Dollz

An early "prep" style doll

Dollz, cartoon dolls or pixel dolls are small pixelated digital images, generally consisting of illustrations of people and their accessories. Dollz, under their various designations, are considered to be an internet art form used as avatars, signatures or displayed as artwork on personal web pages.

Dollz were created as user avatars on The Palace Chat program in 1995 by a Palace Pioneer member, Melicia Greenwood a.k.a. artgrrl, as an alternative to the standard Palace-provided "smiley face" ball avatars. These new Palace avatars were inspired by the Barbie doll. Pieced together in layers and as easy to dress as paper dolls, these new avatars were freely distributed on the main Palace server, the "Mansion," and within weeks thousands of creatively modified dollz were redistributed around the many Palace servers.

Dollz' original sizes were no more than 132 x 132 pixels and allowed for animation. Generally, dollz are human - mainly female - figures. Dollz were distributed across Palace servers whole or in pieces, with a wide range of styling, accessories and animations available. The template upon which dollz are created is generally a naked, bald human form upon which clothing and accessories are layered.

People who create dollz are known as Dollers or Dollists. The Dolling community was most vibrant and flourishing in the late 1990s to the 2000s but still exists today. Dollz "adoption" is the act in which a Doller displays their collection of favorite dollz that were created by other Dollers on their web site, generally with credit and a link to the other Dollers' site or email. Adoption is not performed with bases as bases are used for editing. Correct attribution may or not be given with the distribution of dollz bases. Dollz editing is the act in which a Doller uses any base image and overlays it with their own pixelated creations.

"Dolling" quickly became a widespread Internet phenomenon^[1], spawning numerous web sites, interactive 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. For many, Dolling is simply a personal hobby.

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 the paper doll concept is accepted to be the Japanese Kisekae Set System, invented in 1991.

Cartoonish and very small, "dollz" were first created to be used as avatars in a graphical chat client called The Palace. For their avatars, each Palace user was allowed a total of no more than nine 32 x 32 pixel props in a square template, including the use of props to be layered as frames of animation. Before dollz were created, Palace users' avatars consisted of either the standard Palace-issued smiley faces with layered accessories, or copies of photos or other images made of colored pixels that were pasted into the props section.

Although the early history of dollz may become convoluted in the retelling, it is generally accepted that they were first created by Melicia Greenwood (also known as artgrrl, or shattered innocents) in 1995 due to her encyclopedic, dated and illustrated web publishing of the history of dollz.^[2] Doll creator Emby Quinn verified this along with her own original dollz.^[3]. These pixel avatars had body bases made out of three vertically-aligned 44 x 44 pixel squares (called "props" in The Palace Chat) and were dressed by creating clothes, hair and accessories in the remaining six props. These dollz were distributed freely in the main Palace's editing and trade rooms and quickly began to spread to other Palace Chat servers.

Since dollz avatars and props were freely distributed among Palace users who would edit each others' work and redistribute the dollz, many different styles of dollz were created in a very short time as a result. Sometimes adopted by teenagers as a sign of rebellion against standard Palace avatars, they eventually became very popular on The Palace servers and became known under various names and categories such as: Preps, Tinyz/Tinies, Wonderkinz, Silents, Thugs, Skaters, Uniques, Minis, Flavas and Ravers.^[4] This led to a period where anyone wearing a dollz avatar could be kicked or banned from certain Palaces, where it was assumed such an avatar implied an ill-intentioned teen user. In fact, most early Dollers were creative adults and teens exploring this new, albeit tiny, art form.

Dollz websites began emerging in the late 1990s and early 2000s, showcasing dollz edits (modifications) of Palace avatars dollz (some examples include Veriria's Palace). No longer being bound by the restrictions of Palace Chat (which only supported web colors and was constrained to a total area of 132 by 132 pixels, dollz eventually became more elaborate and larger in size, though still edited pixel by pixel.

Soon, many websites related to Dolling began to emerge, and Dolling e-zines such as "The Doller Express" and "Pixel Post Magazine" appeared. These websites and e-zines included links to Dolling contests, forums and interviews with Dollers.

Eventually, Dollers began to think of their work as more than an internet fad or meme and began exploiting the dollz for their full artistic purposes. On August 3, 2007 a separate Dollz category was added to DeviantArt.com, which further contributed to the establishment of Dolling as a legitimate internet art form.^[5]

Dolling Technique

Dollz 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. Usually using a base, clothing, adornments and decorations are drawn in layers onto the base to create the doll. Baseless dolls are drawn freehand, with an effect often akin to Oekaki. Dollers created and distributed tutorials explaining how to create dolls, further spreading the phenomenon.

