Have trouble looking past the pictures?

Some of the companies certainly don't make it easy. I wish it were standard practice to post the blanks both frontal and side views along with all the showy dressed up photos.

 

I actually have a harder time deciding if I like a sculpt or not based on the blank head. I prefer to see owner photos, as many as possible, with different styles and qualities of faceups (i.e. anything from really poorly done to "wow I don't want to know how much that cost"). I have trouble with that sometimes, though, because sometimes I end up interested in a very unpopular or relatively new sculpt that maybe only 2 people on here have (at least that have posted photos...)

 

Only three BJD sculpts I own were ordered by me from the company or company vendor. I do much more research for those dolls, including finding blank pics of the heads and entire bodies. None of them are popular. I think I’m the only one so far with the Angel of Dream pregnant body.

I love to buy second hand dolls because the seller usually has loads of photos and selling photos aren’t made to be glamorous. There are other perks to second hand dolls but that’s a big one for me.

 

Yeah, i agree with the research part. If i'm interested in a doll in find, i tend to scour the internet (Flickr, Instagram) for owner photos and blank shots before i make a decision. Mostly because with a blank head i can see the faceup i'd put on it better.
Dolls with no owner photos and few company photos are like a dark level of hell for me. D:

 

yep! especially when i'm trying to look for a certain resin color but then i get hung up on how the company photo looks (particularly if i'm not a fan of it!) i try to look at the blank doll or, better yet, owner pictures who have done/commissioned their own faceups so i can better imagine what different details will look like! unless i instantly fall in love with a doll, i definitely like to see a mix of different looks before deciding.

 

Blank face crew.

 

Like other people before me have mentioned; I also like to look up side to side comparison photos on instagram/flickr to decide if I like the sculpt and to get a feeling what kind of face up fits a specific sculpt.
I always do a lot of research before deciding on buying a doll and so far I've never regretted any purchase ... though clothes/wigs are excluded from this statement

 

I used to have a bad habit of falling in love with a doll without first seeing it blank when I first got into the hobby. I've gotten way better about that in the last couple years though, especially since seriously getting back into it. I always check out the blank first, then I like to see a lot of examples of what others have done with theirs before I make a decision. It helps now that I have a few characters I want to shell, too.

 

I absolutely can relate to this.
Right now I'm looking to buy a second doll (I'm trying to resist haha) and I'm having trouble with the topic mentioned.
I really love looking at the dolls with wigs and face-up so it's a bit hard to get past it.
When I look at the blank heads I really have no opinion, I know that a lot of this has to do because I'm a newbie but I'm trying to work on this.
After seeing a lot of comments I think I will pay more attention to the blank head rather than the pretty makeup and hair that they have on the pictures.

 

Blank head photo is a must before purchasing. I have seen lots of attractive photos from the companies or doll owners but looks really difference in reality. Quality of offical makeup, photoshopped sales photos are traps to make people spend money.

 

I honestly can only remember buying a couple of dolls just because of the initial company offering (and these were very unique and extreme examples, a Dollzone flower girl and a Doll Chateau spider girl.) All the rest were shellings of pre-existing characters, so it was more a case of “recognizing” my character in a sculpt. For this, the company photos are very helpful at a glance, but then I research owner photos and blank sculpts to be absolutely sure it will be a perfect fit for my character. And gotta love the second-hand marketplace for some really great finds with non-enhanced photos as well! I’ve eventually sold dolls due to refining my collection over the years, but I’ve never regretted a purchase initially.

 

I'm pretty terrible at this myself. Sometimes it's easy, because I just fall in love with the exact doll in the company pictures, and then I just get a fullset. But when it comes to shelling my own characters, hoo boy...I still feel like I'm not that good at "seeing through" faceups or assigning personality to a blank sculpt, so I often have to feel a little spark that "this could be my character" when looking at the default company pics. But once I feel that, I definitely go hunting for blank photos and owner pics if I can find them. I tend to like more obscure dolls so sometimes it's impossible to find owner pics, but I've always lucked out in being able to find blank pics.

The one doll I have who looks completely different from the company photos, to the point where I'm pretty sure they're photoshopped, is my Asleep Eidolon Fay. I think if I had bought the doll based on the official pics, I might have been disappointed, but I bought him secondhand so I knew exactly what he looked like beforehand.

 

I'm generally pretty good at looking past a faceup, but sometimes the faceup and camera angles can make a doll look totally different than it does in person, so I try to see owner pictures too, if I can.

If I can't see past the faceup, that usually ruins the doll for me. I'm not a fan of default faceups (and the very few times I have ordered a doll with one, it looked nothing like the default anyway and was pretty disappointing...), so that can actually make me dislike a sculpt I end up loving once seeing it blank or with a custom faceup. I wish every doll site showed every sculpt blank and at least a clear front and side view. It would help a lot!