Dollzone Originality - Discuss it here.

for reference:

the fleshtone is Volks, the white skin is DZ


This photo was found on the Dollzone site. whether or not the photos were taken by Dollzone isn't known..at least by me...


the differences are so easy. a little sanding, a little added on, it's so easy.

the DZ body is not just a straight copy of the SD16. there are obvious differences, such as the middle joint and the size of the chest. but these are EASY modifications. so really the differences are irrelevent. easily explained away. waht I'm asking is a good explanation of the similarities. why are some parts of the dolls nearly identical in size and very similar in shape??

if DZ hadn't been capable of making the slight modifications they have ( which IMHO they have been lazy with;they could have tried harder) then they wouldn't be around scamming people today.

why should we accept blatent stealing? Volks, as a company and I'm sure individuals within the firm (sorry I have no proof of that) are hurt by this.

An analogy: Imagine you are set an assignment/homework in school. something like, write a line about someone catching your attention. So maybe you find this quote by Shakespeare: "I hear a tongue, shriller than all the music." So you think that's pretty good, but I'll change it to sound like I wrote. So you hand in to the teacher "I hear a voice, shriller than the music." Your teacher would realise that's not your style of writing, even if they might not recognise the quote. But they can't prove it cos, it doesn'tcome up on a search engine. Your friend who had the same assignment wrote "She shouted very loudly and I saw her." your friend's work is similar to yours because the objective was the same, but their style of writing is individual. does my analogy make any sense?


the dolls are uneven at best.


Chinese people are intelligent people who take pride in what they do. The fact that they are being associated with Dollzone I find upsetting. why should a few bad apples...

 

I think that although Dollzone has, in the past, copied the CP Woori sculpt, the dolls they are producing now are all very unique. Like a child who plaigarized once on a homework assignment, theyb should be monitored, but not condemned to only being able to produce copied dolls.

 

I think that is very sensible.

Anyway, I have friends with DZ dolls and I've seen them next to my roommates and my dolls, including when everyone was in pieces to be cleaned and re-blushed (it was mayhem--six dolls apart at one time, lol). The DZ boys were completely different from the kid delf, AR, and DoD bodies. And I'm not deluding myself--I inspected and compared them in person.

Another interesting point that I hadn't thought of before, but my roommate makes dollie clothes. She had to come up with an entirely new pattern for the DZ minis, and not just because of longer legs. There were differences in the waist, hips, and rise--in short, very different proportions. The truth is, they look so distinct, that there would have been no point in copying to begin with.

If you look at most dolls next to each other (I say most, because there are some that look so drastically different...) you can find plenty of similarities. After all, there are only so many ways one can sculpt the human body and make joints that work. If it had been any company other that DZ that put out the new big boy bodies, I strongly doubt anyone would have accused them of copying. I understand that DZ didn't start well, and being more cautious because of that. However, that doesn't mean that everything they put out is a copy. I've yet to see pictures that look similar enough to be copies. They are no more similar than many other dolls are to each other.

It would be interesting to see a big DZ body and a Yukinojo next to each other in person--that would be far more telling.

 

I'm open to the minis being original. I hoped they were, cos copying is horrible. that's why the similarities between the big dolls is particularily dissappointing for me. because Dollzone had seemed to have changed.

it's a shame about this. personally I check all new companies pics to see if i can suss out any copying, (but I never find anything suspicious, which is nice!) but I am more wary of DZ. Could be that we are missing copying from others (I really hope not.) it could be like you eat the salad in a restaurant not knowing it came off someone elses plate, but you don't go to the restaurant where you heard that happens.

 

First, sorry to beat a dead horse, but recently I see people saying that "there is no proof that Lynn was a copy of Woori, I've heard it from other people" or it was some kind of accident!



One of their bodies have arm joints that fit like this:


And their second generation boys have headcaps that don't fit! http://www.denofangels.com/forums/showthread.php?t=67753 They can't make head caps that fit, but they can sculpt the hands that appear on their new 1/3 boy?

 

Doesn't anyone think there's a possibility other companies have copied and tweaked the sculpts? Or am I just too suspicious? I mean....some fake designer things look even better than the originals; I have fake diamond earrings everyone swears are real. No one but the factory workers know what goes on in designing any of these dolls. So...I'm just saying, I think there is a chance that any of the other companies have pirated Volks designs. Ragging solely on Dollzone just seems....I dunno....It just bothers me that no one on this board knows for sure, and this debate goes on endlessly.

