Leftover Candy: A Living Dead Dolloween Encore

Halloween never ends that quickly or easily for me, and I have to let myself savor. I'm ready to keep on with the year's events and festivities, but it's always hard to let go and cut off the spooky season right on the last day.

But what am I doing here? I've already combed through the Halloween history, and you already know these characters in the cover image. But not quite. These dolls you're seeing are their variants!  

I didn't think of getting a variant from each Halloween series until later, so they got to be their own post. By the time I decided, Dolloween blogging was on track and I had to publish their mains in the right order, leaving the variants to come later. But I think this is very exciting and I was delighted to have the space to acquire and discuss them.

It was so hard to keep myself from teasing these dolls on Instagram, because it's so cool to have them and they're so interesting, but I wanted to keep them as a little reveal here on the blog. I was considering having this post as an epilogue to the finale (which would have been posted on 10/31), but I realized it just didn't make sense or feel fair to write a conclusion post pretending the variants were never part of my experience and then post them after. So they are being posted after Halloween as planned, and then the finale will follow, with these guys in conversation as they deserve.

Read the first part here, the second part here, the third part here, the fourth part here, the fifth part here, the sixth part here, and the seventh part here.

Burning the Candle at Both Ends: Variant Ember

Warning again for semi-real burn imagery.

I mentioned I was unsure which Ember to get, and I decided to commit to the variant as well, making her my second main/variant pair after Vincent Vaude. I was initially only committed to getting Ember's variant and was planning to feature her in part 3 alongside the main Ember review, but then I found the space and interest to pick a variant from each of my review duos to spotlight and I moved her section here. She was the only variant I pre-bought, getting her last month. Salem and Isabel were October decisions.

According to Mezco, the variants for Series 18 were released in a set of 275 copies each, which is an infinitesimal production run in the grand scheme of things and even scarcer than the 300 copies attributed to the S16 variants. Many elementary schools have higher student populations than the number of copies that exist of this doll. I join a very exclusive club in purchasing variant Ember, and she's possibly the rarest toy I own now. I do feel fairly qualified as such a massive witch fan, if I do say so myself. At least, please know she's in a very loving home! Just forgive the sacrilege inherent in unsealing this one.

Ember came sealed because the previous owner(s) were more pragmatic than me and maintained her fullest value potential. I was about to ruin that.

Series 16 and 18 both changed the orange tissue color to black/very very dark grey for their variant sets. Not many variant sets changed the packaging design as well as the doll, but S16 and S18 join S5 in that club. The chipboard and death certificate are identical.

Here's Ember unpacked.

Variant Ember makes the broad change, per the warm-toned Halloween palette of the variant set, of turning every green tone to orange, which makes her look quintessentially Halloween and witchy in a different way. Since her design had a limited costume palette and only the one major cool tone, the palette change is pretty broad and simple for her. She has a few other changes I found interesting, though, which break from the mapping of the main doll's details.

The hat is the same, but the band is orange. This hat went through a long rinse and squeeze in warm water and detergent, just like the last one, and I got a lot of excess dye out. 

The second I turned the coffin tray over and saw Ember's mask in person, I knew I made the right decision in pursuing this variant. This Ember's mask is yellow with red-orange and black for shading, and it looks leagues better than the main. Night and day.

I already love a classic witch rendered in black and orange tones with warm-toned fantasy skin, but this mask is so lively and fun and oddly gorgeous. The hair section has changed from white to black here, which is a change that didn't strictly need to be made under this variant color palette concept. They just did it, and I like it a lot because it has the nice bonus of matching the remains of Ember's own hair and it blends really nicely with it. I wish both masks were black-haired for that reason, even though I like the green mask okay on its own merits. The variant mask doesn't shade the forehead wrinkles like the main doll's, and the colors all being on the warm spectrum leaves the mask looking clean and bright and higher-contrast, rather than muddy like the reddish/green intersection on the main mask. While the main doll's mask captured a valid retro Halloween aesthetic, I didn't like its dark ugly colors and more grotesque vibe. The colors and paint job on this rendition change the vibe significantly into something more fun and eye-catching. This mask is the variant doll's biggest win over the main.

