Iryna Ivakhnenko is a self-supporting BJD artist. She is a doll sculptor, painter, seamstress, jeweler, cobbler and furniture designer. Iryna is now sharing her creative knowledge on her new Patreon site.
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Q: When and why did you create your Patreon page?
A: My Patreon is only about 2 months old, but it already has some neat stuff, including both textual articles with a lot of photos and video tutorials. Why did I decide to open a page there? I knew of Patreon for quite some time, as many fanart artists had it in their signatures. And I thought it’s mostly for the artists, like “support me with your money, and I’ll be drawing some nice art in return”. It wasn’t quite what I did though… Then I saw that cosplayers also have Patreon accounts – and that was much closer to my stuff. I studied what they share there – and yes, they did what I also did for years: sharing their behind-the-scenes and how-tos of making stuff.
Being a crafter since early childhood and also being in the BJD hobby since 2009, I’ve accumulated a lot of knowledge from sculpting to shoemaking, not missing any kind of challenge actually, so I thought: “I’d like to share my knowledge, and Patreon is a great resource for that”. I actually already did it in my Russian-speaking blog for years, but the situation in the hobby is quite changed, so I moved to Tumblr, to Facebook, whatever… But I felt that my educational stuff would be buried under other kinds of posts there, so I wasn’t too active. Patreon has all this in one place, it’s a dedicated platform. I love to learn new things, to tell of what I learned to others, to share my ups and downs, my research with mistakes included (because mistakes are also educational), to tell of my principles and approaches.
Q: What subjects have you covered so far?
A: Various ones – just like what I do. I wrote the article on the design of two elaborate costumes that were commissioned by a loyal customer who gives me a certain freedom in design. You can see the whole design process there. The reference pictures were chosen by the customer and suggested by me, the schemas we both worked on, the selection of trims and beads. You’ll see how the idea evolves from scratch and turns into the costume eventually.
There is a video that shows how I stitch the shoe’s top on a sewing machine and what I do to keep the allowances of about 0.8-1 mm. The main idea is to glue the pieces before you sew. You’ll see what I do in real time.
I am preparing some new releases in the near future, so there are two posts about that. The first one is about my Manuna Mouse dresses making, and as the doll is only 10.5 cm high, there are a lot of things that could use a creative approach. You’ll see a step-by-step video tutorial on making such a tiny dress.
Another post is about making a new BJD head that will be opened for preorder soon. It’s a portrait head, that used to be called a “minimee” (though Minimee was a service from Korean D.I.M). I talk of sculpting, of how I prepare the schema, and why it’s so important to get the right scale. I tell of the shortcuts of transferring the likeness from your monitor to a sculpted piece, and so on.
There are also posts on making ice skating shoes, revealing the design of a new costume (armor set), a plywood sofa project… I do a lot of various stuff, and I write about my current and forthcoming projects. I also have huge plans on posting the articles on which supplies I use in my work and why I chose them, as it’s always useful to know what works best for you and why.
Q: I saw that Manuna Mouse is returning soon and will be sold on your website. Will you be re-releasing more of your animal dolls after Manuna?
A: I hope so – let’s see how the Manuna release will go. It’s the first full doll release I’ll be doing on my own, and that’s a bit more complicated task than selling just heads.
I’d like to find a casting company with the fantasy skin tones I want – and it most likely wouldn’t be DollShe next time. I hope to re-release my Ropuha toad in some catchy skin tones. Can’t set any dates yet though.
Q: Is there anything you would like to add?
A: I’d like to say thank you to all my followers and supporters, both on social media and Patreon: I’m so lucky to have so many people appreciating my work!
I plan to post not only paid stuff on my Patreon but also free materials too (and I have already done so), just because it’s a very convenient platform for having all my how-to stuff in one place. So I’ll be glad to meet everybody there!
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