Personally, I believe more copying goes on than anyone knows. If it bothers a person soooo much, IMO, they should sell all their dolls and invest strictly in Volks. Because, really, we don't know who has copied and who has not. Many copiers are very skilled experts, and putting together a BJD sculpt is not easy, so it would make sense to make a cast of a Volks or other company for the basic properties, then modify it until it looks original enough. Maybe I'm paranoid, but I know it's a fact that in any very expensive hobby/trade, many 'reputable' places turn out to be nothing more than pirates/bootleggers. Volks was the original. Everything else is a copy of their original concept and principal. That much is fact. So, isn't everything but Volks bootleg, anyway?

 

Yeah, I have been seeing similar comments about the lynn/woori incident. Lynn is an obvious copy of Woori. The picture evidence is kind of hard to refute. I don't need a court to tell me that is a copy. Doll head molds are so intricate and detailed there is just no way you can make such an exact copy by accident. There's no way it was a mistake.

Now the DZ/Yukinojo controversy is a different story. I can see why there is debate over that issue. If it is a copy it's not an exact copy...they made changes. Or perhaps it's not a copy at all. I'm no expert on mold making and how easy or hard it is to make such changes so I'd rather reserve judgment on that one for now until I have more info.

The jointing is another story...DZ did use the same joints. But that's a patent issue we're dealing with not a copyright issue. I'm not sure if Volks could win with that alone. The patent is only filed in Japan and the US, DZ is in China and so the patents have no effect there unless they filed in China too (though I have no clue if China even has a patent department or what it is like). The most I can see them do is try to block DZ from importing to Japan.

 

Actually, Volks has taken a very traditional design idea for "dolls" - ball-joint articulation - and combined it with resin and skillful sculpters and produced their product. It IS original in the same way that the Cerberus Project torso/hip joint is original.

Copying and/or recasting is not being "inspired by." There is quite a moral and legal distinction.

 

I've never seen pics from other companies that have looked particularly suspiscious, though to be honest, it's not what I look for when I see a new doll. However, I spend so much time looking at various dolls, that I'd like to think that I'd notice if there was something blatant.

Another thing to remember is that nothing exists in a vacuum. Everything is influenced by something else. Volks was influences by older jointed dolls (they weren't the first to come up with ball jointed dolls strung together) and other companies were influenced by Volks, and I'm sure by each other. That doesn't mean anyone directly copied even though one might see influences from somewhere else. It's like that in all forms of art. Many artists were clearly influenced by their peers or those who came before them.

In some ways it may be trickier with these types of dolls, because there are only so many ways to portray an attractivly proportioned (I don't necessarily say realistic, because many of the sculpts are at least somewhat styalized) human body. I would think there will be more similarities between these dolls (at least in body structure since their articulation has to work as well as have bodies that look nice and human) than you would get with many other art forms.

 

Since I'm still quite new at this I don't have much to say on the matter, but I do however have a question. There was a few comments on the quality of the resin? Can anyone elaborate on this?

I also want to point out the price of dollzone dolls. Making dolls isn't cheap, so why would they sell them for so much less? I can't help but think "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is".

Personally, for moral reasons, I would not be able to buy a doll from a company I knew once made copies. But thats just me.

 

It's possible, but I haven't seen anything that's made me think that. I would also think that if something were a confirmed copy, that the company copied from would say something. Actually a number of Korean companies sell dolls by other companies as well as their own...AR sells Notdolls, Dollmore sells dolls from lots of companies, and CP doesn't have a deal with Luts that says Luts can only exclusivly sell their dolls. I would think that if there was rampant bootlegging going on, the various companies wouldn't be cooperating so well with each other. Now this isn't to say that copying has never happened or never will in the future, it's just not something that I feel the need to twist myself into a pretzel about because it could happen. Now if something is a confirmed copy, no I wouldn't buy it. I really prefer innocent until proven guilty.

 

It's fairly simple to cast the copied parts in question with a softer substance than resin at first, like a hard wax, which allows you to shave off detailing like musculature or to reshape it. It also allows you to add or subtract size, since you could slice the pieces and either add more wax or epoxy or remove it. You could also make a frankendolly of sorts the same way. Like this doll's nose but that doll's mouth? Chop them out and mash them together. Once you have what you like to your copy, you then make molds from that and cast in resin.

