Do You Have a Character You CAN'T Shell?

YES! Haha, there's a couple of characters I would love to have as a BJD but i've had to accept that a suitable sculpt just doesn't exist (yet). And they're fairly normal looking humans but it seems finding the right sculpt in the right size for them is very challenging. I had a stroke of luck with one of the Myou SD sculpts and face ups looking super close for the one character I wanted a doll of the most. But I want to make his non identical twin brother and can I find a sculpt? Nope. I keep hoping that Myou might put out some more SD sculpts but it seems they are heavily focused on their smaller dolls at the moment.

I also had a character that I went through, i think, about 5 dolls before I finally got one that was close enough in real life to be acceptable. I have compromised on my fan character dolls (Bakura & Nux) where I had to settle for a sculpt that was passable. But it does still bug me that they're not perfect matches so I know it's no good me getting sculpt for personal characters that aren't as close as possible as I will spend all my time focusing on how they don't quite look like the character. That's just how my brain is.

(Funny enough I was going to start a thread on the same topic as I was wondering if others got frustrated by not being able to find sculpts for certain characters )

 

I kinda have the same thing, one of my OCs is supposed to be shorter than his group of friends, and currently the boys I have of the group are in the 64-70cm category... I'm struggling to find a 60cm or smaller boy that I like for him as most of the companies that do face sculpts I like are on bigger bodies... I like DOD Camine for him, but my other boy is DOD so I know that's too tall and they're hard to resin match

 

One of my characters has such an enormous nose that I've never seen a doll come close, lol. Partially my fault for such a stylized drawing style, but yeah... not a lot of big round nosed girls out there.

 

I have a character that i have a very particular expression in mind for, and though I havent looked very hard Im betting its going to be difficult to shell her. Id also like her body to be on the chunky side so...itll probably take a miracle to shell her.

 

I have a character that is supposed to be Braesin's Uncle and he's supposed to be shorter and in his 40's. But my dolls already shelled are mnfs. :/ and I can't seem to find a doll with a more mature face sculpt in that size range that fits. So I've accepted that he probably just won't be shelled. So I stopped looking for him and call him the undolled OC. Lol.

 

You might be able to get a really good modification artist to do something ooak, though?

I’ve had a similar problem. Not only was the character very distinctive, he’s meant to be about 40, but he’s still very small. To fit in with my 65-70cm crew, he’d need to be about 62 cm and all the sculpts that size look very young. I now have a sculpt on order for him, but it’s taken me five years!

 

Iplehouse YIDs are 63cm and they're pretty mature-looking. Also I'm pretty sure you can fit some of the Luts Senior/SS Delf heads on the regular Delf bodies. As for mature dolls in the mini range, there's Soom's Idealian 51 and aGatti dolls?

And if you have a head but are worried about resin matching bodies, Resinsoul can do customs I think?

 

Yeah. Quite a few. None of my dwarf or orc characters will likely ever get shelled, even if some of them would be relevant to my existing crew... though I can always hope!

 

Yes. I tried shelling Francis in the thickest boy body I could find in the 1/3 range, IslandDoll Noah, and it just didn’t work out. Francis supposed to be a big fat guy, and slightly chubby just doesn’t cut it. While I’m thankful there are artists out there making thicker girls, I really wish somebody would make some big guys! I would do it myself but my sculpting skills are about like a kid playing with Play-Doh.

 

I told myself my first male doll was probably going to be turned into my yakuza character. But when I got both boys, I couldn't really see that character as either of them. Neither of them so far have really fit, and I figured I am better off waiting on the perfect face sculpt/body and just working from the ground-up. But so far, most I've seen have been 'maybes'. There's also the fact thatI'm pretty sure I'm going to end up commissioning the design of his tattoo, then commission someone else to put the tattoo on him, as well as a face-up that is him. But it all starts with the face.

 

There's always one character I'd always regret I may never shell out: Guórén/Jinsuke's adoptive father and mentor, Tarōzaemon. Despite being a vital, if not understated, figure to the central cast of my dolls, he has to content himself with being just that. Uncle Iroh from the original Avatar: the Last Airbender series is the closest comparison I have to the character. Where I'm supposed to find a stocky 1/3 scale male body, plus an equally grandfather-ish head to match, I don't know!

