How important is having your dolls all be proportionate to each other to you?

I'd like to say "it's very important to me that they are the same size to take pictures of them together!" but I don't have one of the same size XD

 

Previously it was very super important. I wouldn’t go for a doll with large eyes because my first doll, Zola Lee, had such small eyes. It became very hard to find compatible dolls, though. Lately I’ve gotten less picky, though. I ordered a Delf Ruby on layaway, and she’s got significantly larger eyes. I think I for sure wouldn’t go for a DD or any other dolls with blatantly anime features, but standard resin dolls with more playful countenance, I’ll go for these days.

 

It's really important to me that they match! When I first entered the hobby, I thought it wouldn't matter to me much, but oh boy was I ever wrong.

I'm fairly tolerant of differences in level of stylization vs realism. As long as we're somewhere in the realm of "realistic leaning, but still with somewhat large-ish eyes and idealized features" I consider it good. Volks, Soom, Luts, etc. I don't mind if the exact sculpting styles don't match.

But scale!! Oh my goodness, the issue of SCALE gives me CONNIPTION FITS.

Spoiler: An Entire Rant About Scale

Okay, so the BJD world at large has a really bad problem with scale. "1/3" "1/4" etc are extremely broad terms, and IMO they're misused. 1/3 and 1/4 are DIFFERENT SCALES, NOT JUST DIFFERENT SIZES, but most companies don't seem to realize that.

Generally, these days, 1/3 dolls are young adult-ish sculpts, and they can be anywhere from about 55cm through about 68cm, right? And GENERALLY, the 1/4 dolls from the SAME COMPANY will be sculpted to look roughly like children in comparison to these 1/3 dolls.

But then, we hit the issue of Size Creep, and the fact that the VAST majority of adult male sculpts these days are at least 70cm tall. 75cm is starting to become very common.

And y'all, most companies 1/4 sized children start looking WILDLY out of scale once the adults get taller than about 65cm.

This is compounded by the fact that a lot of companies put out Adult Male sculpts in the 70-75cm range, and then have Adult Female and Teen Male sculpts that are right around 65-68cm, and then...enter the 43cm children who are sculpted to look not like four to six year olds, but ten to twelve year olds. And what you wind up with are these comically tiny children next to mostly reasonably scaled adults.

And idk about y'all, but it drives me insane looking at it. Sometimes it can sorta work if the adult characters are supposed to be hella tall, but usually it just looks like BJD companies have never seen an actual child in their lives.

(And I think part of this really is that 1/3 and 1/4 are DIFFERENT SCALES. NOT JUST DIFFERENT SIZES. But very few people outside the slim mini world seem to actually view it that way.)

Anyway, even Volks dolls aren't immune to this. If an SD10 is ten years old, an MSD is...not really in scale for a couple years younger sibling, but the body sculpt doesn't fit a toddler. And Yo-SD has the same problem. They're scaled more like the SD should be an adult, tbh. But then...SD17 etc exists...It's very strange and inconsistent, and tbh I think it's where the whole problem began. Because other companies began vaguely copying Volks' wonky scale, and then Size Creep happened and exacerbated the issue, as did the trend towards 10-year-old-ish 1/4 dolls as 1/3 dolls became more adult-looking by standard. (To the point where it's difficult to find a 55cm girl who doesn't have a mature-looking body sculpt. Even if it's LESS mature than the same company's 65cm girls, it's still very likely going to have a slim waist and some boobs.)

Teal Deer; It really matters to me that my dolls look reasonably in scale with each other, and that has caused me quite some grief because the "industry standard" scale doesn't look right to me.

Spoiler: My solution isn't perfect, but it's worked pretty well.

My solution to this problem has been to just straight up swap cm and inches, and go by that. So, by this metric, a 72cm doll (very common size for "uncle"/adult male sculpts - though Size Creep is leading 75cm to become a new standard there) works out to being six feet tall "in universe." This seems pretty reasonable to me, given that we're idealizing things a bit here in doll-world.

Likewise, 65-68cm adult females are easy to find, and fit into scale perfectly.

Now, by this same logic, Volks MSDs and Yo-SDs don't really work, but SD10/13/17 DO. 55cm is right about on target for a ten year old, at least in the US. Unfortunately, as I've already stated, finding 55cm girls with childish proportions is a bit difficult, but it IS doable.