Ember's burned skintone is done in the same way as the main even as the method of painting assures no two Embers will be strictly identical. However, her eyes are pretty different on the variant, with black sclerae and smaller orange irises that make her look more dark, and like her eyes are supernaturally glowing. The pupils are unchanged in their red color. This face feels more fiery and zombified, though the expression does read the same overall. I think this version just looks more dangerous. It's a cool transformation, and I like when LDD variants make subtle detail/tonal changes as well as directly swapping colors.

Both look lost and sad, but I might try to help the main doll, while I'd run away from the variant.

The dark eyes pair with the shading on the mask to make the costume witch's eyes look even more sinister and sunken, though this Ember copy's left iris is closer to her nose than her right, making the mask a bit harder to align in a way that looks good.

Here's how the masks look with the opposite variant's eye paint.

You could take the variant as Ember's full resurrection or the depiction of the legend--an undead vengeful witch with literal fire in her eyes, as opposed to the real little girl who was burned for no reason. In that way, both poems could be true: she really was a human little girl killed senselessly (chipboard), but turned into a magical witch killed "more justly" through her legacy rewriting history (certificate poem). 

I think main Ember looks better than the variant when both are completely bareheaded, but when both are wearing the hats with no mask, each looks really good.

Nothing special of note on the rest of the doll. The rest of the paint (on the hands) is comparable to the main, and the outfit is the same, just with green changed to orange. The variant's costume looks better sewn on the "bodice" section of the dress, with the variant neckline sewn perfectly straight across the sides of the jacket section it's sewn into.

Jinx and Hellcat are excellent feline companions to this orange Ember, matching her really nicely. They made such a great little trio on the shelf.

Pre-paint makeover for Hellcat.

For this Ember's stake-burning photos (taken the same day as the main's, right afterward), she's a little more freed, as if taking control or becoming the witch in death that she was accused of being. Is she holding a magical wand, or is it just a dangerously burning stick? I like the ambiguity of just how supernatural her act of weaponizing the flames really is.

I then played with manipulating color and digital additions to create a smoky/ashy-looking "burnt-out" portrait.

And versions of just the eyes and nose, completely swallowed by smoke. This also feels very painterly.

I also found another old oil-painting image here with the mask partially off and the right light and filtering. This feels very Rembrandt, and without the neck joint, this wouldn't look like a photo of a doll at all. I love this one.

Then I put together a circle of witches around a cauldron candle.

I went on record back in Living Dead Dolls Roundup 2 in May saying that variant Ember was a doll I "didn't particularly want". I don't know what I was talking about then, and this is one of those cases where my ability to re-evaluate and talk myself into just about anything was a good thing. Ember's variant is incredibly fun and visually appealing and I'm entirely glad I made the commitment to be the owner of one of her 275 copies. Her combination of personal semantic appeal and awesome visual design makes her worthy of such a precious status.

Ember's main doll has a great green tone and her more human eye design makes her look more pitiful and endearing. The variant doll, however, looks more vintage with the orange-witch theme, the hair on her mask matches what little she has on her head and displays well in conjunction with it, and her exclusively warm palette and darker, more supernatural eye design push the concept of fire and someone burned a lot further and lends her more stylized caricature, which can give her a better sense of camp that makes her less upsetting. The variant is less sad, though I think the sadness of the main forms part of her appeal. Main Ember's face has more personality and unique charm, but variant Ember's mask and color palette make her one of the very most visually appealing Living Dead Dolls I've come across, and she's a wonderful encapsulation of several angles of Halloween-pop, vintage, wholesome, scary, and gory. Plus, she's the only orange witch they've made, and that's worth a lot. Main Ember is the little girl wrongly murdered, while the variant is the vengeful undead asserting herself as the archetypal witch they feared. Both have their place. Of course, due to the overwhelming scarcity of this doll, there's not much hope of getting both for most collectors. Kind of a shame, because this variant is so good!

Both Ember dolls have a concern with staining. Wash those chapeaux!

Cat Out of Hell: Variant Salem

Look, is it any surprise that I had to complete the sweep of classic LDD witches this year? 

