Angell Studio has been celebrating their 5th Anniversary since May with new doll releases and special events. A company representative interviewed by BJDcollectasy discussed the background of the company, some of the dolls released for the 5th Anniversary event, and additionally revealed some of Angell Studio’s ambitious plans for the future.
Q:When did the company open in China and internationally? What were some of your first doll releases?
A: In 2005, Angell Studio was established by a lady who loves BJDs, and we start to plan and sell our dolls all over since we build our company with the belief “Spread love of our BJDs all over the World”. Through the financial support of business companies and the originality of many talented artists and designers, Angell-studio has become the biggest BJD company in China and started to enter the international markets. The first three dolls we released were Gus, Leira and Vera.
Q: You have teams for each of the phases of production and sales. What are the Angell-Studio teams? How do you work together?
A: There are ten teams on Angell-studio:
Prototype design, Costume Design, Photography & Optics, Planning Media Publicity, Web Management, Market Department, Sales Department, Production Department, Quality Control Department, and Finance Department.
We will work together to discuss the monthly plan, such as what we want, how do we should do if we want those dolls, when should we release the dolls etc. Take General Huaxi and Tyrone as example, our designer passed her design idea to all of us, and we started to work and make her idea come true.
All of us come from different domains and areas before we come to Angell-Studio (AS). We love the BJD dolls and enjoy the process of making a doll. We hope each of our dolls can bring the happiness and pleasure to all of you and you can love our dolls too^^
Q: Can you tell me a bit about the creation of some of your releases like General Huaxi and Ty & Rone? How are your dolls usually developed?
A: As we release General Huaxi, we put in a lot of effort. His face is the typical pretty face based on the understanding of Chinese traditional aesthetics: inside double-fold eyelid, buddha lip, straight nose and peaked face. Right now, we have released two versions of Huaxi: General Huaxi and the one with half-open eyes. And his name “Huaxi” means gorgeous and magnificent, greatest glory, and in fact, he also bring such happiness and glory to us .
About Ty & Rone, we get inspirations from some films and some mystery books. We hope to create someone who is a killer, but with different sides of faces. We hope they are totally different from those traditional cool killers, maybe they are cool when they need to complete missions, but when they are not working, they are actually some cute guys! Rone maybe looks older than his brother, but would be childish sometime. About their names, we once had only one name for Tyrone. Tyrone represents Power and King of ancient territory. Now since they are brothers, and they treat each other like themselves, they are always fighting and working in line, then we decided to split this name into two, that is where Ty and Rone’s name comes. When they are together, they are one in spirit. Coz they are Tyrone. They are the most special twins to us.
Q：You have also offered interesting Halloween and Christmas releases in the past! How do you plan for events like holiday themes?
A: Some our events like holiday themes are all based on the traditional festival in European countries as well as Chinese. We would like to prepare some promotions in order to celebrate traditional festivals abroad and some of our own. Therefore, the events will always be close to the holiday themes, like our Halloween and Christmas dolls. We would like to share our happiness and celebrate those festivals with all of you just like a family. We hope the relationship between us is family and friends.
Q:I also would like to know more about how you planned your anniversary celebration. Can you tell me a little about your egg doll?
A: We planned our anniversary celebrations a long time ago. We did lots of preparations for this important event. We would like to hold this anniversary for a long time, and not only promotions, new dolls, new styles etc…, we also will hold some big doll party in our own country later.
We hope all of you can enjoy our celebration party.
About the egg doll released in August named Miss Anna, she is our little guardian angel. ^^
Q: Angell Studio puts a lot of effort into the photography. Can you tell me anything about how the company designs their presentations?
A: Yep, we put many efforts into the photography since we think it’s an important part to express our idea and thoughts to all of you.
This year, one talented professional photographer joined in us, and we also do a great adjustment on our shoot plan according to our six styles. With more accurate orientation and complete shoot plan, our photographer can finish the presentations to look as much as we expected. Of course, there is usually much preparation work before filming. We will keep working hard and hope all of you will love our photographer’s works.
Q: Can you tell me something about your fashion department as well?
A: Our doll fashion department is led by several experienced fashion designers and high-level pattern-makers. Their whole process should be: the designer submits the finalized document, the stylist finds the materials according to designer’s requirement, the pattern-making division makes the pattern, and the clothes production department produces the samples. The final clothes will come out after 3-5 modifications at least.
Actually, each process will go through thousands of discussion and modification. They put lots of effort every time working on a new product. And they keep working hard and study more new ideas from different fields and always keep trying something new to push themselves, and create new valuable works.
Q: Is there a special concept you have behind your doll lines?
A: Each of our dolls has a story, and you can find it in our new 5th anniversary celebration website. They are characters with unique personalities and hobbies, like those two our new dolls Ty and Rone.
With the development and maturity of Angell-Studio and the whole global BJD market, our design begins to be different. We have been developing six series according to customer orientation and classification. You can find our customer orientation from the various styles and prices of our items. We hope people of different ages, different aesthetics and hobbies can find what they want in Angell-studio.
You know, Angell-studio make a big adjustment this year, and the doll lines adjustment is the biggest one. We are planning to release six series of doll and item lines. These are six different styles which are inspired by different cultures.
The six series are:
1.“山海经”. It mainly talks about our Chinese ancient mytheon “山海经” (An ancient mythological and geographic work; it was written in the warring states period with the author’s name unknown; many old myth have been preserved in the book.) Well, our “山海经”series make an innovation reform based on this mytheon, and it will include the Immortal and the mythological creatures who lived on Eurasia two thousand years ago.
2.Angelos. It mainly inspired by the “Angel” in European classical oil painting.
3.Pastoral. This style is very fresh and sweet.
4.Dark Theater. It mainly about punk, rock and gothic style.
5.Fashion. This line is mainly about the street fashion, or casual style.
6.Royal style. This style is inspired by different palaces from different countries and different era.
Q: Will you re-design your site at that time? How will the re-organizing work? Will all the dolls will be listed under their theme?
A: About our 6 themes, we are trying our best to make it come true as soon as possible.
We are preparing a new website, the new website would have several sub-websites, and the six-themes is just one of them. We would like to show all of you our six themes through this platform. All of our dolls, old or new, will be dressed in different outfits, try different styles. We hope you can not only find their photos, but also the complete stories or information, such as their own personality, some series of their own photo albums (pictures can be uploaded by our customers), a series of story or some little poems, their family members and so on. So you may find different themes of the same doll. We hope our new website would provide all bjd lovers a platform, share experiences with each other as well as a place to show their talent etc… This would be a big project, right? But we’ll try our best to make this dream comes true as soon as possible.
Above (from top): , General Hauxi, Miss Anna’s resin wings.
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