How important is it to you to have similar styles in face-ups for all your dolls?

I think you're overthinking it. If it's important to you that they match, then they should match. What makes you happy and bond with these dolls should be what matters most. In this hobby everyone is different and has different tastes. There are some that only use one artist for all of their dolls and there are others that switch it up based on their character or storyline or just the change in weather. Personally, because I shell my dolls from my OC's I would like my dolls within each storyline to somewhat match in style. Not every storyline has to match. But then again, I do my dolls faceups most of the time. So they don't look very professional in comparison to the ones that were done by professionals.

 

I like having stylistically different faceups, and I find that it really helps for the overall cohesion of my collection. The more stylized sculpts have more realistic faceups and the more realistic ones have more simple ones. As a whole it keeps my collection in a similar realism level despite having a variety of different sculpting styles.

Also, if I have 2 dolls that will be more photographed together, or are siblings etc, I'll want more similarities between them as well. So it is a balancing act.

 

I like that there is a certain homogeneity among my dolls. But I'm making all the faceups myself, so it helps!
But I think you're overthinking it. You can choose similar artists and not send all the heads to only one artist. About smooth faceup or textured one, it's a matter of taste! Both are nice.

 

Not important at all. The face-up style has to match the specific doll. If that means it's gotta be more "artsy" (for lack of better words) then that's what I go for.

 

I like my dolls to look good together so I do choose similar styles of sculpt and faceup. I wouldn’t say “matching” styles for me since there’s some variance of personal style but I don’t want one to have a super dramatic faceup and another a super minimal one. Almost all of mine have the company faceup but those that don’t I’ll have to find a faceup artist that can do a similar style that fits in with my others.

Having said that though, if I saw a doll I really liked but didn’t have a character for it already I would be less concerned with them matching the others. Most of my dolls are shells of characters in the same world which is why I care more about them looking cohesive as a group.

 

I prefer similar face-ups. It's probably also a side effect of doing the majority of face-ups myself. Like Nick, Niccolo, Az, Percival, and Kasiel are probably the most blatantly my style because they all have the exact same triangular cheek blush shape.

Only two of my dolls have face-ups from the maker. I have a high preference for face-up texture because I think it makes them look more alive and I just like a little of human irregularity in style in general and tend to blush faces pretty aggressively. Sometimes I sell dolls because something about their face shape doesn't gel with how it feels in my hands to paint.

But there's always gonna be some variation since the dolls have different facial features.

 

As far as I'm concerned, each of my dolls has its own 'personality', so each has a faceup to match theirs. It's not that "other things are more important" as your poll states, it's that this is important. Then again, when you have as many as I do, uniformity would be an absolute bore...they would look like a resin military battalion.

 

There's a reason my motto is the tagline underneath my avatar: 'Variety is the spice of life.' I find homogeneity and too much same-facedness rather alarming, even unsettling. It brings to mind movements like the Nazi regime, or others that call for everyone of a certain group to look, dress and think the same.

The thing is: even within ethnic groups—or families for that matter—there's variety in their appearances. They might share certain characteristics, but none (or most, if we're counting twins and the like) are exactly the same.

I tend to think that translates into the OCs (and existing characters) that I have shelled into my resin crew. Each has their own unique eyebrow shape, lip color, iris color, face shape, eye size, nose or ear length/shape, amount/lack of texturing detail, etc. to fit what suits their character best. About the only thing a vast majority of them share in common is having their elf ears tinted with some sort of color scheme. The color scheme they have is determined by their inherited nationality.

Outside that though—I aim to have differences amongst the bunch. Humans come in a variety of shapes and sizes and can still look cohesive as a group. Sameness just starts veering too much into an army of clones for my tastes.

 

I dread the day that I have to have any of my dolls re-faceuped because of this.
I like them to all have very similar, simple face-ups so it kind of kills me that my LE girls all have glossed lips although I can ignore that.
When I got my FCS girl I had them basically do the 2010 standard Megu face-up with the colors tweaked a bit to better suit sunlight but it's basically the same.
It's not even a matter of them all looking good together or not, it's more of I like the simpler aesthetic and feel that times are moving away from that so getting VOLKS to redo their face-ups (while possible) wouldn't even necessarily get me the same result

 

Some of mine match and some don't!

I want to keep my mind open to have the freedom to try different styles

Of course, the ones that match feel a little more like they're in the same world, so they may play together a little more nicely, but I think that helps me kind of categorize projects around them as well.