 

I had the same problem and ended up going for the Mirodoll 60cm male body with added padding for my Aka. So far it's worked out, though the Mirodoll body is quite sturdy to pose. The body is quite strong/muscular looking, but ends up looking more stocky when clothed and next to my other dolls. (Especially since his gf is on the extra slim newer resinsoul sd female body).

I also keep hoping there will be more stocky sculpts out there one day, but for now this works. And since Mirodoll does resin matching, pretty much any head is a-ok!

 

Yes, the main character in my (not yet completed) book series. I've been trying for ages to find a doll to shell him, and there's always something off. SD dolls are the closest visually, but I just don't like the size of them, especially since he's in his early to late teens (depending on the book in the series) and is a bit small for his age, so he can't have a very mature or tall sculpt (or one that's too young-looking). I also want to shell his friends, sister, parents, villain...basically every primary and secondary character from the series. He also has quite a complicated hairstyle that is going to be very difficult to replicate in a doll wig. He's also half Chinese, and oddly enough Asian sculpts are hard to find? He is very near and dear to me (I've had the idea for his character and been playing around with the writing of the epic high-fantasy series since I was eleven) so if I were to shell him and the other protagonists in the series (he needs to have his sister and all three of his best friends...that much is absolutely certain) the dolls would have to be an absolutely perfect fit. And I'm pretty sure that's going to be impossible.

 

Yep! I have a character that is supposed to have a dragon tail, but there are so few sculpts with dragon-like tails. If there are some, like Resinsoul for example, they don't look like my character enough to be worth attempting to buy them. I've thought about adding a tail myself, but making a jointed tail seems like a hassle. :3

 

Yep. So many... I need a feral werelioness looking cat girl and a western style dragon girl... even find a human with the right expression for the second one has been a pain. I prefer the less realistic style of dolls and finding one of those in the right size and smiling/smirking without being too anime is proving more difficult than I thought.

 

I'm still really new to the hobby, but I'm still having trouble shelling out Nano and Akira from Togainu no Chi. I like Ringdoll's sculpts the best so far and am looking at the head models used for Edward and Sol. But they're still not QUITE right? Besides that, their body #3 is perfect for Akira, but is 70." Nano is taller than him but slimmer and a lot less muscular, and it seems all of the dolls that have his body type are teenagers in the 62" range. Frustrating!

 

My character Saskia, has been through 5 dolls so far and the hunt for the right doll has been frustrating to say the least.

 

I am struggling at the moment to find the right sculpt for my Character "Eri".
Eri is supposed to be 13 years old and at least 1-2 heads shorter than my other dolls.
My other dolls are all yo-sd size, so it`s not easy to find a tiny, that would fit for him.
Also, I would need him in tan skin... but I wont give up looking!

 

Oh heck yeah. My big problem is I have a fairly clear image in my head of my ocs and quite a lot of them aren't conventionally pretty like most dolls are, in fact several are just downright odd looking.

the twins I have never found the right sculpt for as anything close is either in the wrong scale or lacking the right nose, jaw, eye shape combo. Body is tricky as well as finding a body slender enough in tan? Yeaah. It drives me nuts. They have heavily angled almond shaped eyes, a hooked nose and a jaw that's more squared than it is pointy and most dolls with those sorts of eyes have really pointy chins.

I also have a giant spider taur who also has little vestigial limbs on his shoulders and big ol' horns and that isn't gonna be an easy thing to do either.

I have a cat cyborg, a plant person, wierd sloth monsters... yeaaaah... Not to mention my various not really so pretty vampires hahahah.

Another added awkward is that a vast majority of my human characters aren't pink/peach/white. They're shades of brown. SO MANY companies don't do appropriate browns and dying something myself is a bit tricky to get exactly the shade I need. Not only that but getting the appropriate ethnic features on top of the right shade of brown eugh.

And i'd want them in scale with one another so that's a whole other kettle of crazy.

So i'd say that like 85% of my ocs are impossible to shell without sculpting my own heads/bodies and I haven't got the skill for that.