Doll Builders on Deviant – Part II

Here are a few more of my favorite doll makers on Deviant Art (they are appropriate for all ages):

Rock Chick Maker

The Rock Chick Maker Game: A click to mix and match style doll builder game, but it has and entertaining style and lots of pieces to choose from. The little round buttons on the bottom let you choose the catagory of piece you want. Click a piece on your doll to remove it. There are a few little accessories that you can drag and drop as you please, and you can mix and match some background elements to get a fun stage for your rocker. Once you are done, you can hide the other pieces (hit the “show” button) and even print your doll if you want 🙂 I really like this doll.

http://pixelledanddead.deviantart.com/art/The-Rock-Chick-Maker-Game-136032264 (Click the download icon on the left side to play, or use the second link.)
http://fc00.deviantart.com/fs25/f/2009/248/7/f/The_Rock_Chick_Maker_Game_by_pixelledanddead.swf

 

Face Maker

Face Maker: This one is a little more confusing to use than some, but its kinda fun to play with anyway anyway. It was created to help the programmer build faces more easily for RPG games. (He is not the origonal artist for the pieces.) Click the rounded tab things down the right side to go through different features. Select options in the other list to change the colours of your pieces. The circle with arrows in it allows you to adjust the position of some features.

http://foxrichards.deviantart.com/art/FaceMaker-52755515

Wolf Maker

Wolf Maker: This one is just nicley drawn fairly realistic wolf colour changer. It lets you recolour almost every patch of fur (though only with realistic colours). There are a few little drag and drop scars you can add under “Misc”. Make sure that you colour this wolf in order, so start with the “Base”, then the “Unders”, then the “legs”, etc…. When you choose a tab you have already used, it erases your other work!

http://kaylink.deviantart.com/art/Kaylink-s-Wolf-Maker-122966749

Stay tuned for the next post of Doll Builders on Deviant 🙂

GirlsGoGames.com – A Game Directory

GirlsGoGames.com is a favorite of one of the girls on our site. I have listed it in directories, since it basically hosts a huge number of games from all over the net, but all of them are playable without leaving their site. There is generally a link inside of the doll maker back to site that actually hosts the doll.  On the downside there is a lot of advertising on this site (you have to watch one every time a game loads, and there are a lot of big animated banners and such) but that isn’t unusual for free sites 😉

Since the games are from all over, the art is varied, but most of it seems to be a nice quality. The occasional doll or game has animation as well. The dolls are sorted by theme rather than how they function, but they do have both drag n’ drop and click to change style dolls. They also have a lot of maker/builder type games where you can create pizzas, cakes, snowmen, and other fun stuff. For the sort of 6-9 year old crowd this is probably a pretty good choice. They don’t need to sign up to play, and there is enough variety to keep them entertained for quite a while.

As far as drag n’ drop directories go, this one isn’t bad. The have a huge variety of games, and their advertising isn’t too annoying. Many of theses sites have tons of pop-up ads and such, but this one manages to steer away from that. One last side note though, the site does seem to go down a fair bit (it is probably a bit busier than their servers can handle) so you might have to check back at another time of day if it seems to be acting funny 😉

Cute Dolls – Cartoon Doll Emporium

 Site: Cartoon doll Emporium
URL: http://www.cartoondollemporium.com/
Audience: Girls of about 8 to 14
Cost: Free, some content is restricted to Paid “Premium Princesses”

Todays pick is Cartoon Doll Emporium, another large social networking/dollmaker site.  They have a notice for parents, billing themselves as the “safest and most creative virtual world for girls”. I am not sure how accurate that statement is, but things are moderated in real time which is nice. The artwork is fun and colourful, lots of giant heads and big eyes, and the dolls are unique. The magority, of the newer ones at least, are “click to mix and match”. Some of their older content has changable colour as well or drag and drop pieces. (You have to hunt around for it a bit; when you go to dolls section type drag and drop into the search bar on the right hand side.) On the plus side, most of the dolls have some kind of animation and animated props or backgrounds which younger kids will love.

