Do you model your doll off a character or do you create a doll?

I want my first doll looking like an anime character, when I got it like I dreamt I could model my own characters

 

My first doll's character is being created while I wait for her. In the future, though, I'm going to shell an old OC of mine, and I'm flirting with the idea of shelling Pandora Hearts' Jack Vessalius. So...yes to all?

 

My doll and my planned future dolls are based of my own charaters

 

I don't write or RP or anything so I don't have any OCs to base dolls off of. Mine are instead existing characters. I keep their personalities and clothes as close as possible to their character because that limitation is fun and more realistic than if you were able to add things to their personalities that may or may not make sense and might simply be wishful thinking.

 

Most of my crew are avatars for originals; typically favorite MMO or tabletop RPG characters I've played over the years... But I do have a couple that are "fan dolls" as well.

I have a resin version of D from the Petshop of Horrors manga (He's a CP/Delf Yder), my own version of Nue from Harukanaru Toki no Naka de (a CP/Delf Dreaming El with a massive ear mod) and a sort-of chibi/odd-ball take on the Devil May Cry video game series' Dante (my Bishonen House Steve).

 

All my dolls represent original characters. I don't really 'get' character BJDs, to be honest. I do own some character Pullips (the Rozen Maiden line and Askua and Rei from Evangelion), but I don't really interact with them the way I do my BJDs. I'd feel a bit wasteful spending so much on a BJD just to have it sit on a shelf like my character Pullips do. I guess I just got get the same creative spark from a doll representing someone else's character as I do from dolls representing my own characters.

 

I wish to have a special style for my doll. I could not make a lovely looking girl beeing a gothic queen or for example Dollshe Saint looking like the boy next door cause he seems to have a dark charakter. Its like wigs: some dolls you put a blonde wig on and you could never imagine to change it to a black one and so on. But I think you can plan and think about building a charakter. But when you got the doll in your hands, you really know who she/ he is

 

mine aren't based on any character at all, other than a vague 'feeling' I get about them - usually based on their looks. My dolls are characterless until I've had them a while really, and tried various wigs etc. - they kind of evolve into a personality, and obviously the wig/eyes/clothes I choose for them (or as is often the case, have lying around already) shape their personality. My most 'real' characters are impulse-buys, chance finds, wearing wigs/clothes I just happened to have already - it's like they were meant to be, and through synchronicity they came to life.

 

Two of my BJD currently shell OCs, the third was "adopted" because of his terrible cuteness and had a personality based on his look.
Like sharnofshade, I don't really get character BJD. I love to see Dollfie Dream and customized some doll to make them resemble already existent character, before having BJD, and all the time, when I finished my customizing work, they just sitted on the shelf, not inspiring further interactions. I know people that have and greatly enjoy character BJD, maybe because trough roleplaying them they have made the characters "them", but it doesn't work for me. I can RP only with characters at least in part mine, and I can't risk to spent on a BJD just to have her/him sitting on a shelf "cristallized" in his/her character.

 

Mostly neither. I don't do "characters" for dolls. It's limiting. However, I am going to be making an Elsa (Fairyland Shushu). I'm excited! Elsa is not my character but I get to do more for her because I have to make and modify everything.

 

I almost always have a character in mind, and seek out a doll to fit it. Occasionally that does change up a bit; I have a couple of fantasy tinies I got just because they were cute (but I have a lot more trouble with them than the others), a LTF I grabbed because the faceplate was cute (she's worked out better), and a DZ Eudora I snagged because Coral and Eudora were time-limited and looked a lot like some of the creatures from the story my OC dolls originate in; I'll work out exactly what character he or she is eventually. I also have a doll won in a raffle who's shelling one of the characters I was seeking, but she's not quite the right fit so I'm working on both a new sculpt for the character, and a new character for the sculpt.

While my group of dolls does actually divide down farther, overall there's three main groups I have. The "bought because they were cute" set is by far the smallest, and the largest (for number of individual characters) are my OCs, but I do also have a set of "Character Dolls" derived from existing characters, who I love just as much as the OC group. Their origin was a MNM I was going to do as a simple "shelf character doll" just because I loved the character, but I'd also roleplayed as him at one time, and in working on pulling him together, decided to reconceive the whole project into a group of dolls representing the "family" he ended up with at the end of that game. It's been a whole different exploration of dolls for me, and something I'm really enjoying the quest to find dolls matching existing designs just as much as the quest to find dolls matching the characters I designed years ago.

 

All my dolls are created, I don't do well with fan dolls...the only thing I "steal" is the name from my favorite book characters but looks and personalities are my own^^

 

I don't know if I'll ever do character dolls. There's not a character that appeals to me enough that I'd want a doll of them. Although, I wouldn't mind having dolls that looked like my two favorite Kpop boys. I just don't know who I would get to represent them. The dolls that I own are characters that I made up. They all live within the same world, and most of the dolls on my wishlist are for other characters in the story. It's fun figuring out what sculpt will be your characters.

 

My dolls are based on my OCs, but my OCs often have at least a little basis in celebrities I like. The OC isn't a copy of any particular person, more like "Kier, if he were alive, would look like a mix between Niall Horan and Lance Bass, but with dark brown/black eyes and freckles." Personality may start out being based on a real person, but as they are role play characters, they do tend to grow and develop on their own as storylines continue, and don't always end up being much at all like the person they were originally based on.