anne zielinski-old

fashion software developer in Los Angeles who brought (my partner) Patric over from London to explore the possibilities of their 2.5D drape software on our mannequin...My fashion art has made the journey through working from life, to the inanimate mannequin, to the 3-D animated illustration, to the doll.

I incorporated details of the 'Catwalk' digital mannequin into the new doll for Mattel, specifically the bent arm and hand on the waist. With one arm and two legs remaining to design, I produced drawings to illustrate the limbs and the animated potential of those limbs. Working with a marvelous in-house sculptress, Ann Kubic, we worked on refining the design of the limbs, hands and feet to achieve more natural, realistic, proportions and detail than had been on the doll's predecessors.I had zeroed in on a Gucci swimsuit ad; the model had just the arm I wanted, casually dropping by her side.There was a girl in the sculpting department who had really thin arms and we took numerous Polaroid's from every angle. We then used these shots to refine the look of the arm.

I wanted to achieve the 'you talkin' to me?' attitude that comes off of the 'Catwalk' piece...a sassy, contemporary look and feel. Translating the effect from 3-D digital animation to the doll required extensive tweaking to the sculpt over a period of two months or so. Further considerations were to retain that look and feel while taking into account the practical issues such as adequate space under the arms to accommodate the bulk of the fabric on the fashions and ability to dress the doll.

Another hurdle was the issue of the raised hip. I wanted the doll to have the appearance of leaning her weight on one leg. The articulation required to achieve this was not available at Mattel for this doll, so I solved the problem by making one leg longer than the other and bending it to compensate. When the prototype was presented for review to Marketing she originally had a contemporary head with the long blonde ponytail and was dressed in a new interpretation of the original Barbie swimsuit. The resulting prototype was thrilling, fresh and original.The pose-ability of the doll is subtle, just tilting the leg and the angle of the torso gives the classical look Mattel chose to market the doll with.