 

I think that most people don't trust Dollzone because of what happened with Woori (me included), so when something like a body that looks even just similiar to another body comes out, of course we are going to get up in arms. I'm all for "forgive and forget", but we do need to be careful with these things, especially when a company has blatantly stolen a mold before.

 

Personally, it's not an issue of 'Volks is better' sort of thing for me. I see a lot of people assuming that because you're against DZ you should go straight for Volks. A lot of other companies do have original doll molds, Volks may be the first but that doesn't mean they're the be-all and end-all or by far the best to everyone. Personally, I only like one of their molds, and two of thier outfits. I'm not a Volks fan in the slightest, but I don't hate them.

I cannot and willnot buy from DZ because I despise copying and personally, their new molds aren't original enough for them to banish my opinion of them. They copied once, it's obvious to anyone who's willing to honestly look at the photos. I don't think they've cleared their name sufficiently enough to deserve my money. A copy is always worse than the original, whether it's Volks or not. They did copy. They're probably still copying in a different way, in my opinion. That's enough to stop me from buying or being interested in them for now. I'll look at new molds if they're in my shopping market, but if I see something they're similar to in a degree that makes me twitch, I don't care how inexpensive they are, they're not for me.

Someone else can buy them if they like, of course. I just hope that person will take into account their previous history and not deny everything they've done before.

 

I didn't see any where in that thread where it said the headcap didn't fit. It's very possible that she just placed it on for the picture without securing it and it slid. THat can happen with even a well fitting head. I've had four different dz boys in my home for face ups, two of which are the "second generation" including a megi. All of the head caps fit perfectly fine.

I belive that copy right law says something about there being an allowance for 30% similarity to another thing so really, it leaves the way to take and adapt and change something else. Once you've put so much work and alteration into something, it's really not the original anymore anyway, but a unique work of your own. I'm not saying that everyone has to agree with me, just that if there is an allowance in the law, you can't really jump all over people for following it. What about the cans that your soda came in? Should we not by Pepsi because it's can is similar to that of Coke? Don't you think Mr. Pib and Dr. Peper tasted eachothers product and adapted the formula when making there own drinks? It's the way commerce works and companies are influcenced. I'd like to see someone give me an example of some product that is compleatly unique and not influenced by something else.

As to the price issue. It's less expensive to produce things in china. Why do you think so many american companies outsource to there? If the overhead is lower, it just makes sense that the product would be less expensive.

 

Actually in the US the rule for derivative work is this:

How much do I have to change in order to claim copyright in someone else's work?
Only the owner of copyright in a work has the right to prepare, or to authorize someone else to create, a new version of that work. Accordingly, you cannot claim copyright to another's work, no matter how much you change it, unless you have the owner's consent. See Circular 14, Copyright Registration for Derivative Works.
see: http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html#howmuch

But we are dealing with a Japanese company and a Chinese company so the laws are bound to be different.

 

The Yukinojo comparisons have already been posted so I'll move right on to how I believe they entirely copied (from what I've heard the DZ mini body *is* taller than the average mini, whether or not this is another half direct half modified copy like Yukinojo, or one where they just looked at the body and sculpted a replica is not ascertainable at the moment) the oldskin SD13 body for their 1/4 sized dolls.

Body


DZ doll on the left, image linked from (I believe) a Chinese forum and link posted on ConDoll a few months ago. My oldskin BW Syo on a Chris 2 body on the right.

Hands

The hand on the far left looks almost exactly like the default SD13 boy hand (which was also on the oldskin bodies)

Using Volks Images/Terms





Photos of the two banners/buttons used by the eBay dealer, first of Heath's face and second of Yukinojo's mouth.



Photo of eBay dealer even using the term Dollfie.

 

I think with the Yjukinojo, it would be best to reserve judgement until Volks' lawyers either proove or disprove that it is copied.

As for the others- the original DZ was definately a company that copied. That is undenyable. But the new heads have all been original, and while the bodies so far are similar, they appear to be a different size to the Volks so I would say this is a case of copying a sculp as opposed to modifying it, *if any copying is proved.*

Personally, I don;t trust DZ, but I would like to think that they have changed.