Future BJD Trends?

I've been in the hobby since 2008.
I'd say the first big shift I got to see was an overall move towards bigger dolls (65-70cm). I remember when the first EID got released, what a miracle that was!
Them leaning towards more realistic, western faces was also pretty new. That was also the time we slowly started moving away from plastic wigs, platform boots and frilly ita dresses.
On the other side Soom's fantasy dolls really started to take off too (with Sard, Beryl, Heliot, Amber etc.).
So the first years of my hobby dolls got a bit bigger, and both realism and full fantasy got more popular. Also, bigger range of available skintones!

Then was the next shift. Suddenly especially 1/4 female dolls, often made by smaller artists, became crazily popular. With them you also had western independent artists suddenly entering the field. Before that the hobby seemed firmly in the hands of Japan, S. Korea and China. Oh, and MNFs of course crazily rose in popularity too. To me that was quite boring, because I neither like the size, nor girl dolls, nor that specific aesthetic. But I know a lot of people really liked to see this change. Doll Chateau had also come to be, and with it some other companies/artists that would lean more towards otherworldly things and concepts we had never seen before.
Fashion size became a thing too, especially once 3D sculpting became more viable. Now realism and more mature faces was not only for bigger scales anymore.

Right now I'd say we have another size shift, at least at one specific front: 75cm guys. Since they are crazily popular in China, and a lot of the cheap clothes are being made there too, you see them now everywhere as a collector of mostly bigger male dolls. Pretty sure this is how the regular 60cm collectors felt when 70cm guys suddenly became a thing and dominated the market

However, I have to say though that the last years overall felt very stagnant. I had hoped that by now certain things would have become more common that I wished for years ago, but things are still as frustrating now as they were back then.
Female dolls stopped growing at some point. No matter how tall the guys get, the gals stay around the 65cm mark more or less. Male dolls are still a rarity in smaller sizes too.
Body options are still very limited, and have not changed much at all. At this point I'm already grateful when a bigger guy does not have a six pack.
Skintone varity got better, but we could still do more there.
Age ranges are crazily limited. I thought by now old(er) faces would have become more common, but God forbid a doll looks older than 25
I am yearning for those 45+ mature faces.

To get back to your question, what I think will keep growing is the market consisting of smaller artists selling 3D sculpted and/or printed dolls. Since 3D sculpting and printing became easier and cheaper to do, it really opened up the world for people that could not traditionally sculpt or realistically invest into casting tools and materials. Unfortunately that also means the market is flooded with people that sculpted something for 2 hours and immediately put it up for sale/sell prints without knowledge or care for proper printing results. Stolen models are also a huge issue on that front. Got its pros and cons, clearly.
Otherwise I genuinely don't know. Like said, the last years it really didn't feel like (compared to the big shifts I experienced before) a lot actually happened that was truly new. Like the 75cm guys look exactly the same as their 70cm equivalents, they are just taller. There was a way bigger visual shift between 60cm and 70cm dolls. Yes, fashion dolls exist now, but they are often just shrunken down versions of bigger dolls/looks that already existed. The cutesie 1/4 dolls have remained the same for years now. Quality standards/level of detail for wigs, eyes, clothes and co. have been higher than before, but also pretty much have reached a ceiling there a while ago already. Angora wigs and urethane eyes are nothing unusual anymore.
None of this is really comparable to something like the Soom Sard craze and what it started.
Everything since then felt more like it was adding onto what was already there, or just joining long existing trends (like Dream Valley making similar stuff to Doll Chateau).

 

I think the 2D style is growing! It has taken off a lot among Chinese doll makers, and I'm seeing them trickle in to the line up of bigger studios. Even the mature guys we are seeing in different scales have a bit of a "webtoon" illustrative style to them (sorry don't know the right terminology, just a style I see associated with webtoon!)

So, in 5 or 10 years... I don't know that our hobby evolves that fast over 5 years! After all, the dolls take a long time to make in the first place, and then longer to reach buyers. So I'm thinking doll makers will stay on the same path for a while. But I imagine that as the illustrative style grows bigger, there will be some pull back. There is a lot of fondness for oldstyle these days, so I'm wondering if we will have an oldstyle revival! Trends tend to be cyclical, so I'm thinking oldstyle, realism, artsy-frail, and toony, repeat and repeat That's my prediction! With a new twist on it, of course, just like clothing fashion trends, there's always a new twist.

I think the mature 1/6 will have its big heyday in the next several years. More small artists continue to produce mature 1/6, and a few bigger studios too. And if these dolls become more available, I think it will appeal to the group that like the aesthetic of big dolls, who simply don't like their size. They are not new at all, but never got too popular yet, and I think we are heading that way!

 

My hunch is that since the hobby is so big and diverse now, the era of "everybody has to have a...." level of trends for the dolls themselves is probably over.
I think we will see trends mostly in accessories, both in what is made at home (like the eye making and the 3d printing already is) and in the styles, since they tend to follow real world fashions to some extent.

