Anyone else face-blind? How does that affect your collection?

haha, you're not alone there!
I tend to prefer vastly different sculpts too, for the same reasons. dolls with similar facial features blend together in my mind. I think that's why I love highly realistic dolls, they tend to look different from each other in ways that some stylized sculpts don't. I also like gothic horror dolls that are inhuman in many different and very obvious ways, like skeleton dolls of all levels of stylization, cyborg and robotic dolls, and the like.

 

This is a very interesting topic, I never heard of it and I'm probably face blind too since I can't distinguish Minifee faces, they all look the same to me but the dolls from one company look all the same to me like all Soom dolls look the same to me, all Volks dolls look the same, etc etc even all iplehouse dolls look the same to me even though they are realistic looking dolls.

But I personally never saw this as a problem. All my dolls might look the same, sculpt wise, but I make them different with their styles. I try not to have a doll with the same style but I love to have twins and I like a more homogenous collection.

I have dolls from different companies but for me they all share like the same face style (stylized sculpts). I got my Iplehouse Claude since he is my dream doll but sadly I had to sell him because his face wasn't similar to any of my other dolls and that bothered me so I sold him but I will always see him as my dream doll.

Having said all that, I'm very attracted to teenie Soom dolls. I don't get a yo-sd type of doll from another company, they have to be from Soom. For MSD I was drawn to Dream of Doll but they went out of business so I switched to Soom and Volks MSDs. All my MSDs are from DOD, Soom and Volks because they all look kind of similar.

For SDs, I get only Volks SDs that have chubby cheeks and big eyes and also Volks dollfie dreams, although I got a smart semi-real doll because she looked similar to my S9 (semi-real dollfie dream) and I was right, they go together so well.

Thanks to you I just realized I get dolls (depending on their sizes) from the same company because I like them to have similar facial features. I seriously didn't think about this before!

So in sum, I like the fact that all my dolls share some similar facial features, I can't do realistic dolls unless I have more than one or else it will be the same to what happened to Claude, he was all alone (face wise) so he didn't match with others and had to go.

 

I've wondered before if I'm face blind, actually. Still honestly not sure because if I do it is a very mild version of it (or I'm just very good at working around it? lol) I actually took an online quiz meant to determine if I was or not but I don't know enough celebrities for the results to have any meaning

All that being said, I can eventually figure out the differences between similar sculpts but it can be a real struggle. As a result it doesn't really bother me if dolls faces are similar, I especially like Resinsoul Mei so I have twins who are styled very differently. It also doesn't bother me when they don't "match" aesthetically. I have Resinsoul, Iplehouse, Fairyland, Dollfie Dreams, lol. All sizes too, the more the better, haha. I think my "rules" about the dolls I collect are very lax compared to some, the most important things being "do I like it?" and "is it in the budget?"

 

I can tell them apart by their face up, wigs and clothes. At first, I just thought it is because they all are from the same company. But if I see the head with no face up first, I tend to be able to recognize them. So, maybe it’s because the sales image is so impactful that I can’t differentiate them without all the glamour.

 

i don't know if i'd consider myself face blind, but i find is difficult to visualize a faceup on a blank head (and i do faceups! they just kind of magically appear haha). so i end up not very picky about heads other than maybe if a head needs closed eyes or elf ears.

i just buy heads that i've seen previously with pretty faceups. (so i def have trouble developing interest in seeing sculptors WIP pics X: since they don't have faceups)

 

What an interesting topic! I do believe I have some form of faceblindness, albeit a milder version of it too (it takes me months to remember a classmate's face, only to 'forget' them the next semester! same for relatives as well... ) I tend to recognise people by their hairstyle, dressing, and gait; the face really is impossible sometimes, especially if it doesn't have a particularly striking feature.

However, I do prefer homogeneity in my dolls, and I do think my collection will end up very homogeneous! But I think it's more of a personal preference than feeling a need to differentiate them enough - because I do prefer certain facial features and body shapes for example, I think I'd differentiate them more through, say, resin colour, hair colour, quirks in their joints etc. (Perhaps for this reason, I do subconsciously parse which outfit/wig is for 'who'.)

I'm very drawn to SWITCH sculpts, which I think is rather homogeneous in style, but with enough striking differences in their looks to make them different enough.

And oh dear... I really can't differentiate minifees to save my life. I do think they have a certain facial quality/proportion that is attractive to many consumers, but since I can't tell most of them apart... I guess I'm just not one of their intended audience

 

*Raises her hand*

I have no idea if I'm face-blind or not, but so many sculpts look exactly the same to me. Especially when without a face or wig on. Some companies have very distinctive styles and that breaks it up a little when I can compare the super-skinny fantasy dolls against the round-cheeked anime ones, but within companies? Nope.

I used to make regular customers at my old job laugh, because all they had to do was change their hairstyle and suddenly I had no idea who they were. Wearing a ponytail when your hair is usually down? Complete stranger to me.

To answer the question - I don't think I have a sculpt or company I go to because of it. I seem to get pulled in by the clothes and hair and attitude of the doll in the picture than anything.

 

I am diagnosed as moderately face-blind (likely prosopamnesia rather than pprosopagnosia; there's a LOT of overlap between them) and I have the acquired version after suffering a TIA 37 years ago. I remember what it's like to be able to identify people by their faces but I haven't been able to do that for decades. I will not be able to always identify people that you'd think I should without problem like my husband of 30+ years, my adult son, my grandkids, friends I've known very well for 15+ years, and even myself if there's a mirror in an unexpected place. I don't have a mental image of my own face so it's always a bit of a mild surprise when I see myself in a mirror and think, "Huh. So that's what I look like."

