MakieLab moving to the U.S.

Wow.  This is a complete coincidence, but exactly one day after I made that last post about my new Makie, I found out that MakieLab, the London company who makes the Makie dolls, is relocating to the United States!  I have no idea what this means for the company, but I'll be interested to see what changes, if any, happen because of the move.  I hope they don't change too much, but I wish them the best of luck.

My Makie doll arrived!

A Makie doll by MakieLab.

The Makie doll that I'd first posted about here arrived.  She actually showed up before Christmas, but I've spent the past week with my mom in another city, so couldn't post before now. She's so cute! I have to admit, when she first arrived, I wasn't *quite* in love with her. I'd ordered the medium ("caramel") skintone and black eyes, and the results weren't quite what I'd expected. For one, the skintone ended up being darker than I thought it would be. That's fine. ... It's gorgeous, like a sun-kissed tan. For another, the black eyes turned out more alienesque than I was expecting. They didn't look at all alien in their make-a-doll program. I had a Greek grandfather who had eyes that were so dark brown they were almost black, and I guess I expected them to look a bit like that. Nope. 

Here's what she looked like when she first arrived. It didn't help that I gave her almond-shaped eyes, which managed to intensify the alien look.

 

I turned the eyes so they were side-glancing, and it looked much better. They have heads like Asian ball-jointed dolls, which means they have a headcap that opens and a hollow head, so you can change their eyes and wigs. They aren't actually ball-jointed, though. Here she is next to her make-a-doll picture. The shape of the face, eyes and mouth are fairly close, although the face looks a little thinner in the cartoon portrait.  I love her lips!

I thought I'd try her in some other eyes. I had some 16mms already, so I tried those first. Here she is in 16mm Masterpiece Polymer eyes.

She looks very alert, here.

 

I noticed Makies' original eyes seem to be 18mms, so I ordered some 18mm Secrist Real eyes in a few different colors. Once I switched her to the 18mm "Victorian Blue" eyes (below), her personality popped out and I was smitten. By the time I took this photo, I'd also added some watercolor pencil to her eyelids, so this is her default face paint, but enhanced slightly.

And here she is in 18mm Secrist eyes in "Brown-Green." This is an absolutely great color! I might leave her in these for a while. They look beautiful with this skin tone.

 

By the way, all the wigs she wears in these pictures are all MakieLab wigs.  (They wear a size 7-8".)  Right after I ordered, they put all their wigs and clothes on sale for half price, so I ended up getting a whole bunch of these wigs for roughly $6 apiece as a separate order. You can't even get wigs that cheap on eBay! The quality was surprisingly nice for the price, too. They lay nicely, with few flyaway hairs, and look great on the doll. Very pleased with them.

My girl has the new injection-moulded (IM) plastic body. Its posing is quite good. It *is* a bit shinier than the 3D-printed head, though, which might drive some people crazy. I've heard you can use a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser (sold in the cleaning supplies aisle in grocery stores) to buff the body a bit to reduce shine. I haven't tried it yet. I saw a picture of the results online, and it seemed to work great.

The color match between head and body is pretty good. Apparently when they first started using the new bodies, there were some initial problems with color matching, but they seem to have worked out the kinks. I don't have any complaints about mine.

So here's my awesome little Makie doll. Hope you like her. :)

Adventures at MakieLab

These Makie dolls by the British company MakieLab have been on my radar for over a year, only I never bought one before now.  These are the dolls you design on their web site with an adorably-cartoony make-a-doll program, and they then custom-make the exact doll for you right there in England.

I just found out they've lowered the price by 35% over what the prices were mere months ago.  They're now $75 in American currency.  Apparently, the Makies now have a new plastic body that's enabled them to reduce prices.  The new body reportedly has even better posing than the old, although I've seen people lament that with the new bodies, people can no longer dye their dolls different colors, possible with the older bodies that were fully 3D printed.  There are some really nice customs out there in shades of blue, green and purple, all done with the older body.  Anyway, I saw MakieLab was offering free shipping this week, so I took the plunge and created a Makie!  Actually, I created two.

Violet and Winsome, otherwise known as pouty and happy.  I would have LOVED to have gotten both and declared them twins, but I could only afford one this time around.  I ended up choosing the smiling version for my first Makie, in the medium skin tone.  Here's the final girl that I ordered:

The sliders on the web site were so fun to play with!   I took screenshots of my messing around with the "Attitude" eyebrow slider.  The "Ferocity" slider changes the thickness, and there are also two other eyebrow types in addition to this one.  (Click on the graphics to see them larger.)

If you choose one of the other eyebrow styles, it's possible to make a really angry face.

I also messed with the eyelid sliders.  These narrow the eye to change the facial expression.  It's really pretty brilliant.  I think the wider eye makes her look sweeter, while the narrower version makes her look slightly condescending.  Between this, the various eye types and an eye tilt feature, there are a lot of options.  You can change her nose and jaw/chin shape as well.

I tried some different hair on her.  The immediate issue I discovered with their newest version of the make-a-doll program is that it's extremely difficult to figure out which hair is supposed to be a natural red.  There's a fire engine red, and there's this.  It's impossible to tell whether this is supposed to be a medium brown or a shade of red, or something in-between.  There are some other shades of brown in there, but no other shades of red other than the unnatural, vivid fire engine red.  I didn't order this wig because I wasn't sure what color the actual wig would be, and I had a suspicion it wouldn't be quite THIS color.

Tried a few more wig choices.  It was pretty fun to mess with.

I loved the white hair as well, and ended up ordering a separate white wig in addition to a black one and the purple.  I also ordered an eyeglasses set that included three pairs of eyeglasses in different colors.

I gave her small elf ears.  On the site, when you click on the "Ear Shape" button, the hair turns transparent so you can see the ears underneath.

The outfits are (with a few exceptions) different than they were a year ago.  I don't have very high hopes that the outfit will be a great quality, but I don't plan to keep her in this for long, anyway.  I know I'll be sewing for her soon.  The parrot top made me smile, and I thought the blue leggings might be useful for other outfits.

So, when it was time to check out.  I got this window, showing the price in American dollars.

Here's the weird thing.  As I was checking out, I decided to add the two extra wigs and the eyeglasses set, and the prices suddenly switched to British pounds.  LOL.  The currency switched back and forth a couple of times before I was done.  I wasn't too concerned about it, since I knew it wouldn't matter when I paid.  I'm just mentioning it in case someone else buys from them before they can fix this.  Don't panic!  It'll work out fine.   Other than that, I had no problems checking out and paying.  Order came to $95.66 total with the three extra items added, still less than the original price for the doll alone, which would have been $115.

I'm so excited!  I've heard it's a two-week wait while the doll is custom-made.  I'll certainly post a million pics of the actual doll when she arrives. 

See ya!

EDIT:  She arrived!  You can see her real-life pics here.