Do you only buy dolls that would fit into your doll-family?

Well, I'm planning on getting dolls that resemble Piper, Starling, Stork and Repton (the latter will have to be minimees) from Storm Hawks (Piper's already ordered, she's one of Iplehouse's Ashanti dolls), but there's also an Angell-Studio doll I'd like to get and I've put my name down for a group minimee order of Garrus from Mass Effect

So, my dolls will probably be any doll that takes my fancy!

Oh and I'd also like to get a minimee of Hugo!Elrond from LotR

 

I found out the hard way that it really does matter if my dolls look good next together. I've sold many dolls that look good as what I want by themselves, but next to my other dolls....It's just wrong.

Sometimes it's size, proportion and height. Sometimes it's facial features. It seems to happen more with girls for me than boys, but a lot of my boys have come and gone as well. I tend to use my Dollmore Kara Klums and my Migidoll Ryu as the starter dolls. If they can't work with those two, I get rid of them XD
The Dollmore dolls are kind of stuck between realistic and stylized so they do work well with certain other dolls I wouldn't expect them too, but I have to really pay attention to head size verses face size. Large heads are ok as long as the faces aren't huge. My El and PW Goldie work because they're both dreaming, and their features are kind of small on their faces. My B&G Aurora didn't work cause she had a huge face on a large head. I cant really own most volks molds (other than MSD or YO) because their faces are more proportionate to their head sizes and IMO a little more realistic, same with LW SD sized dolls and Dollstown. They all have molds I like enough to own, but unless i stuck them on 70+ cm bodies they wouldn't stick around long....and after the doll i just ordered, I'm not owning anymore 70cms.

The same thing happened to my MNF girl. I loved how she looked as my character, and she was ok with my Kara Klum (him being so tiny) but next to my other dolls it was horrific. So even though I really liked her, she had to go.

Basically it's a very personal thing for me. If a doll bothers me at all, it's not sticking around. I got upset with the way one of my dolls looked this year with the rest and ended up selling several of them because of it *shrug*
It worked out for the best in the end, I like my collection right now. That may change lol
there's a lot of dolls out there I like! Some of them I won't be able to resist owning XD

 

Eh, no. My dolls aren't based on characters, as of yet anyway. The two that I want to see in dolly form just haven't found the right doll yet. For now, I just choose whichever ones I think are cute and pretty. I imagine once my second doll actually arrives I may have more of a "real" opinion. I would buy I doll because I liked it, whether or not it fit in.

 

My dolls do have to fit into my mother's and my doll family, though we allow a pretty good amount of leeway for having dolls of different sizes, races, and even species. We have SD, MSD, and tinies to represent different apparent ages. Couples are picked to have nice proportions together, and sizes/proportions need to fit into the basic age scale established for our human characters. (Non human characters like chaos demons have their own rules in the doll family.) I'm presently planning and saving up for a new MSD boy to be the boyfriend of one of my MSD girls. He has to fit certain size and aesthetic criteria for looking good with her. For example, I just couldn't pair something like a Chicline El with my DZ Binli. He's a gorgeous doll, but the extremely different proportions would drive me insane. So I did the same thing I always do when looking for a doll that will be in close proximity to another... I sat my girl next to the computer and compared her with all the dolls I love that would fit in with her proportions until I found "her guy". For a doll without a partner, it's more of a general fitting in.

 

I too only choose dolls if they fit with the family, if only to thin out my wishlist. xD

 

right now i only have 2 dolls, noth luts and both with Similar looks, i'm not out to mkae a perfect doll family, i like my normal people dolls, but i wouldn't be suprised if a soom MD slipped into the mix randomly. :3 right now my goal is to get my poor floating head a body! nevermind what the future dolls will be for now i need to pay attention to what i have

 

I only have one doll so far. I plan to buy another soon, I was looking at Bobobie Dolls since they offer tan in almost all their dolls and Iplehouse because they offer beautiful tanned dolls as well. Since the Goodreau compay is closing I may just buy 3 more Mirrors and have 4 different but exactly the same dolls. I'd like to experiment with adding a little age and weight to one of them as well as doing one with a tribal faceup, another with an ancient faceup and one with fairy/bunny/chobits ears. I find that the biggest thing with me is the doll has to have a tan. I can do any size, the small ones while cute and adorable scare me at the thought of making clothes for them. So I figure, MSD sized and up and they all fit in together. One happy family because they are all mine.

