Aversion to customization?

I definitely know what you mean. I was kind of sad when my first boy came and I could tell he needed to be looser. Now I've had his arms loosened and he still needs sueding if I want his arms to hold poses at all. I really wanted him to come and be perfect out of the box since he was my first.

Migidoll Ryu was also one of the first sculpts I fell in love with, but I told myself I would never get one because I didn't want to buy a floating head. Well when I saw one I liked in the marketplace, I ignored that decision and bought him anyway, but saving up for just a body is proving to be annoying.

I don't think I will ever want to do faceups, but I would like to know how to restring, HG suede, and perhaps even body blush someday. I'm just not daring enough to take on faceups though, especially since both of my boys came with ones I was happy with.

 

I don't enjoy taking my dolls apart and whatnot, but I don't really mind it either. I do have help from my sister though, 'cause sometimes two hands just isn't enough! xD I'll fiddle with my dolls if needed but for the most part I prefer them to be low maintenance, so no stuff like body blushing or sueding that needs redoing annually.

As for faceups, though . . . ugh. I've done quite a few over the years, but I truly dislike doing them. I do usually like the way they turn out, but I've found that I'm not so good at doing boy faceups and faceups that are more intricately shadowed/blushed. I'm not a naturally talented artist and have absolutely no desire to practice enough to get really good! But nowadays there are so many wonderful faceup artists available for commission, that I probably won't do my own faceups anymore.

 

I love customizing my dolls! Though I guess thats why we have the marketplace so someone else can do the customizing! they do something they like and you don't have the hassle!

 

I customize my dolls if they need it, but most limited editions i get already have a gorgeous faceup that fits the character. I do however get all my customizations professionally done, i def wouldnt go at a faceup or other by myself.

 

I totally understand and when I first got into the hobby I was scared even to take the headcap off my doll to change eyes... in fact with my first I couldn't as he was one with the shook attatched to his headcap... I've hurt and cut up my poor fingers a lot in 2 1/2 years when it comes to stringing and stuff. I will NEVER wire any of my dolls becuase I play with them far too much. I'm always reposing and doing photoshoots and to me wire if for when you're gonna to crazy awesome stuff like stop animation, or your doll is going to sit on a shelf in a specific pose for a long period of time. I'm all over sueding and kipping becuase I do like my dolls to be able to hold poses and for definitly sure stand on their own. Several dolls i've just done work to just so they would stand becuase out of box the way they came from the company they just couldn't.

I do like faceups though, I keep trying to do more and more to progress and retain what skills I have. I don't feel like I'm anything special as far as faceup artists go, but I have friends who come to me when they get a new doll. I especially prefer to do faceups on other people's dolls and not my own. I sometimes still send my dolls off for their faceups to other artists that I really admire. I think to me it's easier to please someone elses vision because when I do my own dolls faces most of they time they just don't come out quite how I invisioned them.

 

Customizing doesn't bother me the slightest bit. I guess it shows, since my first boy is my Ryu, who came blank and bodiless. I don't feel like I have a natural propensity for faceups, since my understanding of facial structure and whatnot is extremely lacking, but it was always my intention to customize my dolls myself. I think it's because I'm extremely possessive - I wouldn't be able to stand the idea of a faceup that I didn't do myself, even if someone is far more capable. I also feel like the customizing process gives me complete control over the output. The other thing that customizing does - I think, and this is me - is give assurance. If my doll damages or outgrows his faceup, I can simply redo it. And I often choose to redo a faceup because something subtle has changed about my character. I'm not afraid of the change, and my dolls are less static as a result.

But on the other hand, the responses in this thread have really allowed me to understand the other viewpoint. I can completely understand the fear and worry of change. But to me, customization isn't work, it's part of the hobby and while it's frustrating at times, the satisfaction is definitely worth it.

 

I used to have a pretty big aversion myself. The idea of taking my girls apart to even clean them made me sick to my stomach. Right now I'm in the middle of my biggest fear. Having gone to restring one, I couldn't get her back together again. It makes me a little sick to look at her right now. I had her set so she looked like she was still together, but my boy just came by and went to pick her up, and my stomach lurched when I saw her apart again. ugggh.

And my first face up? I nearly cried when I wiped her old one. I hated the first 10 I did. I still don't love the one she has currently. I really do prefer to send my girls off to have someone else do the messy work. Someone nice and experienced with it and I don't have to see it.

 

I hate to restring. I do it when the doll needs it, but I like my dolls strung tightly and I'm never able to pull that off on my own.
Face-ups are simply not my thing. I did a few and then wondered why I even bothered when I didn't even like doing them and there were others who were much better than me whom I could pay to do the job.

On the other hand, I love modding a doll; sanding, cutting the whole works. It's just like sculpting!

 

this is a really interesting topic! I wear really strong, dramatic make-up so I love the idea of doing my dolls' faces but I lack the confidence to change the beautiful face up that a far better artist than me painted! I wouldn't want to touch the strings either - I just know they would break!

