Anime North 2026

    For the first time ever, I attended Anime North two days of the weekend: Friday and of course, the busiest day Saturday. I had missed last year's convention due to illness so I felt especially motivated to go this year. After all, I wanted to make my debut at Doll North.

    And what better way to get pumped than to take last minute doll photos?

Amara in her new SartoriaJ Morticia Set 🖤

Let's welcome our new household member: Matthew the Raven!

    I can’t stop raving about how good she looks! Long before I entered BJD hobby, I always had a clear vibe for how I wanted Amara to exist. She needed to be attractive in devastating amounts of sensuous, elegant, and authoritative. To see her doll form become Queen of the Night is something I never dreamed would actually come true!

    I ended up riding that creative high straight into Anime North. 

    Friday evening, I attended two drawing workshops by Kent Burles: Loomis Head and Comic Book Basics. I was thrilled that both workshops were not only right up my alley, but also completely free. Between those and a few doll events later in the evening, I happily upgraded to a Weekend Pass.

    Going in, however, I made one very important miscalculation.

    I thought these were going to be simple sit-and-listen lectures until I walked into the first workshop and realized I actually had to draw 🫨🫨🫨

    For those of you who don’t know, I used to be an art student many years ago. My folks made the experience miserable enough that drawing still makes me deeply uncomfortable today.

    Even so, I took a deep breath, and with an open mind, reminded myself: I am no longer trying to be an artist. This is how my note-taking went:

The Loomis Head approach surprisingly felt like a fun geometry assignment.

The left is my preliminary thumbnail for a Wizard vs Dragon comic page. To the right is the improved version after some feedback.

    For a few hours, I got to relive my most passionate old self. The instructor had even expressed he wished I drew my thumbnail bigger because in his words, "I can tell you know how to actually draw". I refute this, but the compliment warmed my heart.

    I left the workshops fulfilled in ways I haven't felt in a long time.

 

    After having dinner, I then made my way over to the Doll Swap meet only to arrive just before it wrapped up 😅 Needless to say, I didn't get to swap or sell any of the doll stuff I wanted gone. I set up camp for the next doll program instead, and chatted a bit with hobbyists—some of whom I've met before at Resin Circle. Amara and Cori came out to play, and they received a lot of compliments.

    Cori especially looked good in her pinstripe suit after I figured out how to pose her so the oversized blazer didn’t swallow her up. The collar tie didn’t survive styling though, and ended up hanging loose, fully undone—leaning hard into that bad boy energy she loved anyway.

 

Cori in her custom-tailored KAMI ZONE suit.

    If Amara is dressed as Morticia, then Cori absolutely has to be Gomez. I have this silly skit in my head where they attend a Halloween party and Cori dramatically overplays the role the entire night (“Cara mia!”). While they dance, she keeps having to readjust her fake mustache as it slowly falls out of place, much to Amara’s amusement.

    Amara may have stolen the spotlight with her cathedral-level beauty, but I was genuinely happy whenever doll enthusiasts complimented Cori’s masc style since it’s still pretty rare among female dolls.

 

    Shopping for Cori is a challenge given her wider hips, preference for pants, and bright, warm colours in gender-neutral styles. Female doll clothes tend to lean heavily feminine, often dominated by pale cool tones or bland office-neutral colours (I blame the larger community's obsession with paper-white skin). But perhaps this is incentive for me to pick up sewing. I need Cori to become her true vibrant self for everybody to see!

 

She may be the younger woman, but she is undeniably the chivalrous one 😉

     When the D&D&Dolls program began, it turned out to be a discussion centered on sharing stories involving—you guessed it—D&D and dolls. I received printouts of character sheets in both life-size and doll scale, but I was somewhat disappointed that no actual gaming took place. However, I witnessed something in the doll community that I have never really seen anywhere else before: people becoming genuinely excited for and emotionally invested in complete strangers’ doll stories—treating imagined worlds and fictional lives with the same sincerity as real lived experiences.

   It touched my heart to see this. I say this as someone who often feels invisible in everyday life—the “quiet one” with an unremarkable life but a rich inner world I rarely know how to express out loud.

    I grew up under immense pressure to live in the “practical” world: to want practical things, pursue tangible experiences, and form opinions on subjects that never truly stirred my heart.

    Which is why I wanted to express my real voice for once, and why I joined this hobby. My dolls are physical manifestations of characters I have carried and lovingly shaped in my mind for many years.