When looking for copies of this doll being sold, I stumbled one page with a bafflingly dedicated hater writing a diatribe about how horrible the S32 variants and this doll were, and how Salem's variant promised to be worthless to any except those impossible people who wanted her. Sorry to let you know, guy, but Salem's variant did not prove worthless. She seems to be on par with the main for fetching a good price in the series, and I was getting ready to eat a pretty major cost with her. I wanted to give her a chance, and I was all set to repeat the addition of the Puritan hood to tidy up the design. Pictures of Salem in-hand were more convincing than her official LDD portrait, so I was committed. But then I couldn't find her at all.

Variant Salem seemed to disappear from the aftermarket once I logged back on in October to look for her, and that made me wonder about canceling or postponing this post, but one shopping suggestion from a Japanese retail site popped up...and converted to yen, she only cost me about $35. That's phenomenally better than the going I'd seen for her on the English-speaking market, or even main Salems on AliExpress, and it made me feel like kind of a rockstar to snag her through that channel! And she arrived not very long after ordering! Japanese shipping to the U.S. doesn't take too long; go figure.

I have no idea how many copies of the S32 variants were produced, or what their distribution was like. They seem to be more readily found on Chinese retailers (or, in this case, a Japanese site), but they do pop up in smaller numbers on online buy/sell sites here. Joshua Lee never featured them on his YouTube channel, unlike several other variant sets, so I don't know if he even acquired them.

The variant doll is quite striking for swapping the value balance of most of her her coloration, which really shifts the tone. This Salem's face values have entirely inverted with a dark-on-light face paint design, and her costume is darker as well. I really love that she's an orange cat, since I think orange spooky Halloween cats are massively underrepresented in the holiday iconography, though I was a little stuck on her use of green. I get it, the S32 variant have more pop and all of them involve green, but man, if the color was yellow instead...

I didn't even unpackage her death certificate, since, unlike the Series 5 variants, no other variant set's certificates appear to have any changes from the mains, and I knew that was the case here. 

Here's the doll out.

Variant Salem's aesthetic is a bit more poppy and flat than the main, owing to a combination of her lighter body and darker paint, her colorful body against darker clothes, and the loss of one color from the main palette--the variant keeps the black, orange, off-white, and green, but has no yellow whatsoever, which also results in a stylistically less dimensional faceup. It's really interesting, and I think she's her own kind of amazing.

The hat is mostly the same. The band has switched to orange, though it would have probably made more sense staying green, since the only other orange on the doll is the body/ear color, with no further orange in the costume. 

The ears on the hat are made of the same material as the hat, like on the main, but here, the doll's colors mandated that the ear fabric be a separate color from the hat. I think the ears look a little darker and redder than the doll, but it passes. The interiors are lined with the same velour material as the main's, but here in a slightly bluish green tone designed to match the green satin fabric shared by both Salems.

Very strangely, the hat buckle is the same squared shape as the one on Ember and Holle Katrina's hats, and does not match the buckle on the main Salem's hat. The main's hat buckle was the same as the shape on both Salems' belts. As such, main Salem has only one buckle shape, with the hat one breaking from previous dolls, while the variant Salem has two buckle shapes and the hat buckle does match previous dolls.

Main Salem is the only one with a different hat buckle shape, somehow. The Salem variant and Holle Katrina both feature two different buckle shapes on one costume.

Unfortunately, this hat did stain Salem's head. 

Mezco were smart enough not to put Ember's hat on her for packaging, but forgot by the time this doll came around, apparently. Staining wasn't really a concern for the main doll, who was already black, but her variant is another story. Fortunately, the hat is going to cover the spots that it created, and the hood I'll add will also hide most of it. I washed out this hat to leach out excess dye anyway.

Salem's body color has obviously changed to orange, and next to devil Nicholas changing to black with a red face, it's probably the most cohesive or logical body color change in the S32 variant set. Real cats can be orange and it makes sense for spooky Halloween cats to be depicted as orange, too. I'm guessing this vinyl cast might be the exact same shade as Ye Ole Wraith in the main S32 set. They would both be the only LDDs with bodies cast in bright orange, though neither have the neutral-standard head sculpt.