Bases

Bases are the templates upon which dolls can be drawn. They generally consist of a bald, naked human body. Bases may be provided with or without drawn faces; with props or accessories; are provided in multiple skin tones; or they can depict a partial or full body view. Bases and dollz need not be realistic; they can be exaggerated caricatures, and some may be found 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 with different poses, skin tones and facial expressions. The creators of these base sets generally give them names to identify and distinguish them. Some base sets may have nearly 100 individual poses. Dollz base creators sometimes leave a tiny signature consisting of a few pixels on each base and doll.

Some Dollers ask that no editing of the base template occur other than the layering on of features, while other Dollers allow any and all edits to a base. The Dollz community is self-policing when it comes to matters of copyright and plagiarism.

Internet Dollmakers

Dollmakers are the web equivalent of paper dolls. The first dollmakers consisted of The Palace dollz bases and props, and later expanded to original content. One notable example is e-Louai's^[6] dollmaker collection.

Within an internet dollmaker, one selects a body base and then has thousands of clothes, accessories, backgrounds and decorations to choose from, including animated layers. In the Doller community (those who created or edited dollz pixel by pixel) `dollmaker-created dollz became mixed in with original creations, leading to confusion about the source of such dollz unless credited. Because of their ease of use, internet dollmakers opened up Dolling to countless users; those who did not want to create a digital doll from scratch utilized these drag-n-drop or clickable dollmakers to create their avatars. The original doll makers were simple drag and drop versions that contained props found around The Palace Chat but over time evolved into feature-rich programs and started to feature original props by the dollmaker's creators.

The Dolling subculture

Dollers exist as a subculture of the larger graphic art and digital art communities. The Dolling community also attracts those who only collect dollz and other pixel art. The focus of activities in online Dolling communities - whether interactive websites or forums - usually includes sharing artwork; posting of tutorials and advice; hosting of themed events and competitions; and presenting categories of dollz in encyclopedic form. Dollers sometimes collaborate on artwork and link to each others' sites as "sibling sites" or "sister sites." Dollz web rings were used to join together larger communities of Dollers. Some Dollers were even successful at presenting dollz websites with paid advertising.

Copyright and intellectual property within the Dolling community

As with the larger community of artists, designers and creators, the Dolling community often erupts in waves of contention centering around plagiarism. Plagiarism is not a crime per se, however, if one suffers financial losses due to copyright infringement it may be actionable.

Members of the Dolling community, as with DeviantArt and other digital art communities, have dealt with plagiarism and copyright issues since the first days of dollz appearing on The Palace in 1995. Whether such abuses arise from willful ignorance of Title 17^[7] of United States copyright law, the DMCA, or from malicious theft of intellectual property, no Doller suffers actual losses except when their website or Palace is advertising-driven and they sustain verifiable financial losses due to losing viewers.

Some Dollers have tried to establish dollz netiquette^[8] which generally refers to standard copyright law or terms of use Dollers attempt to impose for the use and distribution of their artwork.

Basic copyright violation may be claimed when someone saves the image of a doll another has created and places it on their website, or uses it as an avatar or signature without permission or attribution, and/or claims that they created the doll when the specific doll creator has not provided for such terms of use. Within the Dolling community, this is incorrectly yet strongly regarded as theft, and differs from doll "adoption," where the user who places the artwork on his or her site gives credit to the original creators within their individual terms of use.

Plagiarism is sometimes an issue when only the doll base has been copied without attribution. Additionally, when one takes a part of a doll (for example, the hair or clothing) and places it on another doll, it may also be seen as plagiarism. Due to the pieced-together appearance of such dollz, this is generally referred to as "Frankendolling" within the Dolling communities.

Direct-linking, a.k.a. inline-linking, or hot-linking has been another common problem in Dolling communities, where one uses the bandwidth of another for the purposes of displaying an image.

In 2003 there was a move by "Heli" of^[9] to create "Standard Doll Site Terms" (SDST). The SDST an attempt to create a standard license for doll site authors.^[10]

See also

• Pixel
• Spriting

References

1. ^ [1]
2. ^ Greenwood, Melicia (2005-12-14). "The Originz of Dollz". Archived from the original on 2006-12-09. http://web.archive.org/web/00000000000000/www.shatteredinnocents.com/dollz/originz1.html. Retrieved 2010-03-29. 
3. ^ left of center
4. ^ Borgeson, Mitch. "Playing with dollz". Salon.com. http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2003/10/07/dollz/index1.html. Retrieved 2010-03-29. 
5. ^ "News: Doll Category Now Open!". http://news.deviantart.com/article/32041/. Retrieved 2010-03-29. 
6. ^ [2]
7. ^ Title 17 of the United States Code
8. ^ [3]
9. ^ sweetandsassy.net
10. ^ http://web.archive.org/web/00000000000000/http://members.surfeu.fi/sdst/termeng.html