 

Well recently i adopted a tan pirate belle which does not fit very well into my fairyland family, photographing her with my two pukifee's sometimes looks odd. I tend to like dolls that somewhat compliment eachother, i have found fairyland is the brand for me mostly

 

This sort of makes me think of a question I answered not so long ago about preference toward anime style sculpts or realistic style sculpts. I am not familiar with anime but I started out more attracted to anime styles because I didn't get to see many realistic sculpts. I do have to say that DIM's Minimee dolls were what really got me into BJDs and I do love realistic sculpts. And although I have quite a few with big giant eyes I am moving toward realistic sculpts like those Iplehouse offers. I've been looking at my large eyed dolls with a bit of discontentment lately as I've been pulling in more realistic sculpts and yes, I think they should complement each other. There's just something "off" about an animated figure with a realistic one.

I didn't start out this way. But yes, I am gearing this way now. If I were the type of owner who had 50+ dolls then I probably wouldn't care.

 

I don't know why but I kinda feel like there are Dolls that I would buy and Dolls that I wouldn't buy. Because they wouldn't fit into my group period. They're not my style, can't do anything with them, don't fit my characters, whatever. They just "aren't pretty" to me lol. I'm sure there are plenty of others who have the same mindset when it boils down to it.

I mean, everyone's got their own style and if you buy something that doesn't exactly work with that style that you're so fond of, it's probably going to look oblong on display. I do think that everyone's collection does tend to have a certain look or feel to it overall, when you look at the collection as a whole. If you like it though, it'll fit. Doesn't matter how different it is, it will somehow share some aspect similar to the other dolls in your collection and it will fit and look like it's part of the collection :3 Hell, I lean towards the slightly more realistic side of the spectrum, yet somehow a kitty boy made his way in there.

tl;dr
Your doll collection is similar to your wardrobe, another aspect of your own individual style. Shirts are shirts, but which are the ones you'd actually wear? Which ones make you say say "Oh yeah, that's me!" vs . "Dood, I look like a Purple people eater. :/ "

 

I find myself buying dolls that are already part of a "story" line-up. I'm willing to get dolls that would help enhance the story with different characters, but other than that, I'm not sure about getting dolls that will not compliment that purpose. I feel that if I were to do that, I'd end up not giving the "outsider" dolls as much attention as the rest. That wouldn't be fair..

 

I choose the dolls based on my personal tastes. If I fall in love with the sculpt and prefer it over anyothers I've been looking at, I'll take it. There are always ways to change the story to make the doll fit, for me what matters most is that I avoid buyer's remorse. :3

 

do you only by dolls that compliment your doll-family?

Nope, i buy for personal enjoyment and if i love them i can find a way to make it work. Some of my couples do look a bit odd together, but in a way their difference makes them more interesting.

If not what are your thoughts on the matter?

Personally, i both understand that people want things to look correct, but i don't understand denying yourself a doll you love because you don't think it will.
When i've made the change up to a new style of doll i tried to make sure to play and bond with them regardless of whether they could interact well with my other dolls. Doing so actually inspired me to try and get similar dolls for them which expanded my interest in the hobby.
So... i suppose, instead of seeing a mismatched doll as a sore thumb, try thinking of it as the first branch into a new part of doll collecting.

 

If I see a doll that I really love, then I don't care if it compliments the ones I own, but if I want a couple for example, then it's of course important that they match and look good together.

 

I buy dolls that embody my original characters in my stories. ^^ And then they adopt my characters style. I like having a sort of physical representation of them I'm not sure that they all compliment each other or match each other. My thing was that I wanted a range of different sizes of dolls.

 

This is me. :3
Besides, why would I want my dolls to look the same? I want a range of styles of dolls.

 

Well, for me it's a necessary restraint: when I need to be talked out of buying a new doll I can sternly tell myself "you don't have an identity/place in the family for him/her". The funny thing is that it just happened this way--when I bought my first doll I didn't intentionally sit down and start planning out a family to go around him, but the situations and characters started suggesting themselves almost at once, and I haven't bought anyone who didn't have a role to fill since. (The one doll I did buy on impulse never did fit in, and I sold her within two months.) If I really fall for a doll I admit I'll try to tweak the plotline and see if I couldn't fit him/her in, but if not...too bad. And except for the two who were planned as a romantic couple, I don't worry about how they look together, as long as they're right for their characters.
Why is it this way? I guess it's just that I can't help being a storyteller. =)

 

OMG! What doll are you thinking of using for Stork?! I must see him when/if you have him done!!

 

yes, I do this. Having clothes that can fit everyone is more desirable and cost effective. I have a Taki doll that just sits in the box nude since the only thing that seems to fit her is own clothes...

 

Eventually they all look good together so long as they're the sculpts you want. I have some SDs with 16mm eyes and an another SD with 20mm eyes! The proportions of the body and face may be radically different but some of them are still connected to each other, character-wise, and I think it shows sometimes..so they do look good together; to me at least. I do have to strategically set up my dolls for a photoshoot so one doesn't look pin-headed while the other looks bobble-headed, but otherwise, I'm not bothered. I get the sculpts that fits who I want to buy.