Which features do you prefer?

So while I wait for my first make to arrive I've been wondering if my choices were correct. Are there any features that you guys find just don't work ( Ears that look ugly, Wigs that fall off, colours that don't look like the simulator etc? )  or any that are particularly nice?

Personally I love very slight elf ears and skeptical faces. 

However the purple hair for Sci appeared a wee bit darker in the creator than in real life...

A very interesting question! I would say that I've never seen an ugly Makie. In my experience, it seems like many features look better on the finished doll than they do in the creator. I've tried to get a wide variety of looks in my girls and I've found that I've got some faces that are way cuter or more beautiful than I'd expected. My best examples are Poppy and Terry. I thought Terry looked grumpy in her virtual picture. I was so focused on that, when I got her out of the tube, I couldn't believe how beautiful she was!

In terms of the wigs, I'd expected that changing wigs would be fun so I had been requesting they leave the wig unglued. Around Christmas when things were too busy for special requests, I couldn't make that request. I found that I actually prefer the wig glued down. In reality, I almost never change my girls' wigs and my girls that don't have their wigs glued down are always losing their hair in my purse when I take them out. I think you're guaranteed to have the wig falling off a lot if you've asked them not to glue it. It is possible to make a wig cap from a balloon, if you like changing wigs.

DollYay wrote:Personally I love very slight elf ears and skeptical faces. 

However the purple hair for Sci appeared a wee bit darker in the creator than in real life...

It's true: sometimes the hair color is slightly different in the creator. Also, there is variability in the skin colors. I've seen strawberry toned Makies that are more yellow and some that are more pink.

In general, I love the range that can be accomplished, and playing with maxed out sliders is fun. Like jupiternames, I have tried to make all the makies I have designed distinct, but I do find myself shying away from certain combinations.
There seems to be a point when the eye distance from center is widened and the nose bridge is high and slender, then wider nostrils that creates a distracting bumpy look in the creator (though I haven't seen anyone print those extremes, so who knows how it would look in person).
I tend to go for a smaller noses in general, but that is mainly because there is no adjustment for the overall shape. The "cutie" parameters only allow for a more pug nose, but I would love a beakier option.
I think a popular choice at the moment is adjusting the cheeks and jaw for the most round face possible. It makes for a cute, young face. A wider jaw is often overlooked, but I love the look. My Professor Hebs, and jupiternames Terry are nice examples.

I find I prefer the way the features turn out on the girls better then the boys for the most part. Especially the eye shapes! I find the actual eye shapes that you get for the boys don't really work for me. Even though they turn out better in reality than they look on the virtual Makie boys, there aren't really any big pretty childlike eyes. I'm not all that into adult dolls, the majority of my dolls, BJDs and otherwise, are preadolescents, or at the most teenagers. Most of my Makies are fairly young, so I want that childlike look. Lol, that's why the majority of my Makie boys are technically actually girls. ^_~

They also both virtually and in reality don't really look much like the little drawings that you choose from. Which incidentally, are exactly the same little drawings whether you're making a boy or a girl, even though the boy's eyes turn out to be different shapes from the girl's.

I kind of wish the MakieLab elves would replace the eye drawings in the Creator with some new drawings that were closer to how the eye shapes actually look on your virtual Makie. I also still wish there was a third more androgynous body option that would work better for young prepubescent Makie boys and girls. You know, around that age where they've started to become longer and slimmer, they've lost that chubby baby look, but haven't yet started to develop the beginning body characteristics that start to identify them as boys or girls. It's that brief period when they have that sort of Elven androgyny about them......
And when people will still come up and tell you what a beautiful little girl your son is!

Same, admittedly I'd like some more features! There's a nice selection at the moment, but probably due to the artist in me, I still find it very very limiting. That's why it's taken me pretty much since makies first launched to finally figure out something I was happy/excited with.

I'd love some body variation. I'm thinking of sanding the bust area of a makie I have coming because I don't want her to have a bust. Ideally though, it would be great to have that option in the creator from the get-go. A slimmer and a larger body type would be great too, though I realise that's a lot to ask in the sense that they'd have to figure out how to balance and move those compared to the current average makie.

Seconding the interest in beakier noses haha! I would LOVE that. And er... I'd love some anthro/aliens options too, but that's me getting firmly into the realm of fantasy and probably far away from the long-term business plan of the labs.

