Dolls of all colors.

So far I've picked at least one of my dolls' resin colors based on the characters/stories I had in mind for them. As an example, my first doll's name is Enzeru Shoukin, which loosely translates from Japanese as "Angel of Forgiveness." The story behind her is that her father had done something horrible in the past, and her being born with alabaster-white skin was a sign that his sins had been washed away and he had been forgiven.

I also choose resin colors simply because I find them beautiful- like my green boy and my sky-blue girl. Both of them have hooves, so it played into the story as them being of a different species from the others. I also like to have diversity among my dolls' colors, as I think it tends to make photos more visually interesting. Overall, I currently have 2 dolls in white, 2 in natural (one's technically NS-P, but you get the idea) and then the one in green and the other in blue. I'm planning on getting another elf girl and having her be natural-skin, mostly because I'm REALLY wanting to get a Rosette body for her and they're only offered in NS.

So overall, I choose based on a combination of story, aesthetics and availability. In cases where the story doesn't necessarily dictate a certain skin color, then I'll choose based on the other two factors.

 

I own dolls in a variety of colors. I am drawn to the not-found-in-nature colors of green and purple and red, for example. I have a doll who is a beautiful shade of dark brown, as well. Generally I prefer "colors" to "NS" and I don't own any doll that is white. (Well, I do have two anthros who are a pale grey.)

I'm not sure why I love the fantasy colors so much, but to be fair I like fantasy-styled dolls, too. My green dolls (I have four) all have pointed ears. My two red dolls have horns. My two purple dolls have pointed ears, too. Certain colors seem to resonate with me, and they have been wildly fun to create face-ups for! It has been a real adventure collecting the right colors of pastels and watercolor pencils to create the amazing face-ups that my colorful dolls are sporting.

I also own several "NS" or peach-toned dolls. I enjoy creating face-ups for them as well.

My mother (also a collector) has just handed me a Beautiful White RealPuki who needs a face up and blushing, so I'm going to do my best with her. I suspect that this might make me desire a white doll of my own, though. (Grin).

 

I think it all depends on the sculpt. I like the Bobobie Pandora in dark tan but I hate her in white or 'normal'.

 

All my dolls (except one) are normal skin, and I intend to get all my dolls in that skin color. For me it just seems to be the best and the pretties color for the face-up I like. All my dollies face-ups are quite simple and natural so they show just enough on a normal skin doll. My dream is to own at least one tanned doll, just because I fint that color skin so beautiful as well BUT I don't know how a tann doll would look like amongst my NS dolls... Maybe then I should get two tanned dolls at the same time

 

I go for NS because I'm not a fan of doing faceups on WS dolls and the fact that they yellow scare the crap out of me. I had a WS, 1st doll 2nd hand so I didn't choose the colour, but I sold cos it yellow to much for my liking. Right now I'm in a tan mood, so my last 2 purchases were tan and I hope to get more.

Usually, it's character based tho.

 

When I was little, my mom used to buy me dolls of every nationality. So I'd like to have a couple different ones now. I don't know if I'd ever buy a doll of an unnatural skin tone though. I suppose if I liked how it looked?

 

I wanted to ask this question for a while, too! There are so many gorgeous skin tones out there, but the majority of dolls I see appear to be white or natural skin. The character-based choosing of skin tone makes total sense, though I wonder how many of us just picked something at random... My first doll was white because it was the color given to me, and my second doll will be whatever I can get a good deal on (though I would love a tan doll). Perhaps that's a little unimaginative, but I want to develop the doll's character after I meet him/ her, if that makes sense. So the skin tone will be random...

 

I really do think it comes down to character. Most of mine were bought to fit existing characters and their resin color reflects their ethnicity and backgrounds. I've noticed though that I don't tend to go paler than normal skin, but that isn't to say that I won't someday have a character that warrants that skin color. It's just most at the moment range the spectrum of chocolate to peach.

 

I agree, character is what really dictates the color of their skin. I'm not a fan of white skin since I think that gives them a more ethereal look which does not fit my characters since they are meant to be normal humans. Perhaps if I ever wanted to do something more angelic I'd go for white.

Today while I was browsing through fabrics for a dress I plan to make for my new girl, the guy I'm currently dating was with me and he was trying to get me to buy shinny/sparkly fabrics full of sequins and wanted me to go for a "Diva" character. When

I told him that it would not work with my very quiet and polite little girl, he added that maybe I should get a tanned doll so I could make her a "fierce diva" as he put it. Maybe I will someday.

 

Hopefully this is not too far off this topic of discussion but does it bother you that most bjd companies refer to what could be termed "caucasian" skin color as "normal skin". As a person who is of mixed ancestry (Native American and Irish American) I sometimes wonder at the names of the skin colors. I mean a since large portion of these dolls are made in Japan, China, or Korea, what makes NS "white" skin? I know that in Japan, there is a tradition of painting the face white for geisha. In Noh theater characters can have red, white, or even black face masks. But why the NS name for skin colors in the "caucasian" color spectrum?

I guess what I am asking is if anyone feels as if the nomenclature for a "caucasian-like" skin color to be referred to as Normal Skin perhaps a little racially insensitive? (In my own collection which is mostly cat anthros most of my dolls are snow white, tan, grey, blue, or lilac skinned. I have only two dolls that could be termed as "caucasian" skin colored. )

Maybe it just feels that way because so many of we Americans are raised to be sensitive to the different races of people that make up the county or at least try to be sensitive to the issue.

