Ideas for simulating many characters with only two doll actors?

You could always meet up with another doll owner in your area and see if they will use their dolls as extra characters in your photostories.

 

If you are stuck using only your dolls after all (or even if you aren't and just need a bigger cast), take a cue from anime. Many anime characters only have a basic face. To visually distinguish characters, they usually vary hairstyles, hair colors, eye colors and additional "oddities" to taste--such as scars, eye patches, hairbands, girly-girl bows, always wearing a certain style of clothes, etc.

You can try faking different character heights with clothing, props and camera angles. At worst, you can make at least one character "the unseen", where you only ever see a small and vague part of them--the back of their head, only their eyes, or always keeping their faces covered or in shadow. Think Wilson from Home Improvement or countless other "mysterious figures" in fiction.

If your library of eyes, wigs, clothes and accessories is very small, then this will be much harder. And admittedly, changing skin color is much more difficult for a doll than for a drawing.

I imagine that significantly photoshopping every picture is something you'll quickly get tired of, not to mention the possibly huge annoyance of maintaining continuity if the story is not a one-shot. But maybe that's just for nitpicky types like me.

 

But you can also put female bodies in male-type clothing or males in female clothing. Layers or loose clothing offer a lot of options for padding. Heights can vary too, by the old "stand them on something" trick of the movies, or vary heights by adjusting the seating height and shooting partial figures (check how many movies have the man much taller than the woman, but surprise! They're equal heights for the kissing scenes!

Once you figure out clothing, a cheap spare body would be a help, for using multiple heads on. (You could use armature wire and padding to even create a body and limbs, as long as they'd be covered by clothing, and use real hands and head. It would take a lot of work to set up, but would really cut down costs.

And definitely see if there are other hobbyists in your area!

 

You can also purchase a couple of character-less heads, and put them on your boys' bodies to simulate new characters. I have a couple of these "actor heads" on hand, in case I need extras in photostories. They take up a lot less room than full dolls, which is nice, and they can look very different depending on wig, eye, body, and clothing changes.

 

If you are planning on continuing the comic when you have the proper actors it might be better to just shoot photos of the dolls you have as their proper characters and experiment with different comic layout styles (text bubbles, font options, special effects, etc.) while you wait for them to arrive rather than try and start the whole comic "faking it". Once the dolls arrive for the character you had in mind, your premature project will have evolved into something else, or established a look for those characters that will have to be altered to integrate the new actors.

New projects are fun, but if you are planning on the complete work to include these other dolls, it might be best to not waste the first half of your project faking it only to have to redo it later with the proper dolls. I am totally with ya on being impatient! But when I'm working on a project like this where I'm missing something then I like to get started by just doing experiments with my pictures and writing, or working on scenes with only the actors I have.

Just my two cents of course !!! Don't let me discourage you from doing what you think is best!

 

I admire your ambition! All the advice above was great. I would add this: stay away from post-production effects. Unless they are done professionally, they look very cheesy. Same goes for 3D models. My husband is a 3D animator, and I know how much work goes into creation of a single realistic image. My advice is - don't bother, it's not worth the effort. As far as the multiple characters - hobbywhelmed has offered some very good ideas here that won't cost you much. Best of luck with your project!

 

Another suggestion is to have a, or multiple characters with and eccentricy/religion/or conditon that means they need to keep covered at all times.
That way you can dress one of the dolls in long sleeved baggy clothing, and give them a scarf covering part, or most of their face to disguise they're true identity.

This might also help when you get you new dolls in, you can have the dramatic revealing (like with your shadow characters.)

or you can always pull a "charlie" from Charlie's angels. and only show the back, hand, or shadow of the allusive character.

 

As opposed to drawing them in, you could always film the backgrounds and the characters separately, and then add them back in later. Once you have your background, you can take as many shots as you need with your dolls, each time dressing them up differently as the different characters.