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Are faceplate system dolls less personal?

Jun 17, 2010

    1. I hope that this is the right place for this, and that it hasn't been asked before, if so please move or delete it :)

      I'm still very new to this hobby and only actually have one doll with me at the moment (two more on the way), but I've been thinking a lot about it and it seems like the dolls with faceplates are less... personal?
      Don't get me wrong, I love the look of them and who knows how I might feel if I actually owned one, but from where I'm standing now it seems like they don't have as much of a set personality or soul as the dolls with one head.
      It seems like with the other dolls, you can switch their bodies, you can change their hair and eyes, but the doll's head and most importantly its face IS the doll, like that's the part that contains their personailty or if you belive in it, their soul.
      I don't mean to insult anyone who owns a faceplate doll at all, and I hope I've got my point across:sweat
      I'm honestly just curious what other people think...

      EDIT: Just trying to clarify, I meant when a doll has several different faces (a sleeping face, a winking face ect.) all devoted to the same doll

      I also absolutly see the benifit in being able to change your doll to a sleeping face at night or a winking face when the situation calls for it, but the idea that the doll then has extra faces sitting in a drawer somewhere still pulls me back to my first line of thinking
       
    2. Uh, IMO a faceplate system is just a way to attach the doll's head to its body. That's like saying magnets are less personal than attaching the headcap with an s-hook.
       
    3. It's pretty much the same thing...

      You said
      Well... How, exactly, is a faceplate different? It's a face. Sure, it doesn't have like an inch of extra resin, but.... there really isn't a lot of difference between a faceplate and a head.

      You can interchange faceplates, but you can also do that with heads. ...and in that respect there isn't a difference, except in the construction.

      :P

      ....have you actually handled a doll with a faceplate? >>
       
    4. Welcome to the hobby Nomi! I'm four dolls into the hobby and several years, and I have to say I feel the very same way about faceplates... It's always seemed errie to me, like something more for a toy, then for a serious doll almost? But that's definitely how I feel about that kind of a system. I also like how you used the word 'soul' because that's what I feel they loose.

      If my Amber could go from one face to the next I would feel less connected to her somehow, like she was easily changeable and missing that persona I believe she has.
       
    5. I can see where you're coming from. From what I understand, and you may want to clarify this in your post, you mean a doll with two faces (like open eyed and sleeping), which can be interchanged.

      I have a LittleFee boy with an open-eyed faceplate and a sleeping faceplate. The face-up is almost exactly the same on each, but sometimes it does seem strange to change between them. I'm used to seeing my cute little open-eyed boy, and suddenly he's sleeping! xP

      On the flip side, my boy is my boy no matter what way I look at him so I don't really feel disconnected from him. I do prefer his open-eyed plate though. :P

      Edit: Note, I prefer his open-eyed plate because that's the one I'm most used to seeing him with. ^^
       
    6. No, I must admit I haven't but then like I said I'm very new :sweat

      I guess my thinking was more that the doll then has several faces, kind of like having multiple personaities, at least that was my thinking...
       
    7. That's my thinking exactly! I have nothing against the faceplate dolls, I would love to get a puki some time in the future, but I just can't see using one as a serious character
       
    8. I think it depends on how you use the faceplates? I sort of see where your coming from, though the basis you're working with isn't how I would have approached it ;) as Luarwolf said, it's just a head system.

      But when looked at from the basis that a faceplate system can lend itself to easy switching between different sculpts, then I can see your perspective :)
      I know there are people in the Puki/LTF/PKF threads who have characters that share a body. Personally (and no insult to them) I can see how it would be a little odd to shift between characters on one body, I can't imagine doing it. Even a puki I plan to have switch between a human based face and an animal based one will still be the same character. However many of those people do tend to get bodies later on for those characters. So while it might take away some of the soul, it can in many cases lead to -more- souls. :)
      EDIT: I also see a lot of people who's sleeping faceplate (or winking face-plate) ends up being it's own character. Possibly for sort of the same reason you don't seem to connect to faceplate dolls? Each faceplate, even if just variations of the same sculpt is completely different feeling. :)

      From my personal experience: I've had dolls with a 'head' and one with a 'faceplate' the head had no sleeping face, the faceplate (my puki) does. I don't see my puki as having less of a soul than my 'head' doll. In fact I think she might have more. I'm just able to 'put her to sleep' at night instead of her staring blankly off into space.
       
    9. I've got an Elfdoll Yumi with the two faceplates. It's almost like having 2 dolls but with personalities that never meet.
      (IMHO in this particular case, the plates are similar enough that I think of them both as the same person, but with an "innocent face" and a "snarky face" :D ) DD prefers one face, and I prefer the other. so at a doll meet, if she's the one dressing the Yumi she'll have the "innocent" face on... and if I'm the one dressing the Yumi, she'll have the "snarky" face on. :D
       
    10. No. I don't find it different from say, Luts who has a few versions of some headsculpts - one can have the different heads sitting in a drawer, no different to having faceplates in a drawer. The only difference between a faceplate system and other heads is where the head opens from, and how much space you need to keep the other heads/faceplates.
       