Salem's face paint is almost all dark, and is slightly simpler than the main's due to the lack of a secondary highlight color--here, it's all black except for her pupils and teeth. 

The main had mostly yellow linework with orange highlights. Salem's sclerae being black with green irises makes her look more supernatural and sinister and completes the inversion of color-value balance by even reaching her eyes. The green pupils also form the bare minimum to ensure the doll doesn't look too disconnected from her costume. If there was no green in her face paint, if the doll had no green when undressed, the rest of the green in the costume would look more jarring and intrusive. I'm surprised, though, that the highlights on the mouth, nose, and eyes were not replicated on this doll's paint, since those could have been a way to include more green and have more parity with the main, like so:

Maybe this was too high-contrast compared to the yellow/orange subtlety of the main, or else perhaps it looks too neon-trim and modern and distracting so they left the highlights out for this palette. I don't mind it. I think the variant looks just fine as she is, and it was wise to keep the green at the minimum.

She also looks a thousand times more evil to me. She looks mean. She looks nasty. Main Salem looks like she's yowling, but the variant looks like she's hissing and spitting. She's actually genuinely scary!

My concern with this Salem was that her light color made her face sculpt too apparent against her eye paint, and yes, this is an issue when seeing her up close, much like with Greed in Series 7. It's not glaring, though, and she looks fine.

Despite the variant being lighter than her hat, it's this copy whose ears feel better disguised by the way her hat falls! I'm still getting a hood over her, though.

Variant Salem reminds me a bit of the cat on the Criterion poster for the Japanese horror film House, which is one of my all-time favorite WTF rides in cinema history. It's impossible to prepare for as a viewer and it's such a playful, vibrant production.

You will not be ready for this movie.

I kind of wish Salem had deliberately imitated this poster with her colors! It's a bit of a deep cut, and not really vintage-Halloween at all, but the LDD guys should be aware of the film on principle, if not by circumstance, and I'd love anything themed to this bonkers movie.

The variant's cape has a black exterior and strap, while the interior is green, showing the first sign of the costume darkening a bit for a more imposing look.

Variant Salem's shirt appears completely unchanged from the main, which is a little surprising. This top and the boots would have thus required no alternate production from the main's pieces. With the shirt staying as-is and the skirt and cape becoming black, Salem's outfit is more austere and moody here, and I like that against her orange. I completely understand the doll's thesis--with her skin being colorful, the rest becomes darker, while the opposite was true for the main, who was dark-skinned and popped elsewhere.

I can also appreciate the shirt being untouched because it makes it easier to finish her with an identical hood to what I fashioned for the main doll. With a different color scheme or different trim on the collar and cuffs, I might be pressed to dye a glove (risking more staining to the doll's head afterward) or find another color of glove to make a hood when I can't guarantee it would behave the same way. This is easy, though. With the shirt the same, the hood can be the same too and coordinate.

The belt here is green and is just as nice as the main's.

The variant's skirt is black satin that matches the top more and also matches the cape, giving her costume more uniformity. 

Boots are unchanged.

I didn't notice a lot of sloppiness or loose threads on this costume, and this Salem's arms behave perfectly without any range issues or popping off when being moved. I think the variant, head stains aside, is the higher-quality copy. Maybe I just had black-cat bad luck with the main copy I received.

I repeated my process to give Salem a hood. The hood this time got some darker stains around some edges, but those won't show with the hat on, fortunately. Here she is reassembled.

I didn't cut the strap of this Salem's cape or add a velcro closure because the result of the modification on the main was a little flimsy and messy-looking and didn't add anything necessary to me. I just popped the variant back together with the loop put around her neck beforehand so it's just like it was before. 

I was able to create the digital illustrations of variant Salem before getting her by just recoloring the ones I had made of the main!

The orange-and-black pieces make a nice diptych.

I then tried inverting the adaptation and recoloring the original vintage Halloween cat artwork to match the variant's colors, as if to make the nonexistent piece she'd be based upon.

I suspected the loud colors of the S33 variants were designed to interact well with blacklight, and that hypothesis is certainly supported by Salem. Her body isn't neon at all in normal lighting, but it glows very bright and poppy in blacklight.