I wouldn't be surprised if we keep seing an increse in body type diversity and age diversity in the dolls themselves, but more to fill out the missing parts of the spectrum of humanity, less in a massive homogenous trend, sort of way.

 

Since this hobby has been around for a decent amount of time, I foresee a wave of nostalgia kicking in sometime soon. Throwbacks and stylings similar to the beginning/early part of the hobby. Or maybe that's just me hoping and wishing.

 

As someone who had an interest in BJD in the earlier years of the genre (I was a lurker for a long time on here, 2003-ish, before getting my first resin head sculpt and finding the courage to make an account around 2005). After a decade later, I lost interest and now I consider myself mostly a (casual) lurker once again. So take my 2-cents with a grain of salt. (:

I feel like there won't be any large or notable changes, for a while if any. Mostly because there's so much variety already (aesthetic wise), that what isn't yet made is probably too niche/obscure to be done any time soon. I am not referring to anything related to physical attributes, because that's dependant on supply and demand of the particular culture of the artists and not all of us are from the same culture as most of these BJD creators. We can't expect all the world to find the same exact things "attractive." The only chance to see less popular features, might be through 3D artists.

Whatever is popular in Asian countries in future years will probably still heavily influence sculpts, since most well known or popular BJD creators are Asian. That's probably something that will continue to be the case, there were always BJD artists from other countries, but Asian ones seem to remain even after changes and some evolving with trends (obviously, not all).

Engineering wise, there are always things that can be improved. As someone who knows zero about engineering, I can't say exactly what those improvements could be, but zero strings would be something I would love (that would make them not strung dolls, I know. I just don't particularly love strung together dolls). DX

 

I really hope to see the trend of mature 1/6 continue (looking at you Granado-with your amazing tiny men!)
I’ve also noticed a lot of shifting trends in joints lately. I feel like back when I started there was more debate of many joints/possibility vs aesthetic, and now I feel like double joints are the standard (my single jointed dolls feel… outdated? “Vintage”? ) and there are more and more dolls leaning into jointing styles from artist and porcelain bjd aesthetic- things like shoulder joints, neck joints, two thigh joints, hands, feet.. you get it

Overall I’m here for both “trends” (okay, this might actually just be my wishlist)

 

I'm really excited to see the future trends for mature minis/fashion size dolls. I knew right away when I became interested in the hobby that 1/4 size was my ideal size, but maybe not necessarily my ideal proportions or aesthetics. I'm really happy to see more choice of dolls with 14cm and smaller heads and detailed body sculpts. I hope there will be room for height and body type variations as well for this size.

 

• More "androgynous" bodies, taking inspiration from the Senior Delf Muse and the Switch Labyrinth. Dream Valley released one recently as one of their angelic sculpts and I suspect we will see a standard human version of that body in the future.
• More dolls, especially male dolls, in the 1/4+ scale range, 46cm-54cm, like the Model Delf51.
• I think we'll end up saturated with 1/5 and 1/4 artist dolls with an extreme pear shape figure and stylized features. The entire market for said dolls will implode in a fireball of IP theft drama which no one will survive.
• The trend towards male dolls with very wide mouths will be further exaggerated until the most popular sculpts have lips the entire width of their faces.
• Fantasy skin tones will become even more popular. Major brands like Fairyland will release dolls in shades like fluorescent yellow. Wars will erupt over whether the color is significantly different from "Banana Yellow".
• Soom will release a 1/1 scale male doll. It will be 6'2", weigh over 100 lbs, and come with interchangeable anatomy.

 

I want all of this to be true.

 

*grim masculine voice* It is the year 2100. Bjds as we know them are but a faint memory of the-before-times. The only male bjds stand a whopping 95cm tall with a head to height ratio of 1:15, shoulders as wide as a freight train.

In all seriousness I wasn't planning to weigh in. I find it exhausting trying to predict the future. Your tone evolution was just very humorous to me @SputnikCentury

 

I have seen a trend of more “chubby” BJDs amongst western small artist dolls recently, and I personally love it. I hope it continues and expands.

 

I think, with 3D printing, we're going to see way more doll artists/companies coming out. Specifically more indie artists than companies. Not only that, but I really think 3D modeling is going to completely change the time frame for which these dolls get released. It used to be four to six months, sometimes even years from companies, but this is changing and it's going to stay that way. In a way, I feel like the shutdown of so many companies due to the recast problem is actually going to turn around with making dolls becoming more accessible. 3D modeling is breathing new life into the hobby.

 

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I've been seeing quite a a rise in the animesque anthropomorphic doll design and crossovers with blind box properties, so maybe the new trend would be to smaller, more cartoonishly stylised dolls? something similar to tinyfox, I mean.

 

I’m in another BJD community that is currently just flooded with posts of those little vinyl jointed blind box centaurs, etc. They are absolutely making a huge splash. I assume some of it accessibility (through price point) but also, blind box is just appealing! Didn’t there used to be sort of a blind box strung resin doll? Those little guys who hatched out of eggs…

 

Wishels?

 

Yes!! I think some of their details were a surprise, right?