Really what I should say is that I want more everything. More eyes, more ears, more noses, more body types (not limited to gender), more extras like paw hands/tails or things like that. (A bit like the tentacle hand they used to do?) That would be excellent and I think my wallet would very suddenly be emptied.

I'd also LOVE more beaky nose options. I would adore the option to pull the bridge out to make it hooked, and the choice to tilt the bridge of the nose etc. I just.. need beaky noses in my life lol.

I find my lot are pretty varied, though I tend toward fully faces particularly with the girls. I find the thinner faces can leave them looking a little too gaunt for my tastes. Husband is the opposite, all his girls have super narrow pointy faces while most of mine have more pudgy hamster cheeks lol.
I also tend to go with fuller eyebrows because I like to draw in the hairs and the thin ones you can't do so much detail. Also as a full eyebrowed gal myself, I like the look hahaha.

I also quite like jugging the ears out lol, because I like to be able to see them. Particularly the elf ears, full size, full elf, full jug!

One thing I would love would be the return of individual hands to buy. The big sets I find a little offputting because there's so many i wouldn't use and i'd need one set for each skin tone which is a bit impractically expensive. I'd love to just be able to buy one set in whatever colour so I could do it like pick and mix hands haha. And on that note, having a bunch of things like claws or yeah, the tentacles and hooks etc back in that pick and mix would be fun. Same with feet, we have heeled feet but man, hooves, paws, dragony claws? that'd be great to be able to pop off the feet and attach fantasy ones hahaha.
Backplates with holes so you could clip in wings or tails.
There's a lot of mix and match potential for Makies, I almost wish I had access to a 3d printer and was any good at 3d modelling so i could print off my own non human parts hahaha.

I admit, the strawberry milk is my least favourite colour, I am rather partial to the cool caramel and cocoa bean, those would be my preference when creating or buying premades. I would love more colour options though. Keeping it human, i'd love a tone between caramel and cocoa, a nice rich brown that was more like the digital maker depicts Caramel. Fantasy colours would also be fun but we can dye those I suppose. Still gotta work up the courage to try that, and decide on a colour hahaha

The wigs are hard to get to stay on unless you use a skull cap or balloon - which is what I have on Wren, but in hindsight I would have had her wig glued on.  I was initially going to change it, but it is so her, there is no need to.

Yes! Strawberry is my least favorite skin tone too. Of course, when it comes to the premades, MFYs etc., the face is the deciding factor for me. If I really like their features, I think they could be bright red with chartreuse spots and I'd still buy them! ;D

I also find the strawberries harder to give face up enhancements to, I'm usually just never quite happy with the way the shading around their eyes, or their eyeshadow looks. 0_o
I find the caramels and the cocoabeans so much more satisfying to do the face up enhancements on!

MissRead, I wonder if something like rubber cement would work for DIY glueing on wigs, or possibly silicon glue?

Lol, I also like to max out the toggles with the elf ears.
For one thing, jigging out the ears makes it easier to get earrings in and out. ^_~

Lol, that last sentence is supposed to be jugging out the ears, not jigging!
Dumb IPad keeps correcting things on it's own, mostly words that don't need changing.
Then when I actually have a word that I know isn't spelled correctly.......... I get nothing!

It is pretty funny sometimes, like every time I start typing Cocoa Bean, it also suggests cockaroach......and usually places that word right where I can see it out of the corner of my eye!

JRyu wrote:Lol, that last sentence is supposed to be jugging out the ears, not jigging!
Dumb IPad keeps correcting things on it's own, mostly words that don't need changing.
Then when I actually have a word that I know isn't spelled correctly..........  I get nothing!

It is pretty funny sometimes, like every time I start typing Cocoa Bean, it also suggests cockaroach......and usually places that word right where I can see it out of the corner of my eye!

LOL. love those cockaroach makies. 

I may be pelted with extra black slip on shoes for saying so, but I love the strawberry milk skin color. It is less forgiving though.

Don't worry Artful you aren't alone. I also love the strawberry milk colour. It is very difficult to cover up mistakes when your doing a face up but otherwise I love it. I would also LOVE fantasy options in the maker. Imagine a makie with full dragon feet, tail and horn. Squeee:PThat would be awesome! 

Purple_Monkfish wrote:One thing I would love would be the return of individual hands to buy. The big sets I find a little offputting because there's so many i wouldn't use and i'd need one set for each skin tone which is a bit impractically expensive. I'd love to just be able to buy one set in whatever colour so I could do it like pick and mix hands haha. And on that note, having a bunch of things like claws or yeah, the tentacles and hooks etc back in that pick and mix would be fun. Same with feet, we have heeled feet but man, hooves, paws, dragony claws? that'd be great to be able to pop off the feet and attach fantasy ones hahaha.