This does further expose the discrepancy with her ear fabric color, though. Now I really have to see the Wraith, because she would probably be just as reactive! That doll really will be the biggest "one that got away" for this Dolloween month. I can hardly say I underdid it or have any regrets with my roster...but if there was structural or budgetary room for one more, the Wraith would be my easy answer...so long as I could get a spare copy of her robe to cover her front and match her source artwork better.

Here's a digital piece playing on a neon theme.

Lastly, I took Salem around some vintage aesthetics in decor and put her outside in the autumn scenery.

Here's the Halloween-cat LDD cast complete now.

Variant Salem is not as classic as the main doll, and her colors leave her harder to read as authentically vintage in the same way the main does, but I think she's very interesting, strikes a really fun evil presence, and overall forms a "more is more" appeal when paired with her main due to the two feeling so different they could be sisters rather than the same character twice. I certainly don't want to write a hate page about this doll. I think she's really cool! She was also cheaper (thank you, Japanese market!) and more tidy than the main, so she was overall entirely worthwhile.

A Sight For Sore Eye Sockets: Variant Isabel

Warning again for themes of eye trauma/gore and self-mutilation in that avenue.

I initially had no reason to pursue this doll. If I was going to pursue a variant from each series I spotlighted, she wasn't going to be the one, especially not since my initial thoughts of looking at variants were to get a variant of a doll I hadn't reviewed. But my plans changed and I was expressly seeking a redemption round because the main Isabel's quality with her thin messy hair and fraying tearaway brocade dress was so deeply disappointing. I had sufficient reason to believe the variant could offer either better quality or at least a second run where I knew how to handle the doll better to protect against damage, so I wasn't feeling like I'd be wasting my time in pursuing her and paying up. Either I wouldn't be paying for disappointment at all, or I'd be able to treat her right if she was a disappointment. The variant had also just grown on me. Who was I kidding; I love the mix of goth aesthetics with classic Halloween orange and black! I figured since I had two variants committed in my plans, it would make a harmonious epilogue to have a variant of a doll from each of my series posts, and for S16, I didn't at all need Eleanor's variant.

Variant Isabel is expensive, just like her main, though she's in a slightly larger run than variant Ember. It's cited that there were 300 copies of the S16 variants each. Being more numerous than Ember didn't lower her price or make her cheaper than Ember, though. I got the lowest-price offering I could find, which totaled to $100 less than the only other listing I could find and also looked a bit neater inside her coffin. Win-win. That gave me more wiggle room to expand my Dolloween with the interlude roundup!

Of course this doll was sealed, and of course, I must apologize again for ruining it.

Like S18 after, the tissue color for the variant set went from orange to black. Both 16/18 variant dolls I selected benefit from the added contrast, since Ember and Isabel's variants are quite orange. Variant Squeak, Pumpkin, and Mishka all present quite orange too, as do variant Jingles, Gabriella, Ingrid, and Calavera. Only variant Eleanor wouldn't get any real pop in her coffin, since her only prominent orange tones are her eyes and bucket, and only the eyes are on display while factory/packed.. The rest of her is very black with white skin, so the variant would actually sink into her coffin. Main Eleanor would pop against either set's coffin tissue, orange or black alike due to being predominantly white.

Isabel's chipboard and death certificate are unchanged, as with variant Ember and Salem. 

Here's Isabel out. She makes a significantly better first impression than the main did, mainly on account of her far better bangs.

Both dolls' side locks hovered, but the main was not at all an encouraging presentation right out the coffin.

Variant Isabel's hair is the exact same style, as variant dolls in the brand are almost always paint/color changes without any of the physical structure changed. Only a few non-Resurrection variant dolls changed anything physical about them, such as variant Purdy getting short hair under her sliced-off dome and bandage, Red Riding Hood getting a wolfskin cloak, and the Series 19 dolls getting staked chests (and Haemon in that set swapping head sculpts to the standard while his main had a unique specialty sculpt). Despite the LDD archive portrait and some in-hand photos suggesting otherwise, variant Isabel's side locks are still gelled the same way, and thus are stuck in their floaty pose until I take care of it. The bangs look a lot tidier, though, and a fair bit more even and thick. They aren't wispy and don't have big gaps in them, it feels like there's more to comb through, and they aren't resting super high and giving her too much forehead. There are a few unruly hairs, but those can be trimmed. Her hair color is, to me, the most significant color change on the doll, and it's a blended ginger tone with reddish and yellowish shades mixed in. It struck me as similar to Jinx's, but Jinx's hair overall reads a bit more orange while the balance in Isabel is slightly more auburn to my eye.

