Dolls as dolls?

While I don't have photos of them (they aren't complete), my little "spirits" group is meant as being at a 1:1 scale, rather than full-size beings. They're small spirits existing in the world, who when they are complete will be photographed in full-size scenes, rather than using backdrops or scaled props for them.

I've seen a number of photos too of people interacting with their dolls (emphasizing the size difference) or treating them as "small creatures" rather than creating the illusion of them being full-sized, and these photos are just as fun to look at as those that do a good job of scaling the scene.

 

I do have a few fairy dolls who are meant to be "lifesized", little creatures that live amongst humans like Borrowers. They aren't character-dolls, but they are in their own scale, and making their stuff out of human things like bottlecaps and coins is fun.

 

Well, I do have a plotline involving all of my doll's characters in which the essences of the characters are stored inside of the dolls and they come to life as whatever creature that they are for the main character of that story when she needs them. It's close, right? ^^

Of course, they each have their own individual plotlines too, but I had wanted a plotline with all of the dolls (and their corresponding characters) that I own together.

 

When I started off with my dolls I liked them to be dolls within a human-scale environment, but these days my dolls are actually my characters so I don't do that as much. I still take pictures of my dolls in a human-scale environment but that's out of necessity because I don't have doll-scale furniture or things like that.

 

I have one doll who is a doll - my little Bajoran here:

She's the doll of my Star Trek LARP character. I don't have any pics of her in the right setting yet - I was going to put her in the captain's chair last con but never got around to it.

 

My dolls aren't characters that live in a world of their own scale--they're dolls. Any pictures I've taken of them always show them in a world that is human scale where they are not.

 

My dolls are just dolls as well. They're meant to look like my characters, but they're not the characters themselves, just like...big action figures or something. ♥

 

All of my characters are dolls! They're dolls, without any sexual orientation and who live forever as beings, modelled on an ideal of perfection. Which is what they are. They have characters and thoughts and ideas. But they're based of doll-ish characters and I totally get what you mean. A lot of dolls are portraits as people or things other than dolls. But I think part of the magic of them is... That they're dolls!

 

I've been planning out my dolls world while i wait for her to arrive, and i fully plan on her living in her own scale world. I don't think i'd portray her as a doll, unless i got bored and did a dolly photo shoot type thing; since that would be adorable xD

 

It depends...Kazumi was sort of a test project to see if I could create my character Coppelia (named after the Ballet) who was literally a living doll, a BJD who had been forsaken by her owner and found her way to her new owner Arashi (my 'character avatar' as it were) but Kazumi's character is a human teenage girl who is a modern day witch...She almost was a ninja but witch is funner.

Now if I were to create Coppelia I would look to Magical Angel MSD's for the posable toes more then anything else. And I would create special backdrops for her...But it would be made to look like her new owner's room or to make my kitchen table look like a stage she had assembled herself. Coppelia's nature is making herself known, the reason she had been forsaken was because she WANTED to frighten her old owner for insulting her and saying she wasn't as pretty as the other dolls. Her whole character arc is letting go of her anger and fear of being forgotten. She is a character yes but she is also a doll. A doll with energy all her own and power she knows how to wield to become a hellish ballerina doll to frighten those she dislikes.

 

Here's a pic of my doll portrayed as a doll:



But yes, usually I try to photograph her as a pretend human

 

With Pete and Billy, when there are pictures of them in a full-scale world, it's because I don't have much environment for them yet, but Vince is my little 'magic doll'-- he has a character, but it's that of a living doll. So while he has some doll furniture to make his life 'easier' (and to give me a place where I can leave him safely, tbh), I also take pictures of him interacting with the 'big world'.

I've taken pictures of him making friends with one of our cats, pictures of him with me, pictures of him trying to use a laptop, a Wiimote, and a PS3 controller, pictures of him comfortably seated on the edges of tables with no attempt at hiding the size-- even pictures of him sitting on his doll carrier!



(I had a beautiful picture of him holding a tiny stuffed bunny and sitting on a dresser, amidst jewelry holders and other human-sized stuff, but I lost it and other pictures when my old phone had issues, so I'll have to recreate it)

 

I don't portray my dolls as 'dolls' per se, but I do photograph them doing stuff all over my house, interacting with human-sized objects and furniture, and generally being 'little people in a big world'. in Gabriel's (Impl Gnaeus) photo stories, he regularly interacts with me, but more as a tiny man than as a "doll come to life". All my dolls live in my world, but in terms of having them interact with things on a human scale, I do it more with Gabriel than with my massive horde of 1/4 size dolls. I do have scale objects, furniture and props for my dolls, but most of that stuff is for my 1/4 and 1/6 dolls. Gabriel doesn't have a whole lot of props of his own, so he's just as likely to try using my stuff.

Gabriel with full-sized coffee (which he had to stand on the counter in order to make), although he does have a cup that's his own size:

Coffee by SapphireStargazer, on Flickr

and here he is standing on a chair to wrap an in-scale present. He stands on chairs a lot

A Present For Élise by SapphireStargazer, on Flickr

 

My dolls are just dolls. I have tried to give them names, but those change whenever I feel like it, and no clothes, wigs, or eyes belong to anyone in particular. They have no backstories or relationships. I just like them as art objects. While I really enjoy looking at photos that people have staged so the dolls look human or human-sized, I would love to see more that show the dolls as objects, deconstructed or otherwise. I was restringing one of mine and had fun taking pics of him holding his own body parts or "looking" into his own head. Like the movie "Toy Story," it amuses me to see the dolls treat each other like dolls, not living things. I don't see many photo shoots like that, however.

 

Some of my dolls are "just dolls" as in their character as well. In one of the worlds that comprise my story's multiverse and where most of the energy is derived from the arcane there exist large dolls powered by magic in crystallized form that are capable of moving and acting on their own similarly to highly intelligent robots, or "living dolls" if you will. These are called "magimechas" and work very similarly to actual BJDs, they are customizable and their owners are responsible with taking care of them.