But then what about younger siblings?

My friends, Big Baby BJD are the answer.

Admittedly, this is where I start to fall down a bit. BB is still kindof a niche size, and a lot of them are somewhat too chubby/large headed to fit well with a 55cm ten year old. But some of them do work! Particularly, IME Rosen Lied's Holiday's Child works really well as a younger sibling to Volks SDs.

Teal Deer; Basically, acknowledge that 1/3 and 1/4 are DIFFERENT SCALES rather than DIFFERENT SIZES, and what I actually want is for all my dolls to be about 1/3 scale. The quick and easy way to approximate this is just to mentally swap out cm for inches and see if the numbers still make sense.

Spoiler: But head size and body proportion is yet another stumbling block.

Height isn't the only thing that matters as far as proportion. Shoulder width and head size have a lot to do with it as well. This becomes especially apparent when looking at 70+cm dolls, many of which are Basically All Legs.

Even if the heights are correct, it looks a little funny for a ten year old kid and a twenty year old guy to have the same shoulder measurement...

Luckily, EID/Idealian/Dollshe 70+cm is also a fairly common scale, and seems to be growing in popularity. They look just fine next to SD10! Mostly this is because they're more realistically proportioned over all, with broader chests and thicker bodies than their skinnier, leggier counterparts. Given that SD10s are fairly sturdy themselves, it looks a lot better.

If I hadn't wanted to go quite so hugelarge with the guys, and had wanted to stick to the more common "skinny 70cm" size, I would have been really stuck on child options. I think Dollzone is the only company I've found that sells 10-year-old-ish looking 55cm dolls with narrow enough shoulders and small enough heads to look right next to them. Unfortunately, it also means that Dollzone dolls won't look right in my collection, which is a real shame considering how much I love some of their sculpts.

Which brings me to the issue of head size. Of course, in real life, children have much smaller heads than adults. But honestly? I personally have decided not to care so much about this. It's just not worth the cost to my sanity. So I chalk it up to "stylization" and don't worry about the fact that my SD10s wear the same size wig as my Idealian...though I do draw the line at younger characters having BIGGER heads than older ones.

(Eyes are also an issue, but I worry about that even less than I worry about head size. My Holiday's Children wear the largest eyes in my crew, and I just roll with that. I think with the semi-realistic style I have going on, it works out just fine.)

Teal Deer; Height is only one metric, and it's not the only one you need to account for if you want your BJD to look proportionate with each other. Shoulder width and head size are, in my opinion, equally important to height. But for the sake of sanity, I give myself more leeway with head sizes, and chalk the fact that my ten year olds and my twenty year olds can share wigs up to "stylization."

At the end of the day, I am willing to bend my own rules a bit, at least when it comes to scale. Preferring semi-realistic faces means that I have quite a bit of leeway in character ages, as far as faces are concerned. And as far as body proportions, well...My collection may be anchored on SD10s, but I also have a Feeple60 Erda who I think looks close enough to fit in. His body is MUCH more mature than the SD10 boy who is the exact same height, and his head is very slightly smaller. If I'm being honest, he's not really in scale. But I love him too much to worry about it, lol. So I just handwave it as him being Very Short. (His character is about 15 or 16-ish)

On the flip side, I'm not willing to go outside my semi-realism aesthetic. Mostly, this rule is to save my collection from becoming too broad! I could very easily let myself develop several different aesthetic crews, but I don't have the budget nor the space for all that! So I prefer to keep my collection focused, and just admire pictures of other people's dolls that fall outside my limits.

 

I did something kind of similar--I'm lucky that I don't have any kids in my character group, but I've had to actually invent my own scale and mod heights to work in it. Basically 1cm=1.71 inches in my scale, so my 75cm girl can be 7' and my 52-53 cm mod girl can be 5'. I wound up anchoring my collection on "taller than Vidania" (mod girl) and shorter than Acyra (75cm massive girl). Granted, I'm shelling fantasy characters, so I have a little more flexibility on head sizes/proportions than I would if I was shelling all human characters, but I had to switch which head I used for one of mine like 4-5 times, because she looked out of scale with her girlfriend and their faces were photographed together a lot.