Isabel's hair fiber felt a little nicer to me than Jinx's, but only a comb and wash will tell. 

The ponytails in back had some stray tangly hairs around the ties, making the separation of the tied-off portions less clean. The ancient elastics have hardened rather than liquefying and I was able to shift them up on the hair without them crumbling to pieces, so I don't feel called to replace them.

I may not adore the bun style on Isabel, but this is not a doll to customize merely on principle of her highly exclusive status. Even if she was mass-produced, I'd be disinclined to change her after realizing how challenging the hair replacement process for this look really is. I think this doll may sell her hairstyle better just because her hair is more colorful and it may add a sense of vibrancy or luxury to her look that the black hair couldn't coast on in the same shape.

I already mentioned that this hair color was not used for the corresponding Living Dead Dolls Minis of variant Isabel. Both variants of Minis Isabel had black hair.

I like that the Mini offers a good visualization of what the full-size variant would look like with black hair, but I prefer the orange hair of the full-size variant. It's the main thing that makes her interesting!

Isabel's face is done mostly the same way, and the color of her blood has not changed to a stylized black or orange tone. This also held true for Pumpkin's variant. Blood just wasn't altered in the variant palette, probably because red is still a warm tone and isn't intrusive in the orange/black theme. The faceup is different, though, just for the fact that Isabel's lips here are painted gothic black rather than a dead corpse-lip tone. The cadaverous lined design is still present, but it looks more like she's wearing statement lipstick with this color. There are also some stray dark marks from her eye shading like I saw on the main's paint as well. I'll clean those up.

But hey, wait a minute! I was wondering why I could see the lined corpse-lip design on Isabel so clearly when her lips are black, and then I noticed something--those dry lines aren't painted. They're textured. It's an extra part of the sculpt!

I went back and checked the main, and yep, of course. The lines weren't painted in there, either. The mold did all the work!

That's such a cool extraneous feature to build into a head sculpt whose only attraction needed to be the gouged empty eye sockets. With that and the other subtle bumpy patches and the dead lips, there's a fair bit going on with this head! I think I'm more curious now to see this sculpt in use on Series 25's Sospirare, and I already had her on my endless list. And to think, I might never have noticed this aspect of Isabel's head mold without getting the variant.

The skintone between Isabels is the same. Only the dolls with saturated fantasy colors (Mishka and Gabriella, both hues of green) in S16 and S18 had their skintones shifted to the variant palette. All of the stark-white and pale human-colored dolls kept their original skintones, likely because they didn't clash with the warm palette.

Variant Isabel's dress technically changes just the one element in the brocade fabric, though in terms of construction between the two copies I got, the variant's high-neck collar is much taller and tidier and far more defined, looking like a whole fold of fabric while the main dress's neck looks more like the same plane of fabric as the bodice, just weakly separated by a stitched line. It looks like this construction might actually be a consistent variant difference based on photos, but I don't know why the neck would be sewn differently between the two designs. Different manufacturing sites, or conscious change? Who knows. I certainly prefer it the variant's way, though. Variant Isabel's brocade is a fully different fabric with its own colors and pattern, though neither are especially themed.

They could be premade generic brocade fabrics selected for each doll's palette. The variant brocade has a yellow-orange background and a red-orange pattern, and I appreciate yellow tones having a significant presence anywhere in the brand since it's so rare. I think a specifically lighter yellow-orange paired with black accents is an underrated Halloween palette, so it's great to see on Isabel. Main Isabel's brocade has a black background that matches the rest of her dress, so the variant costume has one more color in its total than the main costume does. The main dress's brocade has a slightly more embossed glossy effect to the figural designs, and the variant's figural designs feel more flat and matte in comparison. The buttons on the variant dress seem better-sewn. The main's buttons aren't as upright and feel like they could be misaligned.