 

i like customizing best of all, making my doll one of a kind. making individual clothes,wigs, making her more poseable

 

Hoh crap, I think I take Hayvn apart and clean her at least once a month? She's a WS so she needs it. Sueded her three times, sanded her, cut eyelids open, separated her toes.... Yeah. o_O;; Only thing I haven't done that I've considered is adding a thigh joint, and that's because I don't have epoxy or anything of the sort.

I love doing it. I've had almost no hesitation except for the "I have to do it right the first time," factor that goes with mods. I'm quite hands-on and have little to no fear (brains?) with doing customizing, however bad or good that may be.

 

I'll be honest--I am not exactly looking forward to stringing and face-ups, but as I see it, it's a part of owning a doll and taking care of him/her.

I am going to see how I do with my first face-up, and if it doesn't look right--well, that's what Mr. Clean is for. Just work at it till I get it right. I'm also going to have a friend or two there to help me with it, and if it gets to the point where I just can't do it...well, then I know I need to have someone else do it.

 

I'm still learning to do face-ups, but they don't bother me. When my LE girl and boy finally get their face-ups dinged to the point they're not salvageable, I'll paint them without a qualm. Sueding and wiring don't bother me either, and I've restrung my BBB and Resinsoul. A little twitchy about restringing the SDs, though, just because I think I'll need help to get them tight enough.

Haven't had a burning desire to chop or mod yet, though I do have a reminisce head I'm thinking of opening the eyes on.

 

I could see an aversion to customizing as being something that most people might have. It can be daunting at first and it really is challenging. My top two things I despise doing are re-stringing and putting on eyelashes. O_O I have a lot of trouble with both. I'm probably most comfortable with doing face-ups and esthetics as well as sewing clothing.

 

sometimes i regret modding my dolls because they've been in pieces for months, unfinished and untouched because i've been too busy to do it. i can understand why people wouldn't want to do it, either through fear of messing up something so expensive or just because they're not into customisation. i don't think i would have got into the hobby if i couldn't customise though.

 

This is sort of a yes and no for me.

I really hate re-stringing. However, this could be due to my first experience with it. Adelheid came strung so tightly that her joint could barely move. While I heavily appreciate the efforts of Souldoll doing this to keep her more stable in shipment, the re-stringing process for my first doll was not good and the experience does not make me think well of doing it in the future.

That's all the aversion I have to it though. I would like to do body blushing but I dread doing that because it means I would have to unstring her. :/

 

I don't like de-stringing Sanyu because of the elastic snapping and I worry about breaking her... I don't like the idea of sanding and epoxy because it's so final. I feel like I'll ruin the doll. However, I love painting and blushing and doing face-ups and that sort of (removable/fixable) thing. I flinch whenever anyone talks about sanding or sculpting or modding...

Though part of me wants to take just a sleeping head one day and try to open it's eyes... but only if it isn't already it's own character and didn't cost much (so I don't feel like I'm ruining a whole doll over experimentation.)

And I know I have to get over the re-stringing thing... eventually.

 

While I'd like my own doll rather than a premade, cookie-cutter version of a model, I am terrified of modifying and customizing. Sueding sounds awful to me, so I doubt I'd do it, and I'm to nervous to sand or string. Faceup scares me too, so I'll have someone else do it for me.

 

Sueding, at least the hot-glue variety, is one of the easiest things to do (second only to wiring, in my experience)! You don't even have to unstring the doll, the last one I did took longer for the glue to heat up than to suede the whole doll. Stringing and faceups aren't that hard either, and none of those things are permanent, be brave! It's very satisfying to take a doll who wasn't quite right and make it pose 100x better with just a few minutes work.

I'm with you on the sanding, though. I haven't got the guts up to try that yet.

 

I did my first face up and restringing on a friend's doll before I got my own because she was really afraid of doing anything to her boy herself. So I started playing around with dolls pretty early. Since then I have restrung her doll about 3 more times. I can't say I really enjoy doing it, but if I have to I'll do it. I don't really mind so much.
Now I have my own dolls. I love doing the face ups on my AoD and MNF. I bought them both as heads first which gave me plenty of opportunity to play with their faces and eyes. Now my AoD has a body and I have experimented with blushing his hands and seeing how he is put together. Unfortunately he needs new elastic, so I'm not exactly excited about having to restring him, but it will give me a better opportunity to play with a full body blush. I plan on doing the same when my MNF boy body comes in.
I've wired my Dollmore boy and plan on hot glue sueding sometime in the future.
A lot of these kinds of things sound scary, but really they're a lot easier than they sound.

The only things I have not gotten up the courage to do yet is sanding and piercing- my MNF head came pre-pierced so I got lucky there.
I do want to try eye opening, even though that idea scares me as well. But I think it'd be fun and would help me get over the remaining fears I have