Doll-makers are similar to the old method of paper dolls where a base and clothes were provided and the user makes combinations of clothes to create their doll. This became a trend in the community, and many people who did not want to create their own dollz from scratch utilized these drag-n-drops to make their own combination. The original doll makers were simple drag and drop versions but have over time evolved into feature-rich and programs.

[edit] Further Dollz development

Graphic artists began to produce highly detailed dollz. Other artists also followed the trend and created dolls that were less cartoon-like and more realistic. Soft shading, true human forms and realistic designs soon dominated the community, evolving from cartoons.

Some artists wished this method of graphic design to be recognized as a form of art rather than an Internet fad so they referred to their art as "Dolls". A recent survey at a popular dolling forum showed that many see "dollz" as referring to the earlier form of cartoon-esque images rather than the elaborate graphic artwork displayed now^{[citation needed]}. Other artists continued to call their work "Dollz" to distinguish the graphic form from a doll that sits on a shelf, even though they too did elaborate artwork.

There are many websites, forums, and online communities dedicated to dolling. It has been surmised that the popularity of dolling is because anyone can do it. However it is regarded by outside observers as a mainly female online subculture^[3]. A current trend is the incorporation of anime style to the dolls, and a return to the cartoon-like roots.

[edit] The Dolling Community

Main activities in online dolling communities are sharing artwork and advice, themed events and competitions. Friendly dollers may collaborate on artwork, and link to each other's sites as 'sibling sites' or 'sister sites', or affiliations, which is simply linking to another's dolling site.

[edit] Technique

Dolls are created in a graphics program such as Microsoft Paint, Adobe Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, or GIMP. The doll may be made on a base, or the doll may be baseless. If using a base, clothing, adornments, and decorations are drawn onto the base to create the doll. Baseless dolls are drawn freehand, with an effect often akin to Oekaki. Many tutorials exist explaining how to create dolls.

[edit] Bases

Bases are the templates upon which dolls can be drawn. They normally consist of the naked human form in a pose without hair. Bases can be outlines of human figures; they can come with or without faces; they can come with props or accessories; they can come in multiple skintones; or they can depict a partial or full body view. Bases need not be realistic; they can be deformed, exaggerated or cute, and may be in the anime super deformed style.

Typically, bases are arranged in a set, where all the bases in the set are created in the same size, style and proportions, but with different poses, skin tones and facial expressions. These sets are generally given names to identify and distinguish them. Some base sets have nearly 100 individual poses.

Some artists allow others to change faces and skin tones of a base, some disallow any editing of the template but only the strict pixeling of clothing and hair, while others allow any and all edits to a base.

[edit] Dolling etiquette and issues

The dolling community has long been plagued by plagiarism and copyright issues. Some abuses arise from ignorance of copyright law and some from willful or malicious behavior. Within the dolling community, the term Netiquette^[4] generally refers to the copyright laws and stated rules, or "terms of use" many dollers impose for use of their artwork.

Copyright violation occurs when a person saves a doll that another has created, places it on their site, or uses it as an avatar or signature or similar without permission or attribution, and/or claims that he or she him/herself created the doll. This is regarded as theft, and different from "adoption," when the user who places the doll on his or her site gives credit to the original creator and often provides a link to the original site, as dictated by the terms of use required by the original creator. This is an issue even when only the base has been copied. When someone takes a part of a doll (for example, the hair or clothing) and places it on their own doll, it is also seen as plagiarism and referred to as "frankendolling" in the dolling community.

Some dolls are classified by their creators as "Not Adoptable" and some bases as "Exclusive" or "Not Usable".

Direct linking, aka inline linking, or hot-linking is another common copyright (and bandwidth) problem in dolling communities.

In 2003 there was a move by Heli of sweetandsassy.net^[5] to create Standard Doll Site Terms (SDST). The idea was to come up with what was essentially a standard license for doll site authors to use so that visitors wouldn't have to read the rules all the time. The terms were^[6]:

Terms of Use/Rules
Please understand that the "Terms of Use" are provided for both your protection and mine; they are written to clarify the terms under which the images contained within this collection may be used.
These terms are quite simple and they are also legally binding, so please read them carefully.
1. All images on this site are exclusive and permanent property of (but your site/name here) and may NOT be reproduced by any method including screen captures and/or downloads. DO NOT take any of these images and claim them as yours, enter them in contests, edit them (except bases) or frankendollie them.DO NOT copy the code of my website to make your own.
2. If you choose to use any of my images, which are provided to your usage remember all images are NOT, you must use a linking button (ie.banner) or correct referring link within the same page that the image(s) appear. A text link is permitted. This is NOT negotiable. Using this button or link is part of the copyright. A page of "credits" is NOT acceptable. Please credit my images actually on the page(s) of use.
(Remember to but your banner and site address here)
3. You may NOT alter, change, colorize, resize or modify any of my ready made dolls. You may edit my base when doing your own dolls on them, you may colorize and modify them but you CAN'T use any of the bases body parts to add on to bases of your own and you CAN'T take my bases and but them on your site, they are NOT yours. You can also flip horizontally or vertically the bases when you make your dolls. When you do use my bases remember to link me back.
4. Images may NOT be used by individuals whose intent in developing web sites for others is for gain (whether actual income and /or bartered for trade) whether from the site itself or from the web page developing service.
Use of my images by individuals developing websites with intent to gain is unequivocally denied unless a license and written permission from us has been obtained prior to the downloading, uploading or use of any graphic.
You may NOT use the images if you are developing websites for others at no charge and then advertise these sites within a client portfolio with intent to acquire additional paying clients.
5. Images are NOT to be placed in any online collection or archive; in addition, NO images are to be redistributed for financial gain or placed within any compilation CD, software or other reproducible media. You can adopt my dolls that are adoptable but remember all of my dolls/images are NOT for adoption. And if you choose to adopt my doll(s) remember to link me back.
6. Any site whose intent is to earn revenue (whether actual income and or bartered for trade) is considered a commercial endeavor. The images are for not-for-profit (i.e. personal) web pages only.
7. Please load the images to your own server or web site directory. Please DO NOT link directly to our images. The remote loading of an image(or direct link, or stolen bandwidth) is an abusive use of someone else's bandwidth.
8. Please refrain from using the images within pages promoting child abuse, hate, bigotry, racism, animal abuse and/or illegal pornographic activities.
9. Remember that if you violate any of these terms/rules I may take legal actions against you. So really you must abide by these terms/rules. If for any reason I request that my dolls should be removed from your site, you will be given 72 hours to comply
10. DO NOT remove my copyrights or modify my dolls without my permission, DO NOT recolor my dolls to make them as your own, DO NOT use pieces of my graphics/dolls to make your own, DO NOT use them to make your own banners, layouts graphics or anything else, that is frankendolling. Please DO NOT use my bases to create a doll maker of any sort. Respect my work as an artist.
11. If you feel unsure about these terms/rules please contact me before doing something that might be wrong. (You might want to but you own e-mail address here).

[edit] See also

• Pixel
• Spriting

[edit] References