Engineering priorities?

Maybe we can get people to try this long-forgotten BJD GAME -

Can Your Doll Do These Poses?

 

I like to have a good balance between nice aesthetics and good posing. I don't have a lot of double jointed BJDs, but I do use the joints extensively if I have them. I use the torso joints too. But I won't automatically veto buying a BJD just because it isn't double jointed. My first BJD was a Volks SD13 boy, and in a way, I measure all other BJDs I buy against him. As a contrast, I almost sold my ElfDoll Red because he posed so badly, but he's so beautiful I finally forgave him and just dealt with it. So I guess you can say aesthetics comes out a little ahead of posing for me.

What don't I like? Joints that look like THIS:



However, overengineering kind of annoys me too. I handled a friend's SD17 body briefly, and while he looked beautiful, I could not figure out what a lot of his engineering features did! And I have a lot of experience with restringing and sueding dolls, so I've taken plenty of them apart and put them back together again.

I would say Volks is my favorite company for aesthetics and engineering overall. But one of my favorite BJD bodies for aesthetics first is the original DollZone b70-001. I love the torso, its long elegant legs, the beautiful hands, and even its weirdly hypermasculine feet.

I would love to see jointed hands with a skin covering!!

Linda S.
galatia9

 

Oh man, I'm such a sucker for well engineered bodies. Fairyland bodies have me hooked. Seriously. Their minifees and their FL65 line.

I don't think anyone's actually made my ideal doll. It would probably be something like Dollshe's DSM35 bodies, but more realistic and wider.

Or, you know, someone can just give the fairyland bodies the dollshe butt joint, neck joint, and an additional shoulder joint (like in their FL70 bodies), and I'll be somewhere floating in doll-heaven. XD

Right now, I'm kinda at the point of, if the body does not pose as well as or better than my minifee, I will not even consider it, no matter how beautifully sculpted it is. >_>

 

Apparently looks are the most important for me, too.
Flexibility/poseability is right behind that, though, and some double jointing is a must.
Stability is usually something I can fix on my own, so I don't really worry about it. But yeah I need a body that balances, aesthetically, with the head I put on it and if it looks too bobble headed or too skinny or whatever, I don't want it, even if it can do yoga with me. Like the LoongSoul body Love that thing but it's too skinny for the character.

One thing I'd add to the list, and it probably goes between stability and posability, is how easy it is to restring. I've dealt with some nightmare elastic skeletons and it can make or break my bonding ability with a body.

 

I tend to be drawn toward aesthetics first...and then pine for better engineering lol. It seems like, with few exceptions, just about every face I'm drawn to is attached to a body that is not exactly known for it's posing. Which is why i have an EID and a few Limhwa boys here lol I have a couple of hybrids, but I don't really enjoy hybriding and don't do it if I can help it, so I generally just live with their posing limitations or do the best I can to help them along with wiring.

I would LOVE it if all of my dolls could:
-pull their knees to their chests
-slouch
-have a full range of motions through their arm and shoulder joints

Stability is always nice, but, as a couple of people have mentioned, I always feel that's a problem I can, generally, fix pretty easily myself.

 

Ahem to that.
Aesthetics is absolute top priority to me, with poseability hot on its heels.
I like dolls that are at least balanced and can give me at least a nice slouch whilst standing. My SID Claude is the perfect combination; he's gorgeous whilst also being able to pull off some pretty awesome poses. Not the epitome of posing a la minifee but it's enough for me!
I will admit though, I own a few Soom MDs and that body's total lack of posing is beginning to get frustrating. I didn't mind at first but now I'm beginning to realise how much I'd love it if these boys could do more than just about wobble into a standing position and awkwardly crouch.

 

The engineering and pose ability is the most important for me. I hardly ever touch my iple girl though they are beautiful, whereas my shiny doll girl gets played with a lot. Shinydoll is the bomb. Steady, amazingly lifelike and flexible, and the body is really lovely generally, although the breasts are a bit unnatural and the hands are very unattractive. I do love my volks girls though because they are so steady and reliable. Of course dollshe pure body is wonderful for the boys, with heaven faces as well.

 

I'm sort of the opposite - I collected static PVC figurines for a while, where poseability was a non-issue (although stability is always important), so I tend to err towards aesthetics when I make all my doll choices. There's a lot of restringing, sueding, wiring and simple modding you can do to increase poseability, and companies are coming out with more double-jointed bodies, but there's not much you can do to improve a poorly sculpted and chunky body aesthetically, unless you're prepared to do a lot of modding.

That said, there are some things I expect. I don't need one-legged standing or pretzel contortion, but my dolls must be able to stand and sit on their own and hold simple poses with their arms. I don't mind joints showing, but bodies should look good both clothed and naked. It's very much a Venn diagram type tradeoff between stability, flexibility and aesthetics - if a body isn't good in at least two of those categories and passable in the third, I'd be reluctant to buy it.

 

I must say my priority is posing as long as it "fits" the heads well. If the body poses like a dream but looks ridiculous with all heads I wouldn't even bother. Most of the time my dolls are clothed and it's really hard to tell if a body is ugly if it's completely clothed. And obviously, if it poses well it better be stable. If it can't be stable enough to stand and hold a pose obviously it's useless.