    11. I can understand where you're coming from if a doll's different faces have different expressions, like an angry face-plate, a sad face-plate, and a happy one that change the facial features of a doll. However, most dolls with a faceplate system only have variation in how open the eyes are.
      I draw my characters, some of which are dolls now, with both closed eyes and open eyes depending on the drawing. This doesn't change that it is the same character, with the same personality and the same facial features. I plan on getting dolls with multiple heads/face-plates, and the heads will be the same in everything except for the eyes, which will be regular or closed. It would be for adding life and increasing versatility.
       
    12. Ahaha~ My doll has uses faceplates but I only own one faceplate for her, and I don't think I'm ever going to buy a second~
      Personally, I think it really really depends on how you use the faceplate system.
      I might switch a doll from smiling to frowning to scowling.
      But I don't think I would change a doll's face completley.
      If I DID have another faceplate, it would have the same face-up and I would use the same eyes.

      It also depends on what you use your dolls for.
      Mine's like a person. I love her and I kind of spoil her with attention~ XD
      But some people only use their dolls for photography and the like.
      I'd say that it depends on what kind of attachment you have to the doll.​
       
    13. Some of my dolls have multiple heads, some of them have multiple face plates. More expressions lend them more versatility and personality and a little more of that illusion of life. I don't find face plates any less personal, but they are less bulky to store than an entire extra head! :thumbup
       
    14. I'm actually really looking forward to having a regular head-style doll's two heads faceupped- I have a sleepy (half closed eyes) and an awake version of the same sculpt both for the same body to be the same "doll". I'd also love it if a sleeping version of one of my other dolls was released, so that I could use it on her as an optional head. It would be even easier if they had faceplates so I could switch them even more easily. I don't think it makes them any less "personal", they're still my dolls that I'm quite fond of, but it would be nice to have a sleeping and awake version of the same head sometimes, or two different expressions. I suppose having a head or a faceplate sitting in a drawer might seem a little odd at first, but I also have optional hands for one doll and the human legs and feet for another sitting in their boxes... it's not really all that different. I think it allows you to get a little more out of one doll if you can change their faceplates, hands, and whatnot. :D
       
    15. I guess it would depend on if you exclusively associated ONE face, ONE piece of resin as being Doll X. If you so closely associate, say, a PongPong's smiling open eyed face to being THE face for his character, maybe it would feel foreign to pull off that face that you associated with said character and putting a different face on would change it to a totally different doll. I could see someone who has a strong connection between a physical object and a feeling having a harder time connecting multiple faceplates to one doll but not being one of those people, I guess I can't really make the connection. I wouldn't feel strange at all having multiple faceplates with different expressions if they were all the same basic sculpt with different expressions. If the sculpt was totally different (say, swapping a PongPong face for a Cupid face) it might be a little stranger but I still wouldn't have a problem associating them as being the same character. But then again, I also don't have dolls with strong "characters"...they're just dolls to me.
       
    16. I simply love love love my interchangable face plate dolls, with what's basically the same face -with identical face-ups-.
      Not liking the face with its eyes closed would be like not liking my husband with his eyes closed.
      The loose fp do look odd, but not more odd than floating heads, and there aren tons of those around on DOA. i have a nice teacaddy with different compartments for different tea types, that fit the loose f-p great, so they dont really roll around or get damaged, but are nicely nested in there own little holes. Some how i feel less guilty towards them than to the floating heads.

      That said, i know someone who hates to see the faceless body of hers so much, she interchanges plates with her eyes closed.
       
    17. When you have just a face-plate it does look kind of like a mask and less like a head, but once on a doll it's just like having a non-face-plate head. In my situation it's the total picture that counts most and when the heads or face-plates are not on a doll body, they are in a box in a drawer and that's less personal regardless of the shape.
       
    18. I don't recall if I've ever thought it was "weird" or not, but I hadn't considered owning one myself until recently when I started looking at the Unoa Lusis.

      I looked through the various face-plates she had available and chose only two for her - which suited her character's personality. The others were a bit too smile-y or ... uhm.... "adult" for her, a girl of anywhere from 13 - 17, I'd suppose.

      It would be a "different character" if I got the smiling-dreaming faceplate or the smiling-winking faceplate or the "yawning" faceplate. But switching between the regular and the sleeping faceplate (which I intend to mod to a sort of suspicious half-opened eye face) suits her.

      I'm also vaguely considering picking up the sleeping head for the Dollmore Kid Sona they just released when I order my Sona next month. It's no different me changing his head than a face plate (and considering I hear that Dollmore Kids are difficult to change heads for, it's probably easier with a faceplate system!).
       
    19. I forgot to say that I also have dolls that don't have face-plates, but do have several heads and those heads even have non-matching face-ups in certain cases. It's an easy way of changing face-up without having to wipe a good face-up. Just like eyes, wigs, and clothes can change a look, so do face-ups and even with different face-ups (thus different head) it still feels like the same doll. With one doll I have two different face-plate molds (so they are not different versions of the same mold) for the same doll and even with the different looks, it feels like a normal doll just like all my other dolls once the face-plate is attached to the body.

      Different face-plates or heads don't make it feel less personal to me.
       
    20. I wish all my dolls had faceplates and lots of them (sleepy, angry, silly, etc.). I would love to have the option of changing their expressions almost instantly, without having to mess with the wig and S-hooks. It would feel much more convenient and fun to me.