Your Creative Process

I love how creative doll owners are and I really like reading the photostories everyone makes and I've often wondered how others go about creating them. Do you have a list of stories you're going to make before hand? Or are you more spur of the moment type like me? Kinda like, 'Oh that's a good idea, I'll do a photoshoot once I get home' thing. And do you do a sort of story board on how you plan the story to go and plan your shoot around them? Or do you just shoot away, nothing written down, with the story all in your head?

 

I'm more of the latter where I usually don't write stuff down. I have a general idea in my head and get all the stuff I would need ready and go from there. This is why I like doing them when I have a huge chunk of time where I won't be interrupted (like at night when my kiddo is asleep or if she's in school) because I might lose the flow of the story in my head. I know, not very efficient and I'm trying to be more organized about it. But that's me. Hehehe.

 

So what is your creative process?

The one photo story I did was just an idea I had while waiting for Saber and Rin to be delivered, but I wrote the script before I took the photos, as I did have sort of an idea what I wanted to happen already. It ended up being really really long though.

I would say that nearly every thing I've done has been "spur of the moment". Nothing fancy for layouts, just let things "percolate" in the back of my head until I stop procrastinating and get the kids dressed, the camera and background ready.....

I have planned big photoshoots that will forever never be completed, but not once has a photostory been something that was planned. The idea simply comes to mind and I get to it if my enemy, Laziness, doesn't keep me from it. Pictures are done at random and to what I think could work, and then I later change things up mattering on what I want them to say and so on.

Definitely a 'spur of the moment' girl here If I find groovy props it usually gives me ideas for a photoshoot. My dolls don't have detailed back stories but they do have set personalities which tie into the prop use.

I love how creative doll owners are and I really like reading the photostories everyone makes and I've often wondered how others go about creating them. Do you have a list of stories you're going to make before hand? Or are you more spur of the moment type like me? Kinda like, 'Oh that's a good idea, I'll do a photoshoot once I get home' thing. And do you do a sort of story board on how you plan the story to go and plan your shoot around them? Or do you just shoot away, nothing written down, with the story all in your head?

 

I'm more of the latter where I usually don't write stuff down. I have a general idea in my head and get all the stuff I would need ready and go from there. This is why I like doing them when I have a huge chunk of time where I won't be interrupted (like at night when my kiddo is asleep or if she's in school) because I might lose the flow of the story in my head. I know, not very efficient and I'm trying to be more organized about it. But that's me. Hehehe.

 

So what is your creative process?

What if I say all my stories were planned for the past 8 years in my head but I can't expressed it? Would you believe it? I got all these imagination from watching anime anime and anime.

 

In fact, the moment I adopted Mashiro all my imagination went wild so I go ahead with expressing my imagination that has been in my head for the past 8 years with Mashiro now as my expression.

 

All these hard work, paid off for nothing in the end since not many people like my story or like what you say, my creativity. So I ended up deleting all my photostories and prefer not to talk about it anymore. Well, fun while it lasted.

Mine float about in my head until I stop procrastinating and actually do the shoot. The closest thing to a story board I do is that I shoot the pictures in the order that they will go for the story.

My stories just float into my brain one day and then stew there for a while... I'm too lazy to actually write anything down. Oddly enough, more pre-planning and work goes into boring non-story photoshoots!

 

The only time that wasn't true was the big Saber summon thing I posted on F.fm... That actually went as far as shooting half the poses to test them out first, then moving stuff around the room and doing more tests... before finally figuring out what works best, dressing up the girls in correct outfits and shooting for keeps

I really have no set way of doing phoos or stories for my girls. But I do have a few things I usually do when stories are brewing in the ol' noggin.

 

If I know I want to do a specific story with specific shots and girls in it, I will write down my ideas and then begin the setup process of dressing the girls and setting up the backdrops and environments they will be in. If I didn't write down story ideas, I know I'd forget them because it's happened before. I don't usually go as far as doing scene by scene writing, I mainly just write down an idea for the story as a whole and then go from there.

 

When I begin shooting pics tho, I sometimes find my story changing. I'll begin with the pics and then halfway thru, I'll find myself going a totally different direction than I was planning on. But going with the creative flow usually works out best for me and being rigid and sticking with something without letting it lead me to other places stifles the process and the outcome in my opinion.

 

But even tho I write down story ideas, I will sometimes have a "moment of clarity" and a photo shoot idea just pops into my head out of nowhere. This just happened on Thursday when I was taking out the trash. I noticed one of my cactus/succulent plants was blooming and I thought I should get one of the girls out there to take just a few shots with it. One thing led to another and I wound up getting some of the best pics I've done in a long while due to finding some evening sunlight filtering thru the trees onto the side of my garage. It made for some really cool lighting effects and photos. So having random stuff pop up can also be a great way to do pics!

 

 

 

Billy

The photo story I did: heroic tales of saya went through careful thought. I make a story board for every chapter and have a rough idea how the entire story is gonna end. Before I take any photo, I gonna have an idea on what to shoot. Or else I will get a mind block. Lol

So far, I've not written anything down until after I see the pictures. I usually have a vague script in my head, and a few specific shots I know I want, but often the dolls sort of choose how things end up, whether Yuriko is willing to stand up straight, or keeps insisting on sitting down, for instance. Also, most of my bigger shoots have been collaborations with Sisterkyoya, often with her doing most of the posing and me taking the pictures, then both of us writing the dialog together (which, honestly, she does the majority of as well. I'm really only best at pushing the button on the camera ).

I kinda just come up with something when I'm posing my girl randomly, like "oh, that's make a good beginning of photo story."

And then the rest kinda just appear along the way.

I'm quite bad at planning things and I usually just come up with stuff partially while I'm writing/taking photos/ what not.

I have a story that was penciled out in an outline format earlier in the year.

 

Some test photos have been taken to see how I'm going to fit all the girls in to the muti-part story, but that is all.

 

I even plotted or outlined an idea while on the way into work. Thankfully I can remeber the plots well, so I don't have to worry about writing things down.

 

But since what post I have made in pictures here don't get much response, I don't think the story will make it here.

 

A very dear friend here know the outline of the story, but not on how Yoko & Asuka fit in. Hell even I don't know how Asuka & Yoko will fit into the main story.

 

I even plotted a story around two of my girls for the trip to Japan this year, but this is likely not to appear here but will appear in friends email boxes instead.

Normally, I would just kinda do it on the fly.

 

The couple of photostories that I did do with my dolls were just stream of thought and I took the pictures accordingly and posted the ones that best worked with my idea. I'm not very good at them though, this probably explains why xD

Wow, there's quite a number of us who like to the our photostories 'on the fly' so to speak. I'm thankful to everyone who's responded so far because it helps give me an idea of how others do their stuff. I am saddened though that some of us have stopped sharing our some of them here because of lack of response. I wish I could have read everyone's stories and that we can all continue to share them with one another or do so again someday.

I'm a story writer. I've been so for about 20 years now. It's just a hobby, but that means stories can come to my head relatively quickly. Actually, coming up with stories is much easier for me than coming up with the visual part (how I want to take a picture, how I want the doll to look, etc). This means that I generally figure out the story first, then fit everything else together later.