Hybrid-just go for it?

You definitely can't use photos alone to determine a resin match. Between lighting, cameras, and editing, it's completely unreliable.

I've made an educated guess about resin match in a roundabout way. It's true, sometimes you can't find someone who owns resin from both companies to directly compare them. But if you can find someone who owns resin from Company A who can compare it to a popular resin color (like Volks, Luts, etc), you can then look to see if anyone owns resin from Company B who can compare it to that popular company. Basically, if you find that Company A is a little yellower than Luts NS, then discover that Company B is also a little yellower than Luts NS... there is a chance that Companies A and B are similar. I've done this before with pretty good results.

The thing with hybrids is that you absolutely cannot expect perfection. If you get a perfect match, you're incredibly lucky! I've never simply guessed at a resin match, because like you said, it's an expensive mistake. And dolls are not as easy to resell as they used to be, depending on the company.

Another thing you can consider as an advanced hybrid method, is getting a body that you know is pinker than the head. Giving resin a diluted pink dye bath is pretty common for old yellowed dolls, so there's info to be found about which brands and colors of dye work the best. I've used diluted pink dye to tint parts to match and the results were good! I wouldn't recommend this to newbies, though, but if you've done any kind of customization, it's worth considering as an easy way to force a color match.

Good luck on your quest!

 

I don't own many full hybrids of this kind but do own a few floating heads, that borrow my tallest BJD male body (and a ton of OT hybrids). To me, the most important part for hybridizing is that proportions don't look too off (unless the doll is highly stylized, then I don't care about proportions). I don't really mind color matching, because I can always paint the face to look the way I want. Unless you are getting a company face up and are absolutely in love with it; because then you would have to match the body instead, which is not hard but certainly takes a lot longer than painting a face up or dyeing a head. Color matching is not really the end of the world, if you don't mind having to paint one part to match the other. If that does bothers you, and the plastics themselves must absolutely be the same exact color, even before they are painted. Then, you'll have a hard time hybridizing most any doll parts. You can always shade/blush the head sculpt to match the body (or any part really), or the other way around. There might also be face up artist who do color matching for you, if you don't intend to paint the doll yourself. Hope that's helpful, from an old-fart-amateur-hobbyist, that owns way too many dolls, but not that many BJD (despite being one of the more ancient members still active on this forum). (:

 

There are still options if the colors don't match, especially if you like the proportions!

• Dye jobs are another risk but they can be done.
  
• Many people will have a head blushed to match the body. The reverse too, but a head is smaller.
  
• Take into consideration how you plan to dress the doll. Turtlenecks and collars will cover the most noticeable point if the resin doesn't match. I had a girl with an older head that had lost the pink undertone, but when dressed with her pink body covered, the difference between the hands and face was unnoticeable.
  
• I've noticed that wig/eyes will affect the difference too. IE a pale head with a blonde wig seemed to match an even paler body once put together under natural light.

I'd consider how much you want the hybrid to work VS the expense (including needing to pay someone for the mod work if it's needed and you don't feel comfortable doing it). I've had a lot of dolls, and I tend to regret not getting the ones that would have cost more but been closer to what I actually wanted instead of settling on something easier.

 

Unless it's a sculpt Loongsoul says they plan on discontinuing or is limited edition I wouldn't think that you'd need to worry a ton, they normally give plenty of advance notice before axing the sculpt.

That being said I hybrid a lot of dolls, really the only thing that I think is worth worrying about is the proportions (size of head compared to shoulders/body - you can compare the measurements of the body the Loongsoul head normally comes on to the body you want to use) and whether or not the head fits on the neck peg as those are some of the hardest/most daunting modifications to make. If you plan on commissioning a faceup a lot of artists are capable of mixing up some paint and spraypainting a head to be the same color as the body, so I rarely consider resin matching to be a concern.

I've also found that if resin matching is important, white resin is usually a safe bet when hybriding if both companies' white are just stark white.

 

Have you tried asking dealers like Alice's or Denver Doll? They might have some samples on hand they could compare for you.

