How often do promo or sales pictures reflect to what you get in real life?

There used to be a thread where you posted the company promo photo next to the doll you got.
I don't know where it is anymore...

 

I should preface this by saying I'm super picky and also only buy dolls blank so I can do my own faceup.

The faceups and angles in promo photos can really hide the dimensions of the face sometimes in my experience. I almost always have to look for owner photos to get an accurate look at what the sculpt is actually like. Promo photos are often only from the front or from a quarter angle, and it doesn't always show a good representation of the profile of the nose or shape of the cheeks or lips. I wouldn't say this is intentional or malicious, since they're trying to show off the best aspects of the faceup and sculpt, but it can be annoying when there's not profile pictures or photos of the blank head. I have wound up passing on dolls because there was no way of me knowing if I'd like the shape of the nose or cheeks or not because there weren't enough owner photos out there and the promo photos didn't show profiles.

 

I generally prefer to get my dolls with faceups unless I have a specific plan for the head. Of the five heads I received with their company faceups, four of them looked just like the promo pictures! And of the full sets with wigs/outfits, I'd say they all looked the same as their company photos. The one faceup that didn't look like the company photo... I've heard Ringdoll's collab dolls often have nicer faceups in their promo photos than what the dolls actually come with. They aren't bad or inaccurate, but I can definitely see when looking at owner photos that I'm not alone in getting a faceup that's not quite as stunning as the one in the promo photos, haha. My two normal Ringdoll dolls both have faceups that look just like their promo photos, though!! And they're very pretty faceups!

I did find it interesting that one of my normal Ringdoll's head sculpt doesn't look quite like you'd think it would based on the faceup (and its one without a blank head photo on its sales page). The company faceup draws the lips smaller than the sculpt itself, with the corners tilting slightly up rather than turned down like on the sculpt. I hadn't even realized until having the doll in my hands and examining her face closely. I imagine someone purchasing the blank version of that doll would be surprised at how different the mouth shape is.

Otherwise, the only other thing I find deceptive is how different resin colors look in real life vs. on a screen, but that's normal for any product you buy online; things are going to look different on different screens and in different lights. I just accept it and appreciate people who share their resin comparisons.

 

Although I usually end up getting dolls second hand without a face-up and end up doing their faces myself, I do have a few dolls with company face-ups. My Dikadoll Minglan has a face-up exactly as pictured (I only ordered his head with a face-up, not the fullset). My Telesthesia Leopard Jun has a pretty similar face-up to his promo pics, but not exact. My Ringdoll White King has been the only doll I got as a fullset thus far (he was a second hand purchase). His face-up looked just like the promo images, but his armor wasn't as shiny as it looked. The paint job was fantastic on it, looks like real metal in pics even though its only plastic, but I preferred the super shiny, almost holographic look it had in the promo pics. Sometimes because of how companies utilize lighting and camera angles, their dolls might look different from how their shown in promo images. I really got used to looking up owner photos of dolls I was interested in before buying them just to double check that I liked their sculpts. Kind of a pain in the butt sometimes, but worth browsing the web just to be sure.

 

As someone who only buys dolls with faceup (unfortunately I'm not talented enough to make my own) I can say that so far they all looked like the promo pictures (I bought from Loongsoul, Ringdoll, Dollzone, Volks and Fairyland).
I've sometimes noticed smaller differences in the wigs (color, length) but nothing serious.

 

Not much at all. A doll can look very different in promo pics and since I used to buy used almost all the time I never really put much stock into that. My own personal taste runs to more realistic dolls besides and there have been dolls I've loved not faced up or faced up in a way that's 100% different from the way the manufacturer does that have appealed to me.

My current project is a LLT Roderich head. If I had just gone by what the manufacturer site shows for that doll I'd have never looked twice at him. They make him look like he's a fey little 14 year old on the LLT website. Some of the faceups I've seen he looks so much older and therefore much more appealing to me. In fact the face sculpt looks a lot like a much younger version of my mega crush and artistic muse for the past decade almost. Given I have a huge artistic fascination with his gorgeous face and have been drawing it for a long time of course I was rather drawn to LLT Roderich's face.

It took me a year to find a LLT Roderich head I could actually afford. LLT's Roderich heads don't exactly grown on trees. He's a very hard doll to get your hands on but I was determined to do it and I know exactly what I want to do with him once I get him here and get him on a body. I want to turn him into a certain character and have some major fun doing it...

If anything it's seeing other people's dolls, their versions of what that particular doll looks like that inspires me, and sometimes a decent resemblance to a real person I like too. The Bowie BJD's I've seen, particularly the Jareth dolls, they inspire frank envy in me as I dearly love Bowie's face and always have. The studio pics, not so much...

 

All of my current OT dolls are Dollfie Dreams and I think they do usually closely resemble the photos but are much more beautiful irl.

 

Personally, I've always gotten what I expected when it comes to doll.

I usually compare company pictures to the dolls when they arrive, whether fullset or not- and they were what I expected almost every time.

If anything, my Charm Doll Vincent looked better than I expected!