Artists with OCs! How close do your dolls end up to the characters you've drawn/written?

Writer here! The dolls go rogue and change details that I then have to amend in my written versions. Like Kieran deciding to have short hair was an accident of wigs, but that’s canon now. Coris didn’t have a canon appearance, so I based their appearance in canon off their doll once I’d shelled them. Ness went from having a side-shave to having all their hair shaved off. Aura, who is biracial but was white-passing in the original fic (her dad is literally paper white, and her mom is a black woman) now takes after her mother, other than having her dad’s hair. Addi has shorter hair, and wasn’t butch until I started dressing her doll and saw how well it worked on her. Zariel’s entire appearance in my campaign deviates from her canon appearance because I got a doll that I felt worked for her.

on the flip side, sometimes changes in character make me have to change something about my dolls! When Ilya came out as trans, I had to mod the chest on his body. Vidania having a relatively small chest lead to me having to Frankenstein a new chest on her body. Acyra being a big buff Paladin lady lead to me having to mod a buff male body female for her. Adonis being a somewhat tall but very curvy man lead to me having to mod the chest on another female body to give him the right waist. So sometimes the writing wins out and I have to mod dolls to look right.

 

I was very particular about making the doll shells of my characters look exactly as I pictured them at the start, but after awhile, I gave up fighting because they oftentimes found styles of their own and I ended up having the doll versions be alternate versions of my characters.

 

I love this thread!
I actually got into BJDs by feeling the need to shell some of my OCs in dolls. So far it's taking a bit long because I really want them to look like how I draw them and it's hard to get to this results (custom made wigs, clothes, eyes, faceup on sculpt that are as close as possible... whew!).

Here's Louisa my main OC, I still have to adjust lots of things on them but they're pretty close to their original 2D counterpart!

Spoiler: Original art VS BJD

 

As far as her face, Fairyland's Mio is a perfect match for the OC who I share my username with, although she should be a little plumper than any of FL's bodies. She's not quite as round as I am in real life, but she isn't skinny.

And two of my other dolls were the inspiration for the nieces of one of my other characters in one of my stories.

 

I do a web comic BJD story.

A lot of the first parts of the story was written with the dolls I had in the beginning, but as the story expanded I got other dolls to fit the the character roles. For the most part I have been able to find dolls to what I originally had in mind. Or I see a doll that fits perfectly into the story, and then write a role into the story for the doll. Sometimes a doll just seems to belong.

But, recently I was planning a love interest for one of my dolls. I even had a certain doll picked out. Then suddenly something snapped in my when I saw a totally different doll from what I had originally planned. nothing about the two dolls look the same. The storyline will will be headed in the same direction but the new look changes a lot about the character and even the concept of certain aspects in the story. I think the new doll is better for the character roll. It was just an odd experience for me to 180 on a character concept because a different doll caught my attention.

 

I was lucky and very happy to find a bjd that looked exactly as how i imagined my oc to look like! all i had to do was paint her (since she has vitiligo) and make her wig and i was super happy that she ended up looking like how she does when i draw her. im very excited to make her other outfits whenever i have the chance.
im also going to be buying another one soon (honey21 delf bonbon) since it also looks a lot like one of my ocs!

 

3 dolls had characters before the doll existed. Liam and Verona were both middle school drawings before the dolls, so it was easy to transfer my extremely simple drawings of them to their dolls. Volta was designed as a character with RG Williams in mind. I kept my ideas of him vague before securing the doll because I didn't want to long for a doll I would have extreme trouble obtaining. It just happened that Volks released the open eyed version in WS, which was a little bit of settling, but I would have wanted both open eyed and RG anyway.

3 characters were created to match the dolls. Both Hina and Cheby had no character and worked their way into the story of Liam and Verona. I wasn't actually intending to give Hina a character, but she looked like she was stealing Liam. I spent months figuring out how to justify that and she became a character. Rio had a base idea made between buying the doll and receiving him. He's incredibly off to the side in the story, though.

There's 2 more characters I would like to shell. I know the face sculpt for one, so I will draw and write about him to my heart's content. For Volta's wife, I'm attempting to keep my ideas and her face vague because I don't know whose face to cast as her.

@digiv1ce You got really close with your shell!! Impressive!!