 

Mine need to be different but cohesive. I would never, ever want all my dolls to have the exact same faceup with the exact same colors, placement, expression, etc. Each doll needs to have a faceup to suit their specific character. However, I have the same artist paint all of them, so that the artistic style/level of realism of the faceups are all the same. Similarly, each doll has their own style of clothing that suits their character, but I aim for a similar overall aesthetic...something like a cast of characters in a film that all have their own looks, but all the looks were obviously done by the same costume director and all fit in the overall aesthetic of the film.

 

For the most part, not important. I wouldn't want an extreme variance, for example a hyper-realistic almost human faceup next to an anime style faceup, but I do all of my own faceups and they're kind of in the middle between realistic and not. I definitely wouldn't want nearly identical faceups on multiple dolls, as that wouldn't fit my individual characters well. The biggest difference in my faceup styles are that some of my dolls have a totally natural no makeup look while others are heavy goth and one girl is very emo with a ton of piercings.

 

To me, not important at all. I do my doll faceup and honestly, I do not see if I have any faceup signature or if my doll have similar faceup. I did ton of research and look for inspiration for faceup but, really, once start working on 3D head things change and I shift to feel the doll. The most important thing to me is the connection I have with my doll and just go with the flow. Nice thread and great question!

 

I don't really mind if my dolls look the same style or not, because most represent specific characters and I rather them looking as accurate to the character as I can manage, than matching in styles. Having said that, I do paint most of my BJD myself, the only ones that have their original paint apps are my first two. I had a third one with a custom face up from DZ, but I removed it a long time ago. I suck at face ups, I don't think I have a particular style when it comes to painting dolls, but I do feel as a traditional artist that you can always tell an artist's personal style to a certain degree (unless they are mimicking another artist, like when you work at a company, take commissions, etc.). Aesthetically, all my BJD are quite varied anyway, so they wouldn't look good together, even if I tried to make all their face ups much stylistically, but it's never really been important to me that any "work together." (:

 

i do all my own face ups so in that sense they will ultimately end up with a similar style but i absolutely don't want them to all end up with same face syndrome.
even in families there can be drastic differences in how people look so i honestly wouldn't worry to much about your dolls haveing to perfectly match even if they are siblings

 

Since most of mine are children I want very natural looking faceups, with nothing that could look like makeup (eyeliner, lipstick, eyeshadow etc.), and I don't like slanted "expressive" eyebrows as I think they're too limiting of the expressions/mood of the doll, I prefer them in a neutral position... so in those respects, I want similarity, but I don't mind differences in style within that. Each of them is a different person, they'll have differing complexions and colourings even if they're related to one-another (my sisters and I are all very different in complexion and colouring, as well as in physical appearance, for example).

Teddy

 

My collection as a whole has some wildly different faceups in it and I like it that way. When I break it down into groups, there are some groups that I want to look more cohesive together and others I don't care. Hall's matte skull look next to Tulip's default Fairyland shimmery, colorful look is fine because even if they're in the same world, they're from different parts of it, if that makes sense. I do like having my group based on my dystopia story looking cohesive, though- they're the lot I'm most particular about for everything. In that group, three are from one company with company faceups, and two are from another with one having the default faceup and the other I commissioned with instruction to make him look good next to his brother (they're twins, but one is albino so having both with default faceups just wouldn't do).

 

Thank you for bringing this discussion to light...because I’ve never even considered it before (and I’ve been active in this hobby for 15 years!) I find all the responses here quite fascinating and can certainly see the validity of all the various approaches. For me personally, it isn’t at all important because I always patterned my crew on an inner city neighborhood, with rampant diversity at every turn, so I created what I call an urban fairytale. This gave me the most artistic and stylistic freedom, which was what I was seeking. With these dolls, I wanted to be able to explore anything and everything...anywhere my emotions and creativity might take me...without being limited to any single face-up or clothing style.

 

My first two dolls had two very different faceups: matte finish vs shimmer powder finish, lashes vs no lashes, natural colors vs purple/pink makeup, and very different styles for painting the eyebrows and lower lashes. They still look fine next to each other so I never thought of the variance as a huge issue.
Even the sculpts I pick tend to be very dissimilar and no two are from the same company.

The one face-up I have which may be an issue is my IOS Valentine since his faceup tends to make him look extremely pale next to my other dolls with their pinky faceups.

I think differences in gloss could be fixed by going over those details with the same gloss/matte finish. But maybe only if you're brave enough to modify the faceup