Smart Doll – Prowess (Cinnamon)

The original Prowess was designed especially for the Cocoa skin tone but during development we needed to use the milk skin tone. When we make paint masks, the makeup has to be done on a lighter skin tone so that the person etching the mask can better see the contrast of the skin and makeup. If we submitted a Cocoa skin tone to be masked, the etcher would have difficulty making out the borders of each line.

So we had a bunch of milk Prowess dev heads laying around in a box until one day I saw them on the desk of our wig stylist. Development heads cant be sold so sometimes they are used to hold the wigs as our stylist styles each and every wig. The milk Prowess looked really cute and I said that one day we should make a milk version but left it on the back burner to give Prowess Cocoa her prime time. However when we got round to do proper testing for a product, she looked so much better in Cinnamon.

Choosing the red for the cheeks took quite a few attempts to get the color right – the deep red ones looked like fresh blood while the purpleish reds looked like dry blood! The final version is a nice balance.