AGMA

I made it to the top 3 in the AG Modeling Academy on youtube, and so did Mia Lily from American Girl Adventures!

:)

I'm very excited! The 6th and final assignment is "all about you". I have a really great idea, and Brooke and I started working on it today. It will be semi-dramatic, haha. It will start out like this:

"Avery Voisin, who am I?" then it will go into "I am a friend" *picture* "I am unique" *picture* "I am a dreamer" *picture*, and you get the idea. I'll be in a different outfit and setting for each one. We're only using one picture per "what am I" statement, but we're taking a bunch of photos to choose from. Unfortunately, we only got one set of pictures done today. We were just starting to get in place for the 2nd set when Brooke stepped on a wasp (should've worn shoes!) She's icing her foot right now.

Wish us luck!

Edited to add:

Brooke was trying to win the new Damsels-in-Dress design, Pinstripes and Details, auction, but we lost. :( We're happy for the person who is receiving the dress, though! We bid a grand total of... 13 times, and was outbid by 2 cents. LOL! The dress went for $67.02, which is a lot for just a dress, so in a way Brooke is glad she didn't end up winning, because now she can save more for new dolls and other couture like the Melody Valerie fall line, Dollies Dressmaker, and Liberty Jane.

~Avery~

The video!

It's finished. My labor of love.
Click HERE to view it on youtube.
If it says "unable to reach server", just play it, it should work except it will be kind of darkened.

It's basically all my dolls doing random things within a few seconds of stop motion video. I wasn't very creative, and was getting lazy towards the end, sorry!
This is basically what they're doing, in case you can't figure it out:
-Julie is walking
-Kaya is picking a flower and putting it in her hair
-Emily is playing with dolls/stuffed animals and waving
-Nicki is on stage dancing
-Gia is reading and eating a cookie
-Jasmine is walking Coconut
-Kit is at her desk packing up school supplies
-Ivy is brushing her hair and putting in a clip
-Marisol is dancing
-Sonali is listening to music
-Jess is sitting by the pond
-Felicity is getting her dress on (Don't worry, no doll nudity)
-Sierra is curtsying
-Nellie is waving
-Samantha and Lydia share a segment. They are hugging and holding hands.
-Ruthie is reading
-Mia is taking a picture of Licorice
-Avery is twirling
-Erin is riding her skateboard


It didn't turn out as good as I had hoped. I guess I'm being hard on myself but Sonali's segment is all messed up. Somehow it repeated, and it wasn't supposed to. WMM was being a pain and kept freezing, and it messed up parts of my video (made it choppy and skipping some pictures). My pictures were bad quality, and my camera batteries were running low so I didn't take enough pictures to make everything look smooth. But oh well...
This video was basically a learning experience. I had a lot of fun with it, but I'm glad to get it done.

-Brooke

I'm colonial, etc.

Sorry, I couldn't think of a very good title

I tried on Felicity's gala gown today, shhhh!
I think I look pretty good in colonial dresses. I especially love this red one. C'est une belle baies rouges de brocart, avec de l'or en dentelle de détails. (It is a beautiful berry red brocade with gold lace detail.)
It isn't very accurate for the time period because of the 2 huge jewels on the front, but I still think it is very pretty. Brooke didn't like it at all, but now that she's seen it in person she likes it better.

Nous sommes en train de travailler sur la le vidéo de demain. (We're working on the video tomorrow). Brooke has NO commitments, and we're going to finish this thing.

Brooke also has a youtube channel called AGBrooke (click to view it). Well, she entered me into this "American Girl Modeling Academy". It's like a contest, sort of like the TV show America's Next Top Model. Well, this weeks "assignment" is prom. Most of the american girl dolls I know of are much too young to go to prom, so we'll be doing a "summer dance" version. You just take a bunch of pictures and make them into a slideshow. All the modern dolls are going to be in the background partying for my shots! Brooke says I'm not allowed to wear my Melody Valerie dress since I've been wearing it non stop. Oy vey! (Sorry, a little Yiddish thrown in with my French :P) So now I need to figure out which dress I'll use for the photos. Hmmmm... Any suggestions?

~Avery~

Filming...

Brooke has been diligently filming us dolls. Yesterday she got Julie, Kaya, Emily, and Nicki photographed, their pictures uploaded to the computer, and edited on WMM. She also photographed Gia, but hasn't done anything else with her yet.
Here's a group picture that will be in the video, so I guess it's kind of a 'sneak peak'.

Real life interrupted filming yesterday, so today we were going to finish.
Well, the lighting stinks. Yesterday was absolutely perfect for outdoor pictures, but today it's storming and there's zero sun.
Most people know that you need some good sun/natural light for nice photos. The "camera flash of doom" makes dolls look kind of ugly... You have to be a really good photographer, and have a really great camera, to master taking pictures with a flash.

Brooke has nice craft light that has different brightnesses which works pretty well indoors in times like these. She burned her leg on it though (those things can get really hot!)

So, that's what we're working on today! It's not going to be great, I can tell already by the preview on WMM (Windows Movie Maker).

Sorry, not many new things are happening.

UPDATE:
Brooke has been working with pain-in-the-butt Windows Movie Maker all day today. She's photographed, uploaded, and edited all the segments for Julie, Kaya, Emily, Nicki, Gia, Jasmine, Kit, Ivy, Marisol, and Sonali! We're 1/2 way done! WMM keeps freezing up, and she's had to restart that computer 3 times (looks like a 4th coming on!). We were hoping to have the video done yesterday, but more realistically by tomorrow or Monday night.

~Avery~

Stop motion, jerks, and major garage sale find

Well, today hasn't been such a good day. I logged onto YouTube, and went to my "channel" (like a homepage with all your videos, etc.) I looked a my comments and some joker thought it would be fun to cuss me out and totally insult me. In short, he/she basically accused me of being a spoiled little 4 year old that still plays with baby toys, then he/she said that I was "street filth", poor, and just pretending I had American Girl dolls so I would look cool. And that is putting it nicely (insert about 20 of your favorite profanity words in between all that.)

So, needless to say, I'm not too happy right now :'(

I'm not going to let it get to me though. There are those kind of people, and you can't let them bring you down.

I decided that I'm going to make a stop motion "introducing" all my dolls. Each doll will have about 10 seconds of video of just random things. I just finished photographing, uploading, and editing Julie's stop motion segment (I'm doing the dolls in alphabetical order), and I think it will be a neat little project. Nothing too major, but it will at least be a new video. Stop motions are a lot of work, so I'm hoping to spend the rest of the day working on it and then uploading the finished video to youtube tonight.

UPDATE:
AHHHH! I'm so excited! At a garage sale I got:

• Felicity's Canopy Bed and some of her bedding. It needs some work, and is missing some pieces.
• Felicity's Windsor Writing Chair. Again, needs some work, missing the swivel desk part and drawer.
• Felicity's Side Table, really nice condition!

And I got all of this for: $3!!!! That's $1 a piece! Considering 2 of the things are retired, and the other is very expensive, that's an amazing deal! Probably close to a $200 value.

Pictures coming soon!

-Brooke