The Stylist has proved very challenging to make a doll of, much like the Magister and Ethan/the Spymaster. My first version captured her air of comfortable, everyday glam, but looked very young compared to the other two Elder Witches. But they’re all around 400 years old. I wanted them to look their ages, with eyebags and wrinkles and such.
My second version looked older, but it was really…round and balloon-like in an unattractive way.
Stylist 2.0 also shared a problem with Stylist 1.0. Both headsculpts were very stylized, and they did not evoke the Stylist’s particular character. Lively and fast-talking, she uses a combination of outmoded slang and her own kind of folksy similes. She’s sarcastic; she has a mutually sarcastic and subderisorous relationship with the Magister, and she’s very direct. She has hair magic and amazing artistic and fashion design skills; she also cultivates and exploits a vast regional network of informants who tell her everything about everyone and also allow her to strategically disseminate information or disinformation, as she feels is appropriate. In other words, she needs to be very old and very striking, with a face that suggests sharpness, severity, sarcasm, and silliness.
The sculpt I ended up using is my own invention based on the open-source Poser figure Antonia Polygon. She was originally going to be Florrie, an ancient and sharp-as-a-tack relative of Alison from my DW fanfic. I looked at the sculpt and said, “Yeah, that feels like the Stylist,” so I adjusted it for printing, had her printed, and painted her.