As far as the dolls go....

My collection is fairly large and varied. I currently own 75 dolls from 40 companies with the smallest being 5cm and the largest 72cm. Style is all over the map, too. Some are more anime inspired while others are more realistic. A very large portion are fantasy in nature either by features (elf ears, wings, tails, fantasy legs, etc.) or by non-human colours (blue, green, red, purple, grey, black, etc.). I own a lot of dolls that are weird/odd/unusual/rarely seen, too.

As a whole my collection is not homogenous. But, as pairs or groups, it is and that's all that matters to me. I believe that because of my proso I am drawn to the unusual because it makes it far easier for me to recognize sculpts. I can sometimes tell what company a sculpt comes from due to their distinctive styling (DC, FL, Soom, etc.) but knowing what a certain sculpt is... probably not going to happen.

I was at a doll meet a few years ago and I saw a doll somebody else had and I was very drawn to the sculpt. I finally asked the owner what sculpt he was because I liked him so much. They told me it was an Angel Toast Crow and I sighed and hung my head. Why? Because I had MY Angel Toast Crow sitting right next me the whole time and didn't realize they were the exact same sculpt. I had some friends over earlier this year and one brought a doll that I was really taken with. Know why? Because he was a BBD Valentine and I have one of those, too, and yet I couldn't recognize that they were the same sculpt because they were styled differently.

I do have twins/doubles, too. I have two RS Bao's who are twin brothers but they're not identical as one is WS and the other is dark grey. I have accidental doubles. I have 2 AoD Min's (NY & Tan, company sent me the wrong skin initially). They are styled very differently and don't look the same to me although they are the same sculpt. I have 2 Impl Ziv's (light & dark custom green, company made the wrong green initially). They'll be styled different (the dark green is still on his way to me) so I'll probably not see them as the same sculpt.

 

I have aphantasia as well as at least mild face blindness, so...fun lol. If I get separated from my partner in a store for instance, I'll have to remember what he's wearing that day to be able to find him again.

I was actually just getting some assistance from another forum member because I got a free head but the company didn't tell me which sculpt it was. I was able to narrow it down to two sculpts based on "there's a chin cleft!! It's huge! Which sculpts by this company have chin clefts??" but couldn't get any further than that. Every other feature just kind of looks the same to me.

I only have one physical doll (and two others on the way) but I can say with certainty that they are drastically different in appearance (my current is a regular human, the incoming ones are a cat-taur and a realistic weasel anthro). And I can't imagine any future dolls being visually similar to ones I will have before.

But I think the face blindness definitely attributes to my...frustration???...with 90% of BJDs. Even if it's from different companies, the vast majority of sculpts have that default/neutral expression and the main difference is usually "are the eyes open all the way, or only half?". And like. Those are the two options. "I love her nose" or "he's got the best little subtle smile" just doesn't register in my brain. So, in my brain, even if there are tons of different sculpts with all these little changes that make them unique and special....for me, it's really just two. Open eyes, or half open eyes. xD The sculpts might be gorgeous but I can't really appreciate it. And it does sadden me a bit, cause there's all this potential that so many people fall in love with and I just can't get it.

So I find myself drawn to the sculpts with expressions. Cause they're different, in my brain, and it's something I can latch onto and recognize and find aesthetically pleasing xD. And even though two sculpts have smiles, one smile will be different from the other and I can see it and it's good lol. But I also just don't enjoy, aesthetically, the really exaggerated expressions cause it's just too much lol. There's this very fine line I have to tread, which at least will make my wallet happy cause there's not many dolls out there that fit the bill of "I can tell this is a unique character/sculpt and I also find it visually appealing".

 

I always thought I was weird for having such vastly different dolls, as many people put a doll up for sale as they "don't fit in with the others in the collection" but I hate having everything the same and I don't want to buy sculpts that look the same, which is a lot of them; So I may be face blind lol. I'm glad I'm not alone in having a hard time differentiating sculpts and having such a mix matched collection

 

I have prosopagnosia and I feel like it makes me fall in love with specific photos of dolls but not always the sculpt itself. I always have to look at how owners of the sculpts have photographed their dolls to figure out if I like the doll itself or the dealer's photography. It also makes it hard to identify sculpts in photos I see, as I can't tell if two different photos are showing the same sculpt.

 

I have reasonably bad prosopagnosia - I can't recognise family I live with, I struggle with my own reflection and have walked past both family and friends when out (I actually have to keep photos of people on my phone incase I get separated and need to ask for help).

Weirdly enough I don't have a lot of problems with dolls! I can tell apart different Dream of Doll sculpts which apparently other people have trouble with, and I've never noticed any major trouble with other companies either. Brains are weird

 

They are weird! After I acquired proso I never had trouble telling identical twins apart because they didn't look identical to me even when dressed exactly the same with the same hair style. However, have 2 people with roughly the same features/hair colour/style, one of whom I've known well for decades, and I probably can't tell who is the person I know and who is the total stranger because they look the same to me.

I keep a photo of my Lume Zero on my phone to show people what everybody looks like in my memory of people including family I've known all my life (or all their life in the case of my son and grandkids) and even my own face. If you ask me to describe my son's looks I'll tell you he's 6' tall, skinny, has short dark brown hair and dark chocolate coloured eyes and now you know everything about his looks that I do.