Do you prefer shelling characters or...

I bring home my dolls to fill the role of characters. It's always intimidating to receive the blank doll, sort of panic that the task to bring the imaginary to the tangible realm is impossible, then start the long journey to do just that. When one day you finish adding accessories or pop in the right color eyes...and you see it. Sitting before you is exactly what you've been seeing inside your head. It's this indescribable sense of accomplishment and it's absolutely rewarding. That entire process, both frustrating and satisfying, is why I prefer shelling my characters.

If I admire a doll I can't picture shelling a character into I have this forum and hobbyists who share their dolls with us online!

I like to make props and collect furniture for my doll's character. It's like a continuation of bringing the vision of the character and story into the physical world.

 

A little bit of both. Some characters I know I need shelled but other times I'll see a great sculpt and come up with a character for it. It really depends on the character.

 

Personally, I buy my dolls because I love the sculpt, then work on their characters, (outfits, wigs, eyes and accessories usually help form their characters)

 

I tend to create characters for sculpts, or a character wanders into my head and goes "that sculpt, that one." so then I need to shell them.
But I LOVE the idea of shelling existing characters. Big problem I have with that is that many of my characters I have quite clear and specific images of them in my head, and finding a sculpt and body that fits is in many cases pretty much impossible due to combinations of strange or unpopular features.
Human characters aren't so hard, but my aliens? heck no. They're too weird looking and i'm not good enough to sculpt a head myself. Or they'd all need to be hybrids because the right head hasn't got the right sort of body (too buff for a skinny rake character or vice versa) or the wrong colours (company won't do a proper brown or something) and arghhhh. it's just a logistical nightmare.

So it's way easier to just find sculpts and let them tell me a character and build them like that.

but I still really want dolls of several of my actual OCs that I rp. Just.. finding sculpts in the right scale to one another, the right skin tone, with the right features is really... really... really hard. *headdesk*

 

I have my first two dolls on the way and they were both chosen just because I like them. I will design characters around them and I'm quite enjoying them being a complete blank canvas. Having said that, I have a lot of existing OCs that live in my head and on paper, and it would be nice to shell some of them at some stage and have a tangible version of them around (plus to be able to develop their characters in other mediums). So, a bit of both, but I think I will only look to shell characters if the perfect sculpts suddenly spring out at me. The DC Medeas and SOOM Amber are some I've just discovered, but it looks like Amber will be hard to come by.

 

A bit of both. I have gotten a few dolls to represent certain characters, and found they did not quite fit and created a new character. Then I have been right on the nose with others.

 

I find a sculpt I love and their personality and style evolves and developes over time. They tell me who they are rather than me shelling them.

 

My personal rule is that no dolls come home who isn't already a character. I have only broken that rule twice (out of 43 dolls) and both those dolls presented me with hair-pulling frustration in nailing down who they were. I was seriously considering selling the dolls as I struggled to figure them out and where they fit into my doll families. I did eventually figure them out but those experiences taught me that I can't comfortably just buy a doll because of the pretty.

 

I've done it both ways, but I lean towards shaping the character around the doll. The only pre-existing characters I've tried to make into dolls are anime characters. And they've evolved into characters of my own. There are several more anime characters I want to shell, and I expect the same thing to happen with them. At one point I wanted two versions of the same sculpt, one was a fan character and one was a character I made up for that doll. I liked my own character more, and only got that one.

 

I only have one BJD so far and her character came to me then I was putting her together. However, then I did that I came up with an idea for another character that I'd like to put together with her and to create my own head canon. So... both I guess?

 

I only buy based on what my characters are. It's just hard to find dolls sometimes because the click isn't there. T_T So I wonder if this is the curse of bjd shelling. Forever hunting for that perfect sculpt....

 

First and foremost I find a sculpt I like, everything else follows soon after. Usually when I first find a sculpt I love I won't really have any ideas on what they should be like until I've had them for a while and I get ideas just from the sculpt alone, that way I'll know for sure what will fit them best and I go from there! Typically when I finally start working on a doll I'll have a solid idea in my head on what I want for them from the hair to the clothes and the face up.

