These dolls are the result of a lifelong love of gaming, a more recent love of anime, and a perpetual habit of fidgeting that collided in a magical explosion of creativity. Since I don't draw, there seemed no easy way to reconcile my desire to do wacky things with anime characters. Then one day I learned about amigurumi, and saw some different doll types, and I thought, "That's right! I CAN CROCHET!"
The result has been a tremendous learning experience as I try to design new parts, consider the most important aspects of character appearance to distill onto such small dolls, and show off my work to people who will love it as much as I do! I hope you agree with me that the end result is too cute to pass up ^_^
ABOUT THE DOLLS:
All of my dolls are handcrafted by me from cotton and cotton-blend yarns, using buttons for eyes and synthetic poly-fill for their stuffings.
ABOUT THE HOOKED ON CHIBIS! CREW:
There are four of us in-studio full time, as well as a small cadre of helper-minions and table buddies that we'll lovingly refer to as "random encounters", as well as the two 8-bits that Matt and Jenn are in charge of.
Jenn is the sole crochet artist (we all help make the dolls, but every singly bloody stitch of crochet work comes from Jenn's hands), founder, CEO and king for life. Here on dA, she's also the voice you'll encounter in dAmn (mostly in #AnimeArtists, but other places as well).
Casey is the PR diva, as well as being an indispensable Con-Sultant and chibi assembly device. She does the overwhelming majority of our web stuff, and she manages our listings and comments here on dA. So if you get into a discussion with us in a comment thread and/or on someone's deviation, you're probably talking to Casey. (She also writes our blogs unless otherwise noted.)
Matt is our eternally-patient accountant. He manages the finances, makes rental car reservations, books flights, stares Jenn down when she spends too much money on yarn, and more. He also helps put stuffing into the plushies, he would like for you all to know, thank you very much. ^_^
Biz is the other founding member, and if she's listed last out of the four of us, it's really only because she's away at college for most of the year now, so she's in a bit of semi-hibernation mode while we try very hard to let her be a responsible student
As a co-founder, though, Biz was one of the first people to table with Jenn at Anime Boston, she's had a heavy hand in doll design and manufacturing, and to this day she makes just about every single hairpiece ("wig", lawl) that goes on a coiffed character such as Vincent or Yotsuba. She's with us in spirit all the time, because if she wasn't, Jenn would never remember to eat food while at cons and she'd die. (How many jobs include in their description "you may have to physically stick food in the CEO's face because she won't put the hook down"?)
Random encounters have included our friend Liz, who loves to do repetitive tasks like cut out button pictures from their sheets and sew heads onto bodies; our friend Marrisa who helped us run the table at AMA 2011; Jenn's mom, who helps stuff/sew the dolls like a champ; Jenn's friend Andrea, in CA, who saved our butts by designing business cards and submitting the order to a local Kinko's after Jenn left all our cards at home in MA; and all our friends and fellow artists at all the cons who have helped watch our table so we could do things like "go attend a cosplay competition" and "pick stuff up from the hotel" and "pee".
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I'm doing commission just to let you know ; 7 ;
Sta.sh