My avatar and alter avs on Cartoon Doll Emporium.

As with most of these sites, they have blogs, user profiles, forums, clubs, etc… They also have cartoon dollars which you can earn by surfing their site and participating in activities, and a fun little mini economy. They also have a neat little scavenger hung feature that gives you clues and sends you to find certain dolls. There are item prizes for each hunt. I found much more free content on this site than star doll, though its definatly for a bit younger users.

My personal space on Cartoon Doll Emporium.

Cartoon Dollars can be spent buy items that improve your “Doll Avatar” and the “Doll Room” featured in your profile. (Both the avatar and the room let you choose your pieces, but you can’t move anything around.)When you are bored of your old items, things like furniture and outfits) you can set them for sale in your personal store for other users to buy. You set the price on the items you sell, so are some interesting prices on “Rare” items and such. It also means that its possible to get some of the premium content without paying real money for it 🙂 When you are on your profile page, on the bottom right is little box labled “Wish List”. Make sure you check that out; when you have items on there, even Premium princess ones, you can click on “Buy” and compare prices in the mall and various user stores.

My CDE store.

Cartoon Doll Emporium (CDE) has a tons of super fun features, unfortunetely a lot of them are very buggy. Their currency system doesn’t allways reward users, their auction feature was broken when I visited (it kept my cartoon dollars even though I didn’t win any bids). Some of the games, like the scavenger hunt, don’t update unless you hold shift down and refresh your page (it also sometimes fixes money display bugs). Another bug I noticed while on the scavenger hunt, was that their site ads often covered the clue. If that happends to you, go back to the main scavenger hunt page to read the clue, its on the left hand side of your profile page under Games > Scavenger hunt. I did send an e-mail mentioning a few of these problems, however they only responded to the auction problem and said that they where working on it.

All in all though, I do enjoy the amount of honestly free content on Cartoon Doll Emporium. The dolls are really appealing, and the little economy is fun. As long as you are not easily frustrated by bugs, I recomend the site 😉 And if you just want to browse around a little, you don’t need to be a member to play with the dolls.

Beautiful Dress Up Games on HulaBunny.com

HulaBunny.com is a fun little site by a very talented artist. The content is family friendly and very cute. Hula Bunny has artwork, cartoons, and of course dress up games. There are quite a few dress up games on her site, but I have picked my favorites for this little list. They are all “click to mix and match” style dress up games (not drag and drop) so they are probably best for younger users. My four year old does well with them, but I think they would be fine for most 4-10 year olds.

A Bunny Genie 🙂

Genie Princess – http://www.hulabunny.com/genie_bunny.htm is a genie bunny with a simple floating animation really adds to her charm. You can change her clothing, jewelry, slippers, and lamp. Several of the clothing items have sparkly sequins which my daughter enjoyed 😉

The Magic Feather – http://www.hulabunny.com/babybirds.htm is just a simple little baby bird that you can colour and decorate. Bright colours, big blinking eyes and lovely swirly feathers. Defiantly a good choice for younger children.

Magic Mare – http://www.hulabunny.com/magicmare.htm is a fairly limited maker as far as piece selection goes. But the main and tail are animated, the horn sparkles, and the graphics are (of course, lol) super lovely.

Princess Abella – http://www.hulabunny.com/abella.htm has wonderful period graphics organized by year. Again, there are not a ton of choices, but its fun to see what century the clothing is from, and the settling animation when you choose a dress if very nice.

Create your goddess – http://minigamelink.n169.com/flashfile/200610/goddess_game%5B1%5D.swf (this is a random link to the goddess maker that I found in a search engine, the one on the Hula Bunny site was broken when I wrote this). Build your goddess from a selection of pieces inspired by goddesses from around the world. When you make a piece choice, it tells you facts about the goddess the piece was inspired by. Really wonderful artwork and interesting little bits of trivia. The doll is nude though (no body detail, it looks like a barbie), so if you feel that that is inappropriate you might want to pass on this one.

I am really a fan of both this artist and her site, its well worth visiting.