Does anyone else *not* have characters or personalities for their doll(s)?

I don't have a character or personality for Druzi, yet. He only has a name, and only that because it fit my "theme" for my dolls. I'll come up with something eventually tho.

However, I don't think of the actual dolls as having personalities, or talk to them or anything. To me its just a bit of resin I can use for 3d art with no artistic ability necessary. The dolls represent characters, just like the art on the cover of a book might. I don't attribute emotions or sentience to the art.

 

As much as I try, neither of my dolls have stories, characters or even personalities.

No matter how I look at them, they are still just lifeless dolls, beautiful... but still not alive.

 

Corvas is very quiet about herself, Wolf is a little more talkative....but not much.

 

Lately I have been buying dolls without faceups. Now I realize that it's easier for me to think of "who they are" when I have to think of how to paint them. When the dolls come with default faceups I admire their beauty and love them, but I don't have the same sort of imaginings about them as I do when I am struggling with painting them. They are more static out of the box when they come with a faceup.

 

Just a name. When my doll head gets a body she will get a personality with it, I'm sure...well, I think so anyway, we'll see.

 

Names are slowly coming to me, but other than their default expressions I really don't have any sort of character set out for them, nor any backstory. I want to be able to just change them and not worry about if it lines up with who I've made them into in my mind previously.
Besides, I've never really been into writing stories.

 

Most of mine do have names, strong personalities and backstories, storylines they fit into, predetermined appearances, and so on... however, I do have a small set of fantasy tinies that really don't have much more than names (that are, at best, weakly attached to them). They're more about a look I'm trying to bring together than any sort of solid personality or storyline; they've been quite mysterious to me, because of that! I honestly prefer them to have some kind of personality and storyline, so it creates an interesting situation with that group, but at least so far something's working out with them.

 

For a long time all of my dolls had the whole thing: names, interconnected backstories, definite characters, and a fairly unified aesthetic. Recently, however, I have a couple of dolls that do not have backstories and who are a bit outside of the realm of my other dolls visually. Though they do have names. One has a certain style that I like to dress her in (very cute and all color-matched) around the house, but in many of my photos of her, that doesn't come into play. Then there is my Chicline, Ophelia. Other than her name and faceup…she doesn't really have anything, not even a wig or clothing…and that is quite intentional. In many ways I like to keep her as a sort of blank slate. I love to take photos of her, but she really is more about form than any kind of story content for me. Those two dolls are now in my top three favorite dolls of my collection, which I find quite interesting.

 

I guess, being a long term doll collector, I have never thought in the terms of any doll being a character unless it is a portrait of someone. However my first bjd that I have commissioned is going to be Jamie from Outlander as I Love that series and that particular character. I haven't received him yet but he will be SID Claude sculpt and I will eventually get Claire to go with him. But otherwise I just think of the dolls as the "look of them" not as certain characters. I was surprised that so many in this genre think in terms of Charcters - wonder if it the Anime roots?

 

I have 3 that don't. I wanted them too - but nothing stuck. I also didn't try very hard. I have my core group that very much do have a story. But all the dolls I've collected since them are just pretty to look at and it's okay.

 

I have a hard time even naming them. It's not that I lack creativity to do so - it's just when I got I to the hobby I didn't realize there was that part to it. It actually shocked me when I was speaking to a girl at a doll meet up who had a whole back story for her doll family. She was so excited but I had no idea what she was talking about. It's not that I though she was weird I just had no clue. It's helped a lot joining this site to get an idea about the character thing.

When I first found bjds I thought - wow you can change that dolls look and personality in a few minutes with a wardrobe change. I thought I could be creative in the faceup department or by making my own clothes. I totally wanted one. It didn't occur to me that someone might have a fixed personality in mind for their dollies when they got them.

I'm starting to name my dolls now - if that's all I ever do.

 

I imagine a general personality for each of my dolls and style/dress them more or less accordingly, and each one has a name, but I don't make up characters and then "shell" them as dolls, and I don't do backstories or elaborately detailed character profiles and wouldn't consider any of my dolls an "OC". Some of them are loosely based around pre-existing fictional characters-- my April Story Adrienne is my version of Snow White, for example--- but if they have a character in my imagination at all it is as dolls living in my house, not as the avatars of a story.

 

All of my dolls have names and a style of dress. They get their personality usually from their expression or how they dress but it's pretty arbitrary. They don't have back stories, except that one of my dolls is an alien in human disguise and another two are sisters, but it doesn't get any deeper than that. I'm not really into the creative writing aspect of the hobby, I just love making them look pretty and making tons of things for them all the time.

 

Dolls interest me because I can flesh out characters in my stories, but I've been charmed by names and stories given by the official companies, especially dolls that on the site are depicted as a couple. I don't think I could give them new names or a new story if I felt the company had already done such a beautiful job, so while they would have a character, it wouldn't be my own if I ever owned one of those dolls(not likely, I have too many characters to fill!) and they would simply be called their official sculpt name. Does that count?

I like to give emotions and personality to anything with a face, so it would be very hard for me to see the doll as a pretty shelf decoration because I'd just fall back into my old habits!
I also have a stuffed anime looking seal(Mamegoma) called Mooch because I've determined he's a lazy person and he contributes nothing, being the cute freeloader he is. He has a wife much larger than him(he's keychain size, she's pillow size) and any time one of them gets lost, it's because "they had a fight" or "Mooch felt like partying that night."
Currently Mooch and his wife(Puff) are on shaky ground because Mooch would rather hang out with that pretty girl doll. He currently sits on her lap on my shelf because he's perfectly doll sized.

Creating life in lifeless things is fun!

 

I don't. I mean they END UP with some sort of personality based on their appearance, but, I have never had a character in mind that I needed to "shell" into a doll.

 

At the moment I have three dolls without characters or names. I originally had my two Rosette girls (Delilah and Marguerite) cast as Victorian schoolgirls named Adelaide and Sophie. But then I bought Armeria, and decided I want my girls to be centaurs. Which is going to mean sculpting them centaur bodies and redesigning their characters and names a bit. Truthfully, they never had very developed characters anyway, so I doubt much will really change (the relationship between Delilah and Marguerite will stay the same, and their overall personalities will be similar, just in a different setting and with the added complication of being non-humans!)

Until I have my centaur body sculpted, I don't really feel 'right' trying to give my girls personalities. They aren't really 'whole' yet, which makes things difficult.

 

Mine have names, and I assume some level of personality comes from their clothing choice or how they might be photographed, but really, I don't give them ivolved backstories or deep character profiles.

 

Hm, no. All my dolls have personalities. If not when they start, when they are finished a personality develops.

 

Personally I really can't keep a doll if it 'doesn't' have a personality or name and a backstory... it's... I'm probably weird like that...

 

Unless I get a freebie, though sometimes even then, my dolls always have a name and a backstory by the time they get to me.