KiSS tips I realize making KiSS dolls can be confusing, weird, stressful, and generally a hair-tearing-out experience sometimes.  So here are some tips to help out my fellow KiSSers a little.     - Make sure your basedoll is _perfect_ before you start making any clothes.  Okay, it doesn't have to be totally perfect, but just make sure you really, really like it a lot and that none of the lines are sloppy, the proportions are how you like them, etc.  It really sucks when you make a bunch of clothes and then realize you don't like your basedoll so you have to do them all over.
 
- Tutorials are your friend. ^-^ I know, I had one open on Internet Explorer the whole time I was doing the CNF for my first doll, to make sure I was doing everything right (and I still ended up putting the cels in reverse order so my basedoll was on top...gah).  I'll make a tutorial link page one of these days.
 
- Consider other people's dolls as tutorials in themselves.  You can always look at someone else's CNF to see how they did this or that, so long as you don't copy every single effect in their doll.  Or you can look to see how they drew a certain item of clothing and where they put the folds, or if their doll is in a similar pose to yours you can check that as a reference too.
 
- I usually have a couple dolls going at once (*glares at Michiru doll*) and this is for a reason, it's good to have two in case you get bored of one or you don't feel like drawing that style of clothes at the moment.
 
- Completely blanking out on clothing ideas?  That's okay, I do that all the time.  Look in catalogues, online shopping places, clothes people wear on TV...see what kind of clothes people draw on fanart characters or their dolls...you can get ideas from anything in your everyday surroundings.  Try it right now, just pick out an item on your desk or in the room you're in and find a way to make it into a piece of clothing for your KiSS doll.  It might come out kind of wacky at first, or it might not fit with your current doll's style, but that's okay, just sketch down the design and save it for a future doll.  I've got pages and pages in my sketchbook with designs I still haven't used yet... ^-^
 
- I always use this handy little command when I do the CNF.  Go to MS-DOS Prompt, go to the directory where your .cel files are located, and type this:
DIR *.CEL /B > CELLIST.TXT
and you'll get a text-file (named cellist.txt, in case you were wondering how to find it) listing all your files in that directory ending in .cel.  I learned this command offa Emby Quinn's page.  It works so well because it ensures you don't forget any .cel files when you're writing your CNF and it gives them to you in a neat little list.  I can't imagine what I'd do if I didn't know how to do this.
 
- Once you're done, double-check.  And triple-check.  Quadruple-checking is good too. ^-^ Make sure everything works how you want it too, that all the items have snap-to and you didn't forget to snap any (if you choose to have snap-to on your doll), that all the items that need to have backs to them have backs, and check every FKiSS effect you've coded a couple times to make sure it works.  And do this before you LZH it, just to save yourself from having to go back and fix the CNF, then put it back in the archive file.