    After all that emotional introspection, Saturday morning was spent doing something much more familiar: joining my sister on our usual Artist Alley trek through the convention. Although I haven’t watched much anime or television in a while, I still love seeing the crafts, creative merchandise, and overall visual feast that only large conventions can offer. 

    And I love to support my fellow nerds!

    I managed to snag a couple of cool things which include two OB11 outfits for my smol boys and a cap with a red panda drinking taro boba tea (because I'm known to love Retsuko and always order Taro at Chatime).

    By noon, we sat down to eat our banh mi sandwiches and surprisingly ran into our brother and his girlfriend (now fiancee by the end of the day). 

    Afterward, I wandered over to the Doll Marketplace and picked up a few colourful pieces I hoped would fit Cori. And would you know what else I found? A pair of studded ankle boots by Iplehouse! Both the rainbow-striped sweater and the boots had been on my wishlist for ages, so finding them discounted in person felt incredibly lucky.

    I then arrived at the tail end of the Dyeing Your Doll panel where I loved seeing dark-skinned dolls as the result of expert dyeing work. I even got the chance to see and handle the IMPLDOLL Plump Body for the first time, whose thighs—thicker than many Chinese doll bodies—looked far better in person than in photos. Also, the Yummy Sweets doll was every bit as delightful to handle as it was when I first saw it back at NYC Doll Con.

    However, I learned something shocking: Canada has banned the import of MSC spray! That's the holy grail of doll faceup supplies! How can this be? What will hobbyists who swear by it do? 😰

    The panic is very real. When I last purchased a can back in 2024—just a year before the ban—MSC was already hard to find in many hobby stores. It sold out quickly, so I know how sought after it is within the hobby community. I will now treasure the one and a half cans I still have.

    After the Dyeing Your Dolls panel ended, the Blind Box BJDs panel followed. I’ve dabbled in this part of the hobby as well and own several 1/12 scale dolls, including most of Nyssa’s Bizarre Nightmare series and two from Bonnie’s Starry Night series.

Say hi to Bonnie's Milk Shake (green) and Mocha Lolo (blonde) 

    At this panel, I got to handle 1/5 scale blind box dolls that were surprisingly substantial in hand—perfect for anyone wanting BJDs on a tighter budget. The most useful takeaway was the shopping guide: apparently, I could save more money using newcloversinging as a proxy rather than Superbuy, which I’ll definitely keep in mind for future Taobao/Xianyu purchases.

    Next came Sewing for Dolls. This panel had the most well-put-together PowerPoint I’ve ever seen, packed with useful information for when I eventually try sewing for my dolls but don’t know where to start. The presenters were not only knowledgeable but also very articulate. They covered everything from tools, fabrics, and thread to managing seam bulk and finding patterns. My favourite part was the many doll photos showing how different fabrics change the fit and overall effect. I'm thrilled to have it all bookmarked for future reference.

     The next panel featured guest doll artist QuartStar on Faceups and Styling. While this was more of an introduction to faceups rather than a demonstration like Tianba's panel at NYC Doll Con, I found her conceptual approach to faceup design quite interesting. She approached it through graphic design theory and the elements of art, which gave the panel a very different perspective. The way we draw lines can express specific character emotions, and according to her, an effective faceup should give off a vibe. One unique tip I learned is to add mica powder to paint for extra pizzazz, and it’s also very affordable at dollar stores.

Look at this cutie I won!

 The Make & Take doll program that followed was a clay bake workshop. It was a little hectic given the room was ill-suited for the workshop so the facilitators had to make and serve everybody their triangle of clay like a cafeteria lineup. We would then crowd the only two tables to shape and paint our clay into croissants or whatever creation we felt like making. There were Worbla sheets we could play with as well, but between the clay oven and the heat gun, the electric outlet went out. Despite the chaos, my croissant turned out fine.

    Finally, the last Doll North program of the day: the Pajama Party. It was a doll hangout with a couple of activities thrown in: making a doll scale pillow with an iron-on Doll North logo, a wig mending station, and a bedroom photo area. Unfortunately, I did not stay long enough to fully participate because convention fatigue finally caught up with me.

     I've never been this hardcore at a convention before. Was it worth it? Totally. Would I do it again next year? I may change my approach, but yes! 

    What stayed with me most wasn’t any single panel or purchase, but the feeling that I had spent the weekend inside a community that treats imagination as something worth caring about.