Catalog

Perface | Cocoon | BéBé | Wednesday | Bloom | Twilight | Amor | Postscript

Perface

Have been asked for many times,

“How would someone studied in bioinformatics become a doll artist?”

The story has to start from the beginning.

Born in Shanghai, I have be fond of drawing since childhood. However, I didn‘t have the support of my family, so I didn’t get trained professionally. I also loved dolls, and it was my dream to make clothes for them.

I still remember that my first plastic fashion doll was a fake “Barbie” that I bought with my own pocket money in the second grade, which was not as pretty as I wanted. At that time, I didn’t have the ability or conditions to make beautiful dolls and clothes. My fate with dolls paused here.

Later, I did well in high school and entered the Department of Biotechnology of Shanghai Jiaotong University. As a child and a student, I dreamed of becoming a mangaka, an astronaut, and an archaeologist, but unfortunately they were all denied and ridiculed by my father, so I didn’t establish a clear goal in life at that time. After entering university, I thought I would become a researcher in biology.  Isn’t it the saying that “the 21st century is the century of biology”?(lol) A Doll artist? No, I never thought about it, and I didn’t even know it existed then.

Looking back now, I didn’t have a clear idea of what college is, and I went to college just because everyone else did. Entering college with a naive fantasy that “College life is much easier than high school” said by my high school teacher, I soon found that it was not ture. Being confused, I started to escape to the world of online games. For this reason, the conflict with my father became more and more intense. The more he scolded me, the more I relied on the brief sense of relief that the game gave me.

In 2004, I discovered the newly developed Taobao.com by chance. Online shopping gradually pulled me back from the game to reality. One day I had the whim to search for “SD doll”. (Finally the doll is back on the scene!) I didn’t know that “SD” (Super Dollfie) was a brand name and they were belonged to BJD (ball-jointed doll). All I knew was that these dolls were expensive and not something I could afford. At that time, I just wanted to take a look. However a look became more than a look. Although I could not afford to buy SD dolls, I could still buy other cheaper dolls with some efforts. So that’s how I fell into the rabbit hole.

In early 2005, junior winter break, on the way to get my hair cut, I suddenly asked myself a question: “Already a junior, soon will be a senior, have you thought about what you want to do in the future?”

“I should choose something that I like, right?”

A weird idea flashed: “Doll?”

At that moment, I finally stood on the turning point of my life.

Inspired by my 16-year career of doll making since 2005, this new seires with 6 dolls represents my style and personal story in six different stages. I named it  “A Song for Myself”. Now, please follow me to listen to this song.

click the photo to read each chapter