hookedonchibis

These dolls are the result of a lifelong love of gaming, a more recent love of anime, and a perpetual habit of fidgeting that collided in a magical explosion of creativity. Since I don't draw, there seemed no easy way to reconcile my desire to do wacky things with anime characters. Then one day I learned about amigurumi, and saw some different doll types, and I thought, "That's right! I CAN CROCHET!"

The result has been a tremendous learning experience as I try to design new parts, consider the most important aspects of character appearance to distill onto such small dolls, and show off my work to people who will love it as much as I do! I hope you agree with me that the end result is too cute to pass up ^_^

ABOUT THE DOLLS:
All of my dolls are handcrafted by studio members co-operatively, from cotton and cotton-blend yarns, using buttons for eyes and synthetic poly-fill for their stuffings.

ABOUT THE HOOKED ON CHIBIS! CREW:
There are four of us in-studio full time, as well as a small cadre of helper-minions and table buddies that we'll lovingly refer to as "random encounters", as well as the two 8-bits that Matt and Jenn are in charge of. We also have two retired members ("Chibi Emeritus") who have contributed too significantly to just forget they exist (and who do still help out when they're able).

Jenn is the lead crochet artist, founder, CEO and king for life. She started this business in 2008 after everyone she knew was as warm as they could stand, having been buried under scarves, blankets, and hats. Here on dA, she's also the voice you'll encounter in dAmn (mostly in #AnimeArtists, but other places as well). She's also responsible for a lot of the photography work.
Matt is our eternally-patient accountant. He manages the finances, makes rental car reservations, books flights, stares Jenn down when she spends too much money on yarn, and more. He also helps put stuffing into the plushies, he would like for you all to know, thank you very much. ^_^
Will is one of our new members. He joined up in 2012 with a strong desire to learn to crochet and a lot of time to spend on the internet, and so in addition to being an apprentice crochet artist and con table-buddy, he's managing several of our internet presences, including our Etsy shop and parts of dA. If you encounter us on the forums, chances are, you're talking to Will
Ben is another new member and crochet apprentice. We recruited Ben in part because of his love of cosplay and con attending, and with his guidance, we're learning all kinds of ways to get our name out at conventions other than "sit at our Artists' Alley table and hope for the best".
The 8-bits won't stop growing up, no matter how much we ask them to knock it off, and now they're tweens. _o: They do increasingly more for the studio, and travel with us to a handful of cons every year, so they're growing up into savvy con sellers and an uncanny street team (They talk about Mom's chibis every chance they get, pulling up our website on school computers so they can show their teachers!). They also help with some of the more mundane tasks around the office, and are v e r y s l o w l y learning to crochet

Casey , now Chibi Emeritus, was an important PR diva from 2010-2012, as well as being an indispensable Con-Sultant and chibi assembly device. She got us on ALL the internets, including some of the furthest reaches of dA, and it's because of her influence that we've been able to reach where we are now.
Biz is the other founding member, and if she's listed last out of the four of us, it's really only because she's away at college for most of the year now, so she's in a bit of semi-hibernation mode while we try very hard to let her be a responsible student As a co-founder, though, Biz was one of the first people to table with Jenn at Anime Boston, she's had a heavy hand in doll design and manufacturing, and to this day she makes just about every single hairpiece ("wig", lawl) that goes on a coiffed character such as Vincent or Yotsuba. She's with us in spirit all the time, because if she wasn't, Jenn would never remember to eat food while at cons and she'd die. (How many jobs include in their description "you may have to physically stick food in the CEO's face because she won't put the hook down"?)

Random encounters have included our friend Liz, who loves to do repetitive tasks like cut out button pictures from their sheets and sew heads onto bodies; our friend Marrisa who helped us run the table at AMA 2011; Jenn's mom, who helps stuff/sew the dolls like a champ; Jenn's friend Andrea, in CA, who saved our butts by designing business cards and submitting the order to a local Kinko's after Jenn left all our cards at home in MA; our fellow artists Mac of "Hey Look! A Sign!" and Aimee of "AA&A Artistries", with whom we often share the burden of traveling to shows; and all our friends and fellow artists at all the cons who have helped watch our table so we could do things like "go attend a cosplay competition" and "pick stuff up from the hotel" and "pee".