Doll proportions vs human proportions??

Interesting chart. The proportions are not realistic on a lot of bjds. I have yet to see an overweight or short legged bjd. Most bjds are on the skinny/tall side and all the cloths and accessories are made to fit this. I myself love my long legged slender boys but I know they do not reflect reality, they are an ideal. It does not bother me but I know some people would like more realistic proportions. The most realistic that I know of are the Iplehouse dolls. They are gorgeous but next to my other dolls they look very solid and it's harder to get good fitting cloths for them.

 

Most bjds have really big heads and narrow bodies. We don't tend to notice it much unless the head is realistic (such as MiniMee's). I don't mind my stylized delfs/volks/etc...being out of proportion but a realistic head I would want on a body that is within realistic human proportion to it.

 

I would like my bodies to be realistic and I don't mind so much the heads being larger or a little smaller.

 

It really is the height. BJDs are based more on fashion model sketches, which can be closer to ten heads overall. Great for fashion, but makes for a gangly nude.
Check out Zaolls, or Alice in Labyrinth's tiny Aya. If you can find one, the now out-of-production Limhwa's Mano and Bimong's Dandelion are relatively close to human proportions as well. If I think of any more I'll edit them into this post.

 

I think it's down to head size in addition to realistically sculpted facial features. Look at Fairylands C-line, while they are quite "stylised" in facial sculpts, I think they are among the most realistically proportioned BJDs out there, because real people proportionately have really really tiny heads. Take a look at some of the 1/6 scale action figures (like Hot Toys) sculpted after real people. They're roughly the same height as a 1/6 Yosd/Littlefee but have a head the size of a puki! XD

 

There is a wonderful show called How Art Made The World which basically explains when it comes to statues, and dolls, we don't like perfect realism and accept unrealistic proportions that accentuate the parts we like. Big heads and eyes mean cute, long legs, especially long shins, make the figure look more graceful. Anything too real and too human falls in to Uncanny Valley and turns us off.

 

In realistic male proportions, the width of the head fits three times in the width of the shoulders. The torso is three heads tall and the legs are 3,5 to 4 heads tall, depending on whether you use the 8 head standard, or the 7,5 head standard.

Most BJD's have long legs and short torso's in comparison to realistic proportions and they have very big heads. It's one of the reasons why I turned to hybrids very early on. When you find a body that is larger in comparison to the head, the proportions tend to look better. My Volks Williams, for instance, is placed on an older Soom Supergem body, instead of his normal SD13. The bigger Soom body, makes his appearance look more mature.

 

Yeah, for women, 7,5 heads is the usual proportion standard. To be honest, al humans are approximately 7,5 heads tall, but in art we use the 8 head standard for males, because it makes them slightly taller than sculptures/paintings of women.

For the dolls I buy, not so much, although I do prefer somewhat realistic proportions. For the dolls I sculpt, I'm very much inclined to look at my own appearance. It's bugged me for a long while that there aren't any full-figured women out there, only the very slim ones. Since I'm a bit chubby myself, it felt... odd, to say the least . To me there's beauty in every shape and size and I would love to have more choice is a buyer.

I could, but I'd have to make some first (I hardly take pictures anymore). It's getting dark outside now, so it'll have to wait until tomorrow.

 

I think it's an aesthetic thing. Long legs is usually considered elegant, but with heads, I dunno why they tend to make them so big. I'm more into realistic head sizes, so slowly I changed most of my dolls. I tend to prefer 7-8.5 head size for sd17 and 70cm.

Volks sd13 are very out of proportion, I had my Heath on a 68cm and indeed he looked more mature.

I tend to dislike female doll bodies because they are extremely unnatural.

 

Big heads and large eyes fall into the scheme of childlike characteristics, which makes us instinctively go for them / feel positive towards them. It's part of the maternal instinct's mechanics (and also why we like puppies and kittens and other small animals with big eyes). True childlike characteristics require a certain chubbiness to go with the big head and eyes, but especially the latter are a part of the current idea of beauty anyway so I guess that's where the XXL eyes on some more stylized dolls are coming from.
I wish they'd make more realistic female bodies, too. The only ones that look okay to me are the Iplehouse ladies and the DIM 2.0 for younger girls ... pretty much everything else looks "off".

