How well did you doll fit the initial blueprint/sketch of your character?

The initial sculpt; the face is quite good. 75%, I'd say. The body is a little buff, even for a warrior, and he might have been better on the slimmer FID body option. And the tone of the resin is a touch too dark. So, overall, 40-50%, if that.

Don't get me wrong, FID Bichun is a beautiful, beautiful doll; he's just not quite there for the boy I'd pictured him for, nor the other one I was supposing for him. So, he's in his box, and I'm looking again. At SD+ sculpts, as they are really what I've become comfortable with.

The boy in my profile picture, Ethan, is a lot closer to perfection. He was, until he went away due to needing the shelves for my growing K-Pop collection. But there is another who is... I'd say... 98% perfect. He's off-topic, though. But the sculpt, company face-up, chosen eyes and wig; he's just too good to be true!!

 

One has been spooky perfect, one has been very very good but needs a different faceup, and the third unfortunately was way too pretty to be the character, and will need reshelling.

 

So far my SDs are really close to home, in the 98% closeness for Dante (LR Andre) and Kitten (Impldoll Aurora). A couple of my MSDs are close in spirit which is why I like them, even if they don't fit quite what I envisioned.

 

Um, well I think the dolls I've made to be pre-existing characters are pretty close and I find myself tweaking their looks to edge them closer and closer to what I think is an ideal fit. So I guess, they are not too far off the mark. Though I say that, and the dolls are certainly more realistic in style than the actual, actual characters (which are anime characters) but to me they are satisfyingly close to what I want.

The dolls that I've made to be my own characters...hm. Maybe that's a different story. For a long time in the hobby I purchased dolls and then made a character for them after the fact. It's only sort of recently that I've started making dolls into characters that I already had existing in another form, either from stories I was writing, or Dungeon & Dragons characters I've played, things like that. And I have to say that for my own characters there is A LOT of like...trial and error? I guess? Where I KNOW what the character looks like in the original form, but then I'll put something on the doll just because it fits and I have it. And then after a while, well...I guess that's just what the character looks like because they've been wearing it for a year.

Also, I find it very interesting that when I go to choose a doll to be a character I have always been very particular about the sculpt. But then, I often find myself looking at dolls I already own and discovering they would look really good as such and such character! And then I find myself looking at doll shops and seeing a sculpt and thinking, "Oh! That would also work very easily as such and such...I already have a such and such...but that would also work." So it's very funny to me how much the image can be mutable. Hehe.

 

I’ve worked very hard over the years amassing a rather sizable (to me) collection of 45 BJDs. Each and every one is a predetermined character from an imaginary fantasy world. I simply refused to buy anything without a pre-conceived character in mind from the very beginning, and shelling became more a game of “recognizing” the character than anything else. I knew I could do my own face-ups so that wasn’t an issue. I could also sew their costumes myself which was a great help. And I could create displays for them to live in that expressed their overall personalities as well. This all worked out great...with two exceptions...victims of the dreaded “dolls that jump character” syndrome! After their arrival, these two absolutely refused to become the characters they were believed to be when I purchased them, so I had to come up with new characters “after the fact” instead. But still, 2 out of 45 isn’t bad, and I came to dearly love the characters they became so it’s all good.