Darker Skin Tones?

I agree that it would be harder to produce a darker coloured doll, due to the process of making and dying the resin. AngelRegion even said that only 1 out of about 3 tanned dolls actually comes out right, and their tanned dolls are a bit lighter than other companies tanned dolls.

I think CH has probably come closest to making the darkest doll (their egyptian dolls were pretty dark), but I think much of the dark colour was added through the face-up and painting process.

 

It's a shame, but it just can't be done. It's been said in this thread over and over...but the turn out rate for tanned dolls is rather small...

But I agree, if enough people said they where interested, I'm sure a company would take notice. But be prepared to pay a pretty penny!

 

I would adore having a lovely dark-skinned doll, and I am optimistic that the problems with creating high-quality even-toned darker resin will eventually be worked out through further experimentation. Until then, we must just wait patiently.

 

n_n
This was very informative---
I wanted to know why there wasn't enough tan dolls
and why they were so hard to reproduce...

Is that why Tan Shall looks darker on the site,
while the owner pics- she looks lighter?
Or is that the lighting?


Thanks!

 

My friend was telling me how she'd get into dolfies more if she could get more dark skinned dolls and asked me why they only had tan ones. I guess now I can explain to her to her now ^^

I was planning to get a Soul Doll Sweeni and airbrush her darker.

 

well I guess it could be technical, it could be cultural, but hey ABJDs are asian, aren't we buying them because they are asian? well for me anyway.

so if I wanted a black doll, I'd get and african or american one, wich would be a little more authentic, then again it wont be a BJD.

I'm black myself, and I'd love to see a darker abjd...but oh well, that's just the way the cookie crumbled LOL...

 

I do believe you can airbrush a doll to make them darker...however, I am not sure how long the color would stay even after a coating of MSC or Testor. But others have answered this better than I. ^^

 

In short, it appears that darker-complected dolls are rare, but by no means is it due to lack of trying.

It's kind of a mad little science if you think about it. Dollmakers have to come up with an exact resin formula that will not only replicate the color that you're looking for, but replicate it consistently over each and every doll produced. A tiny bit too much or too little of a pigment can drastically change the color result, which means there is almost no room for error and the risks are way too high.

I would consider it safe to say that a few more years or so and you might start seeing some real progress in this department. The tanned Hounds and a few others are first steps towards that. So...have faith

 

Uh, I think most people buy them because they're pretty and fun to play with. If they were American or such, I'd be just as likely to buy them.

 

XDD Just as long they don't have big heads like the recent trend of American Dolls...:p
I'm not particularily fond of that---
Maybe that's one of the reasons why I was attracted to them

 

Well I donno if you took that wrong way, but yes, I did buy them because they are asian and I find them interesting and beautiful, the same way I would find a cute little blonde haired german doll interesting...(that's just me)

I just wanted to have something from an other country with an interesting culture attached to it.

 

I agree with Aimee. It's more that it's so incredibly difficult to get an even tone, and probably cost. Seeing as tanned dolls sell pretty well, I wouldn't think it was a racial issue per se, whether the Japanese have racial issues or not. Unless BJD became extremely popular in America (which I don't see happening) or demand for darker dolls spikes, I don't think we'll be seeing a whole lot of dark dolls, other than LE ones and custom dolls.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

However, I must disperse information now. The history geek in me... cannot... resist...! (Even though I don't know much Japanese history. ops: )

Ah, that would be... Ainu. That's (at least presently...) from the northernmorst parts of Japan. They were the native group before what is currently "mainstream" Japanese groups immigrated in, taking a lot of Chinese cultural stuff with them. The Ainu were then forced waaay north.

Okinawans, from the Okinawa islands, are legally part of Japan, but ethnically, culturally, linguistically, etc. are a different people. They are also darker than "mainstream" Japanese, and are usually treated a lot worse by their paler-skinned peers, from what I've heard. Of course, only recently is the western world realizing that Okinawa has a completely different culture. -_- I feel so ashamed of the intelligence of Americans right now. Especially when history textbooks are so full of crap, but that's a separate rant.

 

You know, I think the most beautiful human being I ever saw was a checkout clerk at Trader Joe's. This man was tall, gorgeous, and had skin so dark that it had a blue cast to it. He looked like he came from another planet. I'd be delighted to have a dark-skinned doll.

Anyhow, this would make a great addition to any ABJD FAQ... it gets asked a lot. The fact that there's a perfectly reasonable explanation behind it would be really good to make public knowledge, so that unfair accusations of racism don't get thrown around.

Note to self: become materials scientist and figure out way to bond dye to molecules in resin properly.

 

Oh, I don't think (or at least I hope) that anyone took your question to be offensive!!

Not speaking for the Japanese or Korean companies, but I *know* that Donn (of BishonenHouse, which is an American country) was working on making darker-skinned dolls (he also made a blue-skinned head!), but he specifically said that the darker resin was very unpredictable and difficult to deal with in terms of creating an even color over the whole doll.

It's definitely possible to airbrush or paint dolls another color, the issue is that in making "tan" (or darker/different) dolls, if the color isn't even throughout the resin, you won't be able to sand/modify the dolls, and there's a danger of the surface color chipping or wearing away.

There's a gorgeous F-08 Drow girl on here (named Sakiryl, I think?) who has *black* skin (and Paulkaiju's beautiful red-devil-girl Yooskie), but she will need maintenance on her joints to keep the color even (if she's not on a vinyl body, I don't actually recall). You *can* make a DD body (or, I'd assume, an Obitsu body) a permanent color using a professional type of paint that actually bonds with the vinyl, but that's very different from creating a dyed-throughout (not just surface-colored) resin doll.

Oh, and the default colors for these resins are pure white and beige (not a very nice skintone beige, a plasticky beige) -- all of the range of skintones produced for dolls are created by adding pigments to the mix (sometimes including, I believe, a translucent filler to create the lovely 'glow' effect of certain doll companies' resins). So it's not so much that doll-companies are deliberately choosing to only make "white" dolls, it's that the resin is white to begin with, and getting it a darker color is a major endeavour!!

Don't mind me getting all technical, Caitlindevi and I are producing resin doll-heads, so there's been quite a lot of discussion regarding pigmentation and the particular qualities of these types of resins!!

-- Andi

 

I had a thought on this thread on the way to work: I get from the previous posts that darker resin is a pain in the butt, _but_ what about dolls like the Obitsus or Dollfie Dreams? They're made of vinyl, and that would be easier to produce in colours. Goodness knows there's enough different skin tones of Barbies (and I used to have a similar doll from a different company that was one of those super dark African Americans that I thought was prettier than my pale Barbies...) So we could at least ask Obitsu and Volks nicely if they could put out different skin tones of the vinyl dolls.

 

sure, it never hurts to ask! I'm sure if enough people emailed Obitsu and Volks, you would start seeing more vinyl darker dolls.

there has been like ONE dark-skinned Century Model, but that was about it! (I'm not all up on 1/6 history though, there could have been others)

 

Yes, Volks does make tanned skin vinyl dolls tho the current 1/6 ones are kinda light. That one CM you're talking about was a nice tan color.

So yes, they could do a tanned DD. I'm pretty sure they will later but as an LE. After all, they did a white skin LE DD already.