By the way...my FAVORITE doll out of my collection is my off topic Kaye Wiggs Koneko. She is a lovely blue cat girl who goes with me pretty much everywhere. The second would be my Lilac skinned Kaye Wiggs Layla elf followed by the rose grey Luna Tamer cat. So as you can see the normal vs white vs pink vs tan skin does not matter much in my doll world.

 

I based my first and so far only doll on a character that I am playing in a D&D game, she is a drow elf, so naturally she had to have dark grey skin and pointed ears, which was really hard to find, till my friend pointed me to Resinsoul and the Mei doll. Still waiting for her arrival.

I think that if I buy more dolls in the future, I will base those too on characters from our D&D games, which might be hard because many of the races in D&D looks rather peculiar.

I do like the white dolls though, and I'd really like an excuse to get one at some point, maybe I'll play a moon-elf next

I guess that is a little strange, then on the other side some of the skin colours that are tagged as "normal" or "natural" skin are a lot closer to Asian then Caucasian or it lies somewhere in-between the two. It doesn't really bother me, though I do agree that it is a little strange. Just out of curiosity, what would you call that colour ?

 

I think it could get pretty difficult to name the colors given the rainbow of skin tones on the earth. Perhaps I would call the caucasian tones 'caucasian light, medium, or dark' depending on the shade. And perhaps the same for the Asian tones, Asian light, medium, or dark if the company had all those colors. I just get a little uncomfortable calling only fair caucasian skin "normal" just as I would never refer to an Asian as a "yellow" skin tone. That smack of racism to me.

Like I mentioned, as a Native American, I take great offense to the term "Redskin". I am more tan than red but it has more to do with the dehumanizing effect of being called "red". However, I do have some African American friends who call themselves "black" tho I don't feel comfortable doing so. Maybe I am just too sensitive to the fact skin color classification in this country in the past and even in the present casued great pain for whole groups of people, my family included. My dear American Indian grandfather served his country in the Army but was not even considered a citizen of this country when he did so.

 

I like the way normal skin dolls look the best. My favourite skin tone on a doll I own is my NS dollzone. However, I find that you get better bargains on WS dolls as they seem to be less wanted and it's also way easier to match resins or fudge matches. I love tan resin (I have one tan doll) but matching it is a nightmare. I hate the body my tan doll has and unless I fork out a fortune to get a body cast in her exact colour, she's going to stay that way.

 

I think it depends on the sculpt, but I usually like white skin better.

 

I love love love tan dolls!

That said though, I'll always match my dolls to the character first. Often though I don't really have a choice since most of my dolls are either Soom or Volks. By default many of the Soom msd releases are WS, so I have a lot of that around. At first I couldn't stand it, but over time I've come to like how I can kind of give them a more customized skin tone with blushing. Will say though that Soom WS is the only one I like so far...others have been too sterile white or had the wrong undertone for me.

Also, as far as giving a doll a faceup myself, I find NS to be the most challenging to work with. It's hard to get the blushing right! I'm also not so likely to buy a colored resin (blue, green, etc.) as I think it would be more challenging to dress them, but there's a first for everything I suppose. I do have some characters that could possible go colorful

 

I am a real sucker for white skin since I love the gothic style a lot. Although most of my dolls are not alternative, I still like to keep them pale, like an insurance that they still are in fact a little goth in my mind without actually having to be gothic and dress in that style.
Also I have realised that dolls of the same skin tone look best together (unless you have a lot of different, normal, white, tan all jumbled together). I like my dolls coherent and fitting together lookswise.

 

I pick what looks best for the sculpt and the make-up. Usually I like white best but tan skin is a close second!

 

My first 4 dolls were all normal. Two were second hand dolls so I was going for sculpt rather than skin tone. My other two were my choice... I think normal was less scary than white in my head. That sounds strange especially since I'm the palest person I know! (Seriously some of my dolls are darker than me)

My fifth required white skin by the company; limited edition what can you do?? I love his paleness and it works into the backstory for him. However, he's REALLY papery white and looks ghostly with my other dolls. He's also my fantasy doll in my family so he was going to stick out regardless.

I chose normal for my sixth and seventh because I just preferred them in that skin tone. Also one of my floating heads was suppose to be a resin match with that company so I wanted normal skin for comparison. Also, I didn't want them sticking out since they are normal dolls not fantasy.

 

I try to use normal skin all the time. Usually normal yellow but sometimes normal pink. I like it because I think it's the most natural

 

For the OP's question... It depends. XD I don't really have a favourite 'skin tone' for my dolls. At the moment I have a WS BBB/RS, a custom purple BBB/RS (I painted him), an NS-pink DZ doll and a NS-yellow DF doll. I plan on having many different 'colours' because my dolls are based off characters I've created in written RP games with my best friend and none of them are human and not all of them have 'normal' skin colours (see purple doll). But I don't really have a 'favourite', as I am just as likely to find character A beautiful with pale pale paaaaale skin and character F stunning with his caramel tan. It just figures on the character.

This.... Is an odd question because I notice that not all 'NS' skins are 'white' or Caucasian (I really want to know what jerk came up with that word, too, it's weird). I have two different NS tones at the moment and will likely have more, and they couldn't be MORE different. My NS-pink is very pale and creamy, very much like you would see on Victorian ladies who covered up all the time and carried their parasols. My NS-yellow is much darker and looks more tanned than my NS-pink when they're side-by-side, even though he seems to have more of an Asian skin-tone. NS covers a lot of varied skin tones, because not all companies make the same colour for NS, though a lot try to match the ones from Volks or Luts (I've also seen them try to match Dollzone and Dream of Doll or Soom). And the 'Caucasian' spectrum of colours also comes from EVERYWHERE, its a big melting pot of races, so there are going to be some people who match those colours.