Isabel's mask is the same color, pinker than her skin, but the eye color and airbrushing has shifted to the same yellow/orange tones as her outfit. The eyes on/in the variant mask have more saturated irises, giving them a livelier effect, and the airbrushing has more contrast against the skintone and reads more like dramatic makeup.

The variant eyes do still look a little deadened by the beige dots in the pupils. Those were red on the main.

The apparent nerve endings on the back of the eye(ball?)s are still red. The mask handle is the same color too.

I think the colors of the variant doll make the masked look feel more sinister and campy, more like a Disney villain or something.

The brighter eyes, yellow tones, and black lips make her look more dramatic and cheeky and evil in a fun way.

Isabel's boots and socks and pumpkin bucket are all unchanged. I didn't try making main Isabel hold her bucket by the grip before, but the pose of her arm doesn't actually prevent her from holding it in a believable way. This arm's most natural pose with the bucket is just a different one from the other gripping arm's. 

I was exceptionally delicate when taking off this costume, but her arms slid out pretty easily and the piece came off unscathed. There weren't any dramatic loose threads inside or at the hem of the skirt, and the interior of the join between the torso and sleeves looked okay, but I gave myself insurance and saturated the edges of the brocade coming out of the stitched seams with fabric glue to ensure the fabric couldn't fray and tear and slip out of the stitches to detach from the sleeves like the main dress's did. This is a more valuable doll, and I wanted to preserve her and get it right with an Isabel this time in general. And heck, I'll admit it. I'm so attached to the display cheat I discovered of dislocating her elbow to hold and wear the mask at the same time that I'd like to have a copy whose dress can survive through a few photos doing so.

After a hair wash, she looked pretty good, and the sleeve trick worked without tearing the dress, though I was also refusing to try popping the arm out inside the sleeve this time and only ever set this up by popping the arm out while both sleeves were off, then sliding the arm into the sleeve loose and doing up the dress. I was able to reconnect the arm while it was inside the dress, but didn't risk the fabric stress of pulling it out inside.

The hair was fine having looser side locks, but they were still floating above the scalp at the point where they emerged from the center part. To remedy this without ruining her bangs, I wet a folded strip of paper towel to lay across the top of her parted locks and put clips on the ends to keep them pulled down, then poured boiling water onto the towel, which localized the water and kept it from running into and flattening the curved bangs. The result is effective. The variant hair still affects a fluffier silhouette from the loose side locks, but I kind of like it and I'm conditioned to see it as a characteristic of the variant from the archive portrait.

 I was able to reduce the errant black mark on her nose, but some of the paint remained due to being located on a texture bump. I think it's fine like this, and it looks much less distracting.

Then I set to some portraits. I used an orange floral paper that worked great with her brocade and played with lighting and shadow.

She really comes together as a grand lady of Halloween and I'm obsessed with the high-saturation orange shadow-contrast look. Then, I found a cool way to play with her mask that I hadn't thought of before--casting the shadow of the mask over her eye region.

And against a darker background.

Then, I knew with a certainty in my heart that she needed to be backlit on a dramatic sunset balcony...but I don't have one of those, and certainly not in her scale. But I got it done. No two elements of this picture are in the same original frame as each other. Isabel, the tree branches, the blood, the knife, and the body (played by Madame La Mort) are all composited onto the balcony sunset background image I found online. I just lit everything orange first (and edited the color of the branches) so it would work when dropped in. 

This looks incredible, like a colorized still from an old 1930s-1950s horror drama. 

See what I mean?

My favorite touch was realizing the shape of the branch image I used allowed me to overlap them and hide a pair of abstract Isabel eyes in the tree! I'm very pleased with both the cover and this balcony image. They're my best results with completely-composited figures in scenery. It's really all about the lighting. It doesn't look fully real, and isn't supposed to, but everything I placed on the balcony totally passes as actually sharing a frame. I may have leveled up my arsenal. As long as my scene idea calls for distinctive lighting, I might be able to match the scenery to the figure and cut them together more effectively, and spare myself a lot of time and money that might be diverted to physical builds. 