This, this so much! I can't really justify the expense when I'm only after one or two pairs of hands. I have no idea whether hands are kept in stock or printed on demand though, and I imagine that's the thing that makes the difference. If they were printed on demand, then there wouldn't really be a technical problem in letting you decide what pairs exactly to get - and it'd also be much easier to offer cool things like hooves and paws too. But I guess the set-up cost is an issue. A minimum order of print-on-demand stuff could possibly offset that - so you still have to pay around the price of a hand bundle to make it worth their time, but you can get what you actually want.

Sorry haha, I know this is a "what features do you like?" thread, and I'm turning it into a "what features I WANT" thing! There are a lot of things I want though, admittedly. Makies are custom unique dolls, so naturally I want more custom and unique options!

hmm... cockroach... *ponders* hahaha.

my autocorrect loves to throw strange words up. One time I was angry with husband and tried to call him something rather rude, auto correct rewrote it as "villager" so now whenever we're insulting one another it's "you... you VILLAGER!" hahaha. Autocorrect totally managed to divert that argument.
Yesterday I texted husband to tell him his pay slip arrived. It autocorrect to "Pantaloons are here" hahahaha. He was disappointed when I texted again to clarify I meant pay slip, he wanted pantaloons. *snort*

Artful Owl wrote:

JRyu wrote:Lol, that last sentence is supposed to be jugging out the ears, not jigging!
Dumb IPad keeps correcting things on it's own, mostly words that don't need changing.
Then when I actually have a word that I know isn't spelled correctly..........  I get nothing!

It is pretty funny sometimes, like every time I start typing Cocoa Bean, it also suggests cockaroach......and usually places that word right where I can see it out of the corner of my eye!

LOL. love those cockaroach makies. 

I may be pelted with extra black slip on shoes for saying so, but I love the strawberry milk skin color. It is less forgiving though.

I think they may save some to throw at me. I really like strawberry milk too! Historically, the lab has done a better job on my strawberry girls' makeup. When I got Pepper (caramel) I thought I didn't like the caramel as much as the strawberry. It took me a few weeks to figure out that it was because her makeup was way too light, especially the eyebrows. Poor thing, she looked like she had the flu! Now I love the caramel just as much. I love all the colors and second the desire for a "medium" brown. Or maybe an even darker brown? I've seen some extra dark Makies on flickr that look amazing.

Though sometimes taking pictures of the strawberry Makies is so hard! It's so much like trying to take a picture of myself...just a pair of eyes in a sea of chalk color, surrounded by hair

I thought the same thing when Postman Will came! He is caramel, and looked ill without the proper face up. I enjoy the color, but you are right.  The face up requirements are totally different. There seems to have been a time when they were allowing the caramel color to get darker. I have seen a couple of earlier caramels on flicker that have beautiful depth.

Strawberry can look wonderful, I have 4 myself. But I find them the hardest to do makeup because they take any tiny colour SO strongly.

And ooo earlier darker caramels? jealous! That said, i think my Jian is a touch darker than my boys but that may very well be because she has blush and such altering her face tone a bit more. I blush my boys too, but not in such an extreme way as i do the girls.

But omg, why do the caramels have orange eyebrows? hahahaha.
That is the only reason August became a redhead, those bright orange eyebrows.

Now white ones i think must be hard to photograph. I have one on her way and i'm looking forward to it, but also scared out of my mind about doing her faceup lol.

I have a white skinned one coming as well, and I'm curious to see what sort of default face up she comes with from MakieLabs. I know that I'll have to enhance her default to get her to Look right, and I'm not exactly looking forward to attempting that on a white skinned Makie either! ^_~

The only reason she is whited skinned is because the original doll she is being created after, was made out of a white bedsheet.

the original Mary Ann Jones was a much loved rag doll that my mother made for me...... according to my mother, "Just to see if she could do it." I think she made her either while she was pregnant or shortly after I was born, because as far back as I can remember, I don't remember a time when I didn't have Mary Ann Jones.

Mary Ann was my constant companion clear up until her bedsheet fabric began to disintegrate. It was so fragile, the fabric would develop tears in her neck just from the weight of her head. My mother, who had always been less than satisfied with how the doll had turned out, said the fabric was rotting, that there wasn't anything to be done, and wanted to throw Mary Ann away. I was an adolescent by this time, with a bit more say, and I adamantly refused to part with her!