 

Rather important. I like small heads in my crew and many of my dolls are hybrids because I often find that bodies come with too big heads to proportionally fit them. It looks odd if one of them is bobble head, and I've sold a lot of heads purely because they were too large to fit a body that would make them proportional with the rest of my collection.

The bodies of my dolls are all relatively proportional too, because I like when the dolls look good in group photos. I'd not get anything over 72 cm or under 60 cm. (Okay, I have one 59 cm, but she's very curvy so she doesn't look like a dwarf). I'd also not want a very slim doll in that size range because most my dolls have some "meat" on them and a skinny one would probably look underweight next to them.

 

Realism and diversity are important to me at the same time. My dolls embody human figures (mostly) and I need them to be on a scale (becose my story). So I range from 52 to 65 cm for girls and 62+ for boys.
It scares me a little that one of the heads I really need for the story fits a body 80 cm high. This is absolutely out... 70 is for me the max.

 

I like to create characters and backstories for my dolls. I'd like to create stories for them in the future as well so if they happen to be a part of the same world, then yes, proportionality to each other super important to me

 

Having my dolls be proportionate to one another is fairly important to me! At least, as far as my 1/4s are concerned. All but my first 1/4 doll have been from Dream Valley (not necessarily for proportion reasons- mostly because I just love their dolls- but not having to worry about them looking out of scale too much also helps!). They're all part of the same story, and I like to photograph them together, so having them look good together is definitely important to me.

My first 1/4 doll's head is a bit large compared to the others, sadly, but she's very important to me, as she was my very first BJD. She's a Dollzone Lola with a head circumference of 18.5cm, so a whole centimeter bigger than my Dream Valley gang. I might end up reshelling her character later on down the line so that she matches up better, but of course keeping her first incarnation around.

 

You'd think it'd matter but I got over it. I have a character that is 6'4" and his doll is only 65cm roughly because he's so old...now my newer boys are bigger than him and supposedly shorter...not to mention, his significant others are also taller in doll size than they should be character size. I have a problem. But, I've learned to live with it and get creative with photos because realistically I'm never replacing his body...even though I have a love hate relationship with it, I probably never will.

I did base my other characters in his universe (of my dolls) around his height though...so his daughter is a kid delf and his secretary, who is an extremely short adult, is a model delf.

Also, @GammaVector, is teal deer....tdlr? I'm so confused.

 

I don't need my entire collection to be cohesive and proportionate to each other, but I do sort them into different little groups based on their characters and such, so all the dolls in one group have to all look right next to their companions or it'll drive me insane. It's also important to me that their height differences in doll form reflect their "real" person height differences as closely as possible, and the general aesthetics of their sculpt including head/eye size also have to look proportionate together.

 

i have two different categories of dolls I.E dolls from one storyline that need to aesthetically and proportionally match so they actually look like people from the same universe, and then i have dolls i own just because i like them regardless of size, style, aesthetic they don't to fit anything except my own tastes.
i like it this way so i never feel like i am restricting myself from buying something i love just because it doesn't fit in a pre existing universe.

 

Yeah, that's exactly what it is. Too Long; Didn't Read = Tl;dr = Teal Deer

I've been on the internet too long, lol

 

Size preference, I don't really have a scale I want to stick to! But aesthetic-wise I want to keep a more elegant, flowy theme. Er..depending on what characters are in what story/world. Multiple sections of multiple dolls.

 

I don't bother too much about proportions, though I favour smaller heads.
I have the tall group which are 1/3 sizes inc. a dollzone 1/4 who has the proportions of an 11 year old.
I have the MSD group which encompasses all the rest.
Then I have my Doll Chateau Amos who has four legs and moves easily between the 2 groups.

 

Not at all. I think that it's fun to see the dolls in different sizes interacting with each other.

 

Omg they're all so lovely! I'm getting excited for mine all over again!!! Oh wait, I still can't clothe them in the beautiful things they deserve (sigh)

 

Considering all mine are for a story, I'm kind of really angsty about them all being in proportion XD

 

I have my dolls separated into story groups, so I prefer for all the dolls in a particular group to look proportionate to each other. If I have a character that is shorter than the others, I prefer to find a doll in the same size range rather than move down a size (for example, I would rather go with a 58cm and a 65cm to show height differences than a 60cm and 45cm).

 

For me, it’s not important.

 

I have MSD and SD, and yes, MSD can be only children in the composition ((