My last pictures with Isabel were her own version of the mirror-gouging portraits I took of the main. This time, I made it extra repulsive by dangling a Playmobil eyeball on red yarn to hang from her socket. 

Be warned for extremely icky imagery now!

The knife is also a Playmobil piece, which could be a letter-opener in this context.

Her mirror scene naturally had to match her colors, so I put orange cloth behind the mirror and my black skull paper behind Isabel to backdrop her reflection. Here's the two dolls' first mirror photos.

With the variant's more moody alternative takes on this scene, I explored low lighting with an orange tint, and different levels of exposure, rather than a more vibrant monochrome lighting scheme.

And an illustrated poem framing her as the subject of a Victorian nursery rhyme, a treatment I previously gave to Angus Litilrott.

I was looking for redemption with the variant Isabel, and I got it.

Her hair is better-rooted on the bangs, her dress is tidier and I had the chance to protect it more with some fabric glue inside, and even the collar of her dress is much neater and more defined and showed me something I didn't even know I was missing on the main. I don't have confidence that other main copies would be any better than the one I ended up with, so I do think the variant was probably the superior edition overall in terms of quality. Maybe its scarcity made Mezco sit up and put a little more polish in because they didn't want to be selling a messy doll under the label of a prized rarity. Actually, all three variant dolls in this post are quality wins over their mains. Ember's dress is sewn more straight on the neckline, Salem was stained but wasn't a mess of loose threads, and Isabel was a fair amount tidier. They're not immaculate high-end dolls, but they all ended up with a touch more polish that their mains deserved too.

Tonally, the variant Isabel is quite different. She's more goth than Gothic and obviously more holiday-themed with her colors...but she's beautiful and fun and has a lot of personality all the same. I can see her look being a little divisive or less cohesive to some, but I think she pulls it off. I certainly got some great pictures from her.

I was able to love my main Isabel after an intensive makeover, but the variant gave me the experience with the doll I felt I deserved to begin with. She's more polished and tidy and didn't make me frustrated or anxious, and showcases the physical design ideas much better with her raised level of care. The variant is how all Isabels should have been constructed, though I concede I can't be certain the variant's brocade would never have torn away without taking protective measures, and the main was a valuable warning in that regard. I'd have been devastated to find the variant's dress so fragile by surprise, and if I didn't have prior experience to make me protect against it, who knows? It might have happened.

 Here's all the pairs.

In terms of character design, I think the only one where I come close to preferring one of the variants of the other is Ember, but even that's just in the case of her witch costume, which is much more appealing and classic and seasonal to me in the variant form. Both Ember dolls' faces are great, but I'm a bit more partial to the endearing quality of the main. Both Isabels have their merits. The main is more grim and her colors suit her gory edge, but the variant is bright and pretty in a nice way, and her coloring sells her factory hairstyle with more appeal to me than the main's did. There's just an argument for the Halloween colors not suiting the concept of Isabel as well. The Salems are also both competitive. The main is obviously more classic and authentic, but the variant is interesting and holds her own alongside her, to the point of very easily joining the shelf right next to the main because they're so distinct they could be two characters. 

Quality-wise, each of the variants was superior to their main, though the Embers had the closest parity, making it a minor detail (the sew of the dress neckline)that put the variant over the main. Ember was the only doll who called for no salon time or modification, but to be sure, the general lack of hair and the lack of a target "look" for said minimal hair on her is part of it. Main Isabel needed costume repairs and got a hair replacement, her variant got some hair care in the factory vision, and the Salems got hood modifications to patch up the glaring human ear presence in their head sculpts. The quality factor is where I come close to finding a variant preference for another doll: the variant Isabel manages to feel leagues better than her main doll due to the higher polish of her bangs and costume, though I cannot fully attest to the durability of her costume being higher because I obviously wasn't going to stress-test it and quickly took measures to reinforce it instead. Still, the variant feeling like a nicer doll is a strong argument toward her being the better Isabel, and even if I don't feel that way definitively, she was certainly a smoother experience.

I'm happy to have both of each doll in the end, and I like my choices. 

Dolloween finale coming soon.