Dolls of your favourite characters

Well, I'm not sure if this is related, but I mainly got into BJDs because I wanted to shell my favorite character. XD However, he's not a real life actor, he's a character from a book. I can't speak to potential legal issues for using someone's face to make a doll, but I think you should be fine so long as you're doing it for your own enjoyment and not making a profit out of it. In that case, it'd just be the same as fan art.

Although, come to think of it, even if you were looking to sell your work (or what you pay someone else to have done for you), I think you'd be ok? The artist Noel Cruz is well-known for making strikingly lifelike doll portrayals of celebrities and he sells them.

 

I guess you should look more into the minimee BJD topic if you're interested in BJDs that represent different actors and the characters they are famous for. Those are custom made BJD heads that some artists make and cast in limited numbers, usually fit SD sized bodies, but there MSDs as well. I've seen plenty of Supernatural characters, Alan Rickman as Snape, Tom Hiddleston as Loki an many others.

 

Glad if this can be of any help.

As for me and having BJDs of my favorite characters... Well, I have my own characters to shell. And I also have a tiny SakuraPaper kitty painted as Nyanko-sensei from Natsume Yuujinchou. And I think that is enough. I don't think I'd be comfortable with BJDs representing actual people alive or dead, even if it's the characters they are playing. That's way too far to making idols out of celebrities, though I'm not that religious or anything. Too specific for me compared to the characters I've created myself. Of course, I do understand that even company sculptors probably had some real people for inspiration, but I don't know the people and it's fine with me. Although collectible figurines representing particular movie characters is somewhat a different story since it's kinda the purpose of those figurines and the thing that makes them special. I even thought of starting collecting some years ago, but then got my first BJDs and the urge disappeared.

 

I immediately though no, I don't. But then remembered I really wanted a Jack Frost from "The Guardians" at one point.

 

I think as long as you're creating a doll just for your own collection, there's no problem with making it resemble a living person. The only time it might be a problem would be if you were selling it commercially and using the person's name to promote it (a private sale to someone else is okay).

 

Character dolls are my weakness-- I love seeing all the different ways that people bring their faves to resin 'life', whether it's based on an actor, or an illustration/cartoon, or just how different people imagine a book character to look... especially with the variety that can come in when there's no single 'right' way.

There are so many characters I'd have in doll form if I was rich, haha. I mean, I love having dolls of my own original characters as well, whether they be resin bjds or just customized OT dolls, but creating fan dolls just feels special somehow, like... it's a way of having a representation of a character who means a lot to you, the way that buying an official action figure would be, but it's ALSO a way of expressing your love creatively, like a form of fanart, when you put together the costume and face-up yourself...

 

I love OCs, but I'm also a sucker for character dolls. I believe it should be up to the person making the creation if they want to do something original, or base a doll of an existing source. Both modes have their own levels of creativity needed to bring the creation to life, and both are valid in my book.

I personally prefer to do fiction character based dolls when I do them over real-life celebrities (I don't every really get attached to any celebrities to do a doll-version of them), but if they're done with respect and awe towards the celebrity in question, I see no issue with it.

I think the line between where it crosses from being inspired by an existing character/person or a tribute to said character/celebrity/etc into plagiarism/copyright issue territory is when they're mass-produced for some kind of profit. Fan projects with limited quantities are fine in my view, but it definitely crosses the line for me when it is for the mere purpose of making big bucks of an existing property without permission (pretty much the same as my view of recasting: it's stealing from the creator).

On a more specific note, I recall coming across some made to order celebrity based dolls on Dollshe's site, and the sculpt for Leonardo DiCaprio looked pretty close to his likeness. My sister would've been all over that back when she was still obsessed with the Titanic movie. They also had several other interesting concepts in the works.

I hope this stayed OT