 

Same goes for me. From the very beginning, all those years ago, I decided to only do dolls I had preconceived characters for as a way to limit my collecting. I thought this would help the spending aspect, and it worked beautifully of course, holding me to about 3 dolls a year. the one thing I never considered, however, was how this innocently logical approach would add up over time. Now 15 years later, I have a collection teetering on the edge of 50! So in hindsight, only doing characters wasn’t all that limiting

Still, it turned out to be the way I best enjoyed doing it. I had so much fun coming up with these characters purely in my head. I learned early on that this was the best way for me to approach it. I have good writing skills, and drawing skills too, but I found out that those talents seemed too limiting when it came to my dolls. I preferred to approach it purely through my imagination, much as a child does in play. And as new dolls were added, the others naturally developed interactions and friendships with them along the way. It could be challenging at times…some characters took me an entire decade to shell! But I just left it all dancing around in my head and was patient with my purchasing.

 

I find I prefer to create a character with a doll. This can be easier as you buy what you want right out of the gate and don't have to worry about the doll being wrong for it, but trying to find the right clothes, eyes, and wigs can be difficult if you have a blank doll. And when you have it all together, you then have to build up from that, which can be hard. For example, Mischa is a full set, and so came together instantly. Lilith was a blank doll, and so doesnt have much of a background yet despite me having gotten almost everything together. I just knows she's often quite melancholy, and not much else. Took ages to even come up with a name for her.

 

My very first BJD is a Tumnus from 5 Star Doll. At the time I had a thing for the Character Genesis from Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core. I searched for a doll who would resemble the character, but could not find one. But when I saw Tumnus, I fell in love. Even though he does not look anything like the character from FFVII, I still named him Genesis cuz I liked the name.

The only other doll I have which is supposed to represent a character, is my Doll Leaves Asa. He is still in the process of being put together, as I have everything except a faceup. He is going to be the character Rufus Shinra from FFVII.

All my other dolls have their own characters, though two are named after real life family members.

 

I do a bit of both, though I find it much easier if I already have a character in mind. That makes it easier to pick out clothes, wigs, eyes, etc. But it can also be limiting, cuz sometimes you find a pair of eyes or something that would be really cool but don't match the character. So I think a mix works, cuz then I can experiment with some and have set ideas for others. The only problem I have is trying to pick out names for the ones without characters, haha.

 

I prefer to get dolls because I love the doll and then have my dolls become their own character.
Of course I have some sort of idea for the doll's character when I get them but it's really basic and simple and (usually changes) grows after the doll arrives.

Props to the people who are able to find dolls to shell their characters, I think they are amazing and have a whole set of skills and dedication that I do not possess, but I find shelling my characters into dolls really difficult and in all my years in the hobby have never come across a doll that I feel could be an appropriate shell for any of my characters.

 

I think I answered this already somewhere else but my views have CHANGED.

I got into the hobby to shell characters. I found sculpts that embodied their essence, loved them and bought them. Now, I'm kind of finding sculpts and seeing new characters in their faces that are like shadows - there's something there and I can tease it out of those sculpts.

I'm probably just crazy.

Either way, I love this. I love that when I shelled Zephyr - he was a Crobidoll Geroe at first but then I got my DOD Code 2 and that doll just clicked with this vacant, dreamy part of Zephyr's personality whilst still looking badass in a way the Crobidoll Geroe didn't. Geroe was more sombre and sensible and not self centred enough and I was like O____O.

I fought the change at first but then rolled with it. Code 2 wanted to be Zephyr so here we are. I haven't figure out Geroe just yet but I'm kind of excited now to find someone else in him.

In a different vein, Faith, my Angell Studio Kana, is Faith through and through. I bought her because I saw her on Facebook and she was just like: 'here I am' and no other doll since has come close to looking like Faith - not even other Angell Studio Kanas.

On the other hand, the Be Yours Ceiba I've got coming in HAS. NO. CHARACTER. I just saw her and she was so full of her own unique character that I had to get her. Now, her vibrant character that I have no name or story for haunts my dreams.

This hobby is so awesome. It's forced me to be creative in ways I never expected or thought possible and it's really helped characters come alive for me. I really hope it's the same for everyone else.

P.S Sorry for the super spiele! XD

 

I do both. Like many bjd owners, I write stories of my OCs based on the dolls that I have. Not sure if its considered as "shelling", but I used Switch Hwayeon as Kaeya from Genshin Impact.