BONUS PHOTOSHOOT: DiDi DiPterri

Back when I started this blog two years ago, I was more ideas than execution, and some of my doll subjects just didn't get many or any elaborate or fully-presented photos. Since I've now established a practice of quick update posts with more photos of dolls I had ideas or means to shoot with after their original review, it was high time to rescue a very old favorite: Dianée "DiDi" DiPterri, my Monster High OC based on The Fly (1958).

While her customization methods are a little dodgy and not entirely how I'd do things today (I now know her forearms and head would very easily recolor black with dye rather than needing a fragile paint layer; her other pieces could likely sand down so they'd be dyeable), she's still held up pretty well...and what a great design. I'll brag; I'm not ashamed.

I thought her multitonal red/green contrast and black and white pop made her extremely bright and bold and evocative of colorful sci-fi B-movies, and even grasped at that aesthetic with the movie poster edit I did.

This was an important step in my digital art coming into the blog. But today, I felt like I could shoot the doll live in the saturated campy laboratory aesthetic I could only dream of in early 2023.

The first thing I wanted to do was take a shadow photo, like a dramatic transformation reveal. I boosted the color a lot in post to make it so green and bold.

Her hair needed to be pulled back to show her wings.

This one also made a poster, easily.

Then I put her in my "sci-fi tank" prop I first debuted for custom LDD Bedford as a cryo chamber. Since Monster High is smaller and doesn't come as close to the glass, results were a little disappointing. Because I painted it to give it a frosty effect, visibility for DiDi inside is very low, but I got a couple of pictures showing her inside, as if in the chamber which fused her and the fly to begin with.

I had far better luck staging her in a tableau next to the tank, playing with lighting and props, and putting my nightlight in the tank to make it green. DiDi's goggles and green face paint are very blacklight-reactive, making them fun to light. For props, I added some cables, my headlamp on red, a clock, a doll stand with a wooden steak, and a bug figurine (on the corner of the tank base) which is translucent and is probably a grub or caterpillar, but passes well enough for a maggot.

I tweaked the colors on this last one to bring back some of DiDi's red, and this felt like a proper pulp-horror poster. 

And so:

I then did a shoot at the laboratory table I just built for Dr. Dedwin and Nurse Necro. DiDi had to be seated to be at a good height for it, but I put some labby props on, some fly-appealing junk food, and brought in the steak and maggot and brought back the LEGO syringe from DiDi's stock so she could perform experiments on the poor LEGO Fly Monster in a little dish!

And another shot gave me yet another poster.

Last year, when I was working with the impeccable G3 signature Venus McFlytrap, I had the realization that she and DiDi probably couldn't get along, and that perhaps the presence of Venus in the lineup was a factor as to why the CAM bug ghoul was a bee-themed insect rather than a fly. I didn't have any Venus to speak of back when I made DiDi and still don't have a G1 edition in my current collection, but G3 Venus, her modified Chewlian, and the G1 Chewlian paper shredder stopped by...and DiDi hid in terror.

It's all a case of instinct wired into her from the fusion. Of course Venus doesn't want to eat her. She's well aware DiDi is a whole ghoul, not just a bug. And even if she were prey to her, she'd be far too large. Flies aren't even supposed to be afraid of flytraps, but the human side of DiDi overcompensates for the fly ignorance with debilitating panic. It's something to work on.

Well, I think that's much better. This character design deserved a more proper photo session, and it's good to have been able to give that to her now! Definitely something to consider for whenever things slow down a bit. I'm sure others could benefit from new pictures, too.