I told my mother that WE were going to make a new Mary Ann Jones exactly like the original, so I carefully packed her away in a box and put her upstairs. That way we could make a pattern from her old body, since my mother claimed she didn't use any commercial pattern and didn't remember how she'd made her. Also I knew my father would be able to copy Mary Ann's face onto her new head for me to embroider, as long as he was able look at the original.

I think my mother realized I was dead serious about remaking Mary Ann Jones, when I never stopped talking about it, and even bought a pattern for a Holly Hobby rag doll that came out, because it was about the same size and was put together in a way that was very similar to the way Mary Ann was made.

At that point she knew she wasn't going to be able to stall me any longer, and sure enough, shortly after I got back from camp that summer, don't ask me how, but I just knew something had happened to Mary Ann! I went upstairs to check on her.......... and she was gone! I went back down stairs and confronted my mother, I accused her of taking Mary Ann and burning her!

My mother came clean almost immediately, I think it really shocked her that not only had I known that she had done something to Mary Ann Jones, but I also knew exactly what she had done! I think she found that a bit spooky. ^_~

Aw. What a sad story. 

Speaking of the white skin tone, I'm still deciding which tone for Professor Lolly since he might have to come home next! I still can't decide between caramel and white, which would you recommend?

Well, I'd probably go with caramel, since it's my favorite, but it really depends on how he looks and his story background. I mean, if he is supposed to be a ghost, or if he comes from a country where people are usually very fair skinned, then you probably would want to go for white.

Do you have virtual images of him with the different skin colors that you could post? I'd go look at your gallery pic's, but I'm still stuck in mobile version, so I can't see anyone's signatures at the bottom of their posts. -_-

Jryu, what a sad story! Poor Mary Ann Jones. It breaks my heart because Mary Ann was obviously a treasured friend and because my mom sewed me a Raggedy Ann and Andy before I was born and I can't imagine that happening to them. They're both still doing fine, but Ann's dress is in pretty bad shape: sun and time have been hard on it.

Did she ever make you a replacement? i'd DEMAND it. if you have photos of the original doll you could probably copy the face from eyeballing those.

that is pretty sad, what a mean thing to do. I'd have probably punched my mother in the face had she hurt my precious childhood toy, but he's never left my side. I've sewn him back together so many times. My sister's bear was held together with bandages and hope! We never trusted our mother not to sneak them out of the house so we kept them always with us. Mine has travelled the world with me, I almost lost him at an airport once. It was awful.

But ooo i'm looking forward to seeing Makie Mary Ann!

My ghost is strawberry milk blushed over with grey and white to give him a paler desaturated pallor, then I blushed him with grey to sink his cheeks and eyes in. I'm pretty satisfied with how deathly he looks heh. I'm thinking though, his suit should really be remade in grey and white to look desaturated and faded too.

I'm glad your Ann and Andy are both doing fine, jupiternames. You are so lucky to have them with you.

I'm not sure my mother ever really understood just what Mary Ann Jones meant to me, she was never a doll person, even as a child. She never really played with her dolls, they just sat on her dresser and looked pretty. Once in a while she would change their outfit or fix their hair and sit them back on the dresser. She never said what happened to them, I suppose she gave them to her younger sister Barbara when she left to go to nurse's training. They were just pretty objects to my mother, that decorated her room. Objects she had no more use for as a student nurse. She was genuinely surprised at how angry and upset I was by what she had done. It probably sounds silly, but to me it was the same as if she had killed a living thing!

So to her Mary Ann was just an object that was falling apart, and not even a pretty object! She was never happy with how Mary Ann had turned out. I suspect she was embarrassed by what she considered to be her hideous, failed attempt at rag doll making.

I'm afraid I never let her forget what she had done either, for years it was my parting shot in any argument we had.......much to my father's amusement. ^_^
Although, I think in a way he understood how I felt about Mary Ann and how much she meant to me, far better than my mother could. I always sort of felt his non spoken sympathy and support whenever I played my "trump card" as it were. ^_~

Once Mary Ann was burned, I gave up any hope of giving her a new body. Without her old body as a reference, I knew we wouldn't be able to successfully recreate her, even if I did manage to guilt my mother into trying.

However, while I can't give her a new rag doll body, recently it occured to me that I just might be able to create a Makie body for her spirit to live in, I'm hoping it will work! ^_^