Smaller sized dolls for older characters. How do you get the age across?

You can try painting the face in a more mature style, and you might want to try adding a more pronounced bust to her. If you can't get a resin piece, there's a tutorial for fake breasts made out of fabric and stuffing thay you can attach. That might help.

 

Smaller eyes. Babies eyes overwhelm their face giving a cutesy look; adults have smaller eye to face proportion. Dressing in an older way can also help; children and adults don't wear the same things. Shorter hair looks 'older.'

 

Thanks for the educational post and making me think about my doll family in a different light! Indeed, why should MSD's be younger than SD's..

 

It's all about scale. Some small dolls have smaller heads compared to others and that makes them look more mature. Babies heads are 1/4 the length of their bodies, while adults heads are 1/8 the length of theirs. Other ages are also in proportion:

(copied from a tutorial about sketching)

There are lots of small dolls with more mature faces, or they could be with a little modding of round cheeks and other childish features. These dolls are always a challenge.

 

None of my Yo-SDs are children. It's all in the styling. Smaller eyes and non-childlike clothes helps a lot. I hadn't realized I had done so well until I went to a doll shop and took two of them with me. I showed them to the girl working, and she asked me what kind of stuff I was looking for. I said "well, my dolls are like Chibi Adults" and she immediatly said "ya, I could tell they were not children" ^_^

Oh course for my Dwarf, I just cheated and gave him a beard >.>

Good luck with your DnD character development ^_^ Minoru World Juniors are always very tempting to me

 

Like many of the people said, it's about the clothes and the face-up. Most of my dolls MSD's and none of them are really childlike I'd say. The one who looks the youngest is the one with the most "natural" face up in my case. My Yo-SD doen't look that childish too, although he still looks like a kid because he's supposed to be one . I used pretty hard colors on him (IE: he has red eyes and a face-up with black in it)

 

I agree with the smaller eye size - I think that makes the biggest difference in how old a doll looks.

Obviously, clothes and styling can/will make a difference as well, but if the iris almost completely fills the eyes, the doll will always look younger regardless of what he/she is wearing.

 

Face-ups, diction, and body-types. If I'm posting these dolls, and there's a scenario in which speaking was required, I'd select succinct diction to convey their age and maturity level. I'd also probably aqcuire smaller-sized eyes for them, and a "mature" face-up style and wardrobe. However, the MSD I have is fourteen, and she's pretty immature looking (big eyes, ambiguous clothes, childish face-up), while the yo-SD I'm dollysitting is well over one-thousand, and she's quite mature looking (her face sculpt is somewhat stoic, as is her face-up XD).

 

Aging dollies is generally done via faceup and clothes mostly, as far as I'm concerned. Even if one retains a youthful body by excersising and living a very healthy lifestyle age will still most likely show in their face. It's the same for larger dollies though, when you want to age them I mean. Most SDs appear to be around their twenties... thirties at most... well one of mine is supposed to 46... in any case... for your girl I'll second the idea of eyes with a smaller iris/pupil to make her look more mature. (also slap me... but her childish appearance makes me think of a halfling rather than a gnome right now... *hides*)