 

Me too. I love the old Dollstown 15y body, and the Unoss body, but those are about it. It's one of the main reasons why I hardly have any girl dolls around.

 

That's a hard question... I guess it's because dolls do not have to be of average human proportions, there are no rules for sculpting, and so sculptor can pick out whatever proportions he likes and make a doll which represents just what he finds beautiful. Not all of them go for them to be as human-like as possible. I personally will have to sculpt my own doll (which sounds beyond exciting btw! i have to try it) to think that it's all perfect, otherwise there will always be something that's different from my taste. Talking about doll vs. human, i think it'd be somewhere in between, 'cause i like some parts more realistic and some parts in the way that real people rarely have.

 

They're very unrealistic. I did an experiment the other day while deciding my next doll would be Iplehouse SID Stella, because she's so curvy and thick next to my other girls. After sizing her up to her "real life" proportions (multiplying everything by 3) her measurements are roughly 34-23-34, she's 6'1" and wears a size 5.5 shoe. Pretty unrealistic sizes for the most realistic company out there! But this just further proves the dolls are modeled after art proportions, not realistic human proportions.

 

Probably the same reason why what in real life would be a very feminine woman gets called a "man" in the BJD world. (See: Iplehouse Stella. When she first came out there was a small, but vocal group of people who went around and proclaimed that she "looked like a man". Not that they wanted to hybrid her onto another body and make a male doll - that's fine, whatever rocks their boats. But this claim was that she was simply too masculine to exist as a female doll).

The answer is, agreement reality. When the entire doll hobby is filled by stylized, bobble-headed, narrow-shouldered, youthful dolls, anything that's even slightly close to realism suddenly seems so tall and mature. (It doesn't help that almost all BJD's have extremely long legs compared to their bodies, which makes them look taller than they actually are) Ditto on the femininity. When the "feminine" standard is teensy chins, non-existent nose bridges and giant doe eyes, anything that steps into the territory of more realistic mandibular endowments suddenly becomes OMGLOL!MAN.

For the smaller dolls, I think it's because a lot of them have pretty thin bodies and long legs. Little kids have chubby little bellies and short stumpy legs because their skeletal system hasn't grown yet and they pack a whole lotta baby chub everywhere. Remove that, and you suddenly have a body that reads much older. Then you slap on a ginormo head onto that body, but your mind justifies it as stylization, and then you judge the age by the body build and not the head-to-body proportions, because, hey, that's how you tell short adults from kids in real life.


Personally... I like a range. I greatly enjoy the really stylized dolls. I think they're awesome. But I would prefer there to be more options of realistically-proportioned dolls as well, because I've got room in my doll collection for both, to suit my different moods. (And heh, I definitely collect dolls to look like me. I took a step back the other day and went "hmmmm, all of my characters (and dolls to suit them) sure do have some big ol' thunder thighs...." That's okay though. I like my thunder-thighs. They are powerful and sexy ^^ )

 

Idk but I just tested on my 43 cm, using a photo editing program and selecting her head to copy and paste next to her, she's only 5 heads tall according to that measurement. Her head is pretty big though, and it doesn't bother me at all, personally.

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/silks_dolls/11434081186/sizes/o/in/photostream/

Here's a pic of him. I'm just giving you the link, 'cause I'm not sure if I'm allowed to show pictures in a Gen discussion thread.

Remo is far from finished: he needs a smaller wig and I need to shorten his neck. His head/body proportions is now about six heads. Still not realistic, but I like the look.

If you're going for 7 to 8 heads, there's another problem. My own dolls (FreakStyle) are created with this ratio in mind. When sculpting them, you have to keep in mind that the wig will add a lot of extra volume and so you have to make the head a little too small. With wig, they look great. Without... they're off.

Iplehouse EID's have a similar problem. My Kamau is a beautiful doll, but he needs a wig, or else he reminds me of one of my childhood nightmares where the people around me had heads that kept shrinking.