I guess the last is probably aesthetics. As long as the hands aren't crap I'm pretty much okay with it. Though I must admit I prefer thinner looking bodies compared to the chubby looking SD13 bodies.

I have a B&G boy body and I must admit I don't like it very much. I've got to do something to make it pose, probably sueding. It just looks stiff and unnatural which bothers me a lot. It can't even sit and look natural. He constantly looks insanely uncomfortable. T^T

 

This is a difficult one. I guess I wouldn't buy a body that poses well if there are things about it that don't please me aesthetically. However, those things are rarely the joints. Pretty much all my dollies have knees like the ones that are getting reviled here, and though you won't hear me say that they are pretty, I love them for the poses they allow my resinoids to take (and hold). Things that will put me off are ugly hands and feet, weird breasts and strange proportions (though if the strangeness turns out to be pleasing, like my DZ Aurora's absurdly long legs, I'm happy again) - for example, the strangeness of the breasts on the new Supia body puts me off. I can also tolerate a degree of bobble-headedness (I think that strictly speaking, all my dolls are bobbleheads), but not too much of it.

Engineering turns out to be much more important to me than I thought it would be when I entered the BJD world. If possible, I'll have a body with hip- and torso joint, double-jointed knees and elbows, a mobile head and mobile hands and feet. I'd hate for a doll not to be able to sit or stand on its own - these are basic requirements for me - and when a doll keeps a nice, natural pose, it makes me truly happy. Slouching is encouraged .

My least mobile doll is my DZ Aurora. I regret the fact that she can't fold her arms or cover her breasts in a natural way because her arms are too long, but I find she makes up for it with gracefulness and a sort of otherworldly quality that my more normally proportioned (and more flexible) dolls don't have.

I'm planning a Soom SG girl - for once, based on aesthetics only. I'm well aware that she'll pose badly compared to my other resinoids, but I *think* I can deal with it. I wonder...

 

Rosslyn pretty much nailed my body requirements. For a 1/3 doll, I prefer a 3-part torso (minimum) and I'm a sucker for double joints. I'm a lot less particular about my tinies, as long as the torso moves nicely.

One thing that drives me absolutely nuts is torsos that get huge gaps when the parts are rotated. Like IpleHouse dolls, for example; I've never handled one but I've seen pictures in the galleries. You can only twist the torso so far before it looks like the doll has been bisected. (It's probably more obvious on the guys, because of their wide chests and their tendency to go around shirtless.)

Of the dolls I've owned, my favorite is the LoongSoul Bloom (58cm) girl body; it is the most flexible and has the best range of motion. Not quite the contortionist caliber that Feeple65s seem to be, but good enough. (If you're not familiar with this body... the LS Bloom bodies have a 5-part torso - chest, stomach, pelvis, and 2 butt parts.)

The butt-joints aren't the most aesthetically pleasing or natural design ever, especially from the front, but they give her a wider base to sit straight on, and they add a lot of realism to the way she poses. I like the butt-joints because they mimic the way the human skeleton deforms when we sit (your pelvic bone rotates to a more horizontal position) and it allows her to pull her legs up to her chest without having a joint on a part of the body that doesn't bend like that (e.g. swivel joints). I love swivel/mobility joints, mind you, but this is a novel approach to compensating for the fact that dolls aren't squishy like people are.

 

I love dolls that pose well for me that takes good precedence over aesthetics. Or does it? I actually find amazing feats of engineering aesthetically pleasing in and of themselves so maybe the two go hand in hand for me.

I was never particularly interested in Iplehouse dolls in the first place, the men's face somehow bugged me a lot of the time and the older female bodies are disgustingly, falsely busty and bow backed in my opinion. There are some pretty sculpts and I did certainly understand why people like them but at the same time most of them were just never really my thing. However, since seeing how badly they pose and what extensive modding often has to be done with them I find myself struggling to make sense of why people would possibly spend so much money on dolls that can't even do the most basic function of sitting correctly.

On the flip side, the Twigling Ingenue blows my mind. If I saw the head on its own I suppose I'd find it pretty but a little too sad and pouty for my tastes and would quickly pass it by. But the body-- my God!-- I love that body so much and in loving the body I have found myself becoming more and more interested in the head as well and it is now definitely on my 'want to buy' list.

I think I was very lucky with my first doll, Nancy (DM Hwi Ki). I didn't do any research into her, or carefully choose a sculpt, what happened it that my best friend, whilst living with us, decided that she hadn't attached to the poor girl and was going to sell her, out of curiosity (I hadn't even realised that she had a female sculpt) I asked to see her and fell instantly in love with her beautiful face and figure and asked to buy her on the spot. I've been lucky, therefore, that she does pose so beautifully and so natural and I'm constantly fiddling her and posing her over and over because I am so enamoured by how lifelike she looks. The only thing I intend to change about her, now that I know more about dolls and mobility, is giving her mobility thighs so that she can properly cross her legs. But all in all I thank my lucky stars that I've ended up with a girl who is both beautiful and poses so well.