 

I only have one hybrid, but IMO, just "going for it" is not the safest solution (though perhaps it is the only one). If the head is about to be discontinued, how about buying the head and look for a body later? If someone owns a head from the same company and that body, it would be worth a shot too, since you can see how the neck fit and the proportions?

If you can find that proportions somewhat matches, IMO, you could just mod the rest. (you can widen/lengthen the body somewhat by sueding with hot glue and using a bit more than necessary: it will push the joint a bit out of the socket. It could be enough to correct small differences if you are not too picky. I widened the shoulders of my hybrid by about 0.5 cm that way, and it was all that was needed for me to be satisfied)

Even the neck can be thinned and shortened with sandpaper or thickened with apoxie, the neckhole can be widened or made smaller with Apoxie, you can lenghten the neck with a neck doughnut. I had to widen the neckhole and reshape it that for my hybrid, and while I dreaded the process, it was actually very feasible.

I would not overly stress over color: you can blush a head to match if the difference is great, if the difference is smaller (of if you want to preserve a faceup), blushing the neck and hand to match could be enough (and more realistic IMO)

 

This, plus how important is an EXACTmatch to you, and why?

Most real people have differences in colour between their faces and bodies simply because the face is always exposed to sun and weather whereas the body is mostly covered by clothing (I don't even have the same shade along the full length of my arm - at the shoulder where it's almost always under a sleeve it's much much paler than it is along the forearm, wrist and hand, and my neck and chest are much paler thn my face - and if you look at most people you'll find the same).

So why would you be bothered by a slight mismatch between the doll's head and body colour? And even if they start out exactly the same shade, by the time they head is bushed and shaded, there will inevitably be a difference anyway.

Yes you can blush the body to match but, in my experience, body bushing is a waste of money if you're going to do anything with the doll other than leave it untouched as a display piece. The body blushing wears around the joints, and is scraped off by clothing fasteners and jewelery, and very quickly looks awful:
Body blush damage by Teddy ., on Flickr

For my money, I'd say just pick the body you like best, in a colour that that looks close-enough and don't sweat it.

Teddy

 

I just have one hybrid and he stayed without a head for about a year I tried him on all the large boy bodies I have and the closest match to him was my DOD in normal skin which was indeed a surprise as he is a IOS white skin but he does have a lot of blushing on his head so it's quite hard to even see he is white skin.
Anyway in the end I bought him a body it was a cheap old Volks in white skin I got off the market place here and I just went for it having no idea if a Volks body was going to work well with him having found no information on that match. And yeah I got lucky body wise it's a pretty good fit with the neck, not perfect but it's never going to be 100% and even the proportions are pretty good also and colour match the body is more of a cream white but I intend one day of giving the neck tattoos to hide that more but it's really not to bad of a match I think I got lucky.

 

I only have one hybrid, the match looked close in pictures, but was really far off once the head got to my house and I put it on the body. I had to lighten the face-up considerably to get a match. Previously I had a different combo, pale skin and a yellow toned head and with that one I found it easier to tone the pink body yellow.

The most important thing for me in a hybrid is the proportions. If the neck is a really good fit on the body, and the head looks proportionate with the body, the colours and tones can easily be corrected with face-ups or body blush, or if you are feeling really ambitious and plan on keeping it a permanent and not temporary hybrid, you could dye it.

 

I think much of it comes down to what you need from your hybrid. What "problem" you are trying to fix, so to speak.

Just as a few examples:
If you dislike the body the head is made for, does that make you willing to compromize with the fit, mobility and colour to get a body that suits your taste better?

If you are hunting for the perfect doll, how much time, money and effort are you willing to spend hunting for it and at what point will you be willing to call it good enough?

If it's a case of wanting to keep costs down, are you willing to stalk the market place for a good deal and/or are you willing to compromize with other aspects of the doll to make it happen.

You probably can't have it all, so much is going to come down to priorities and expectations.
If you have read through the company discussion threads, the hybrid threads for all the companies you have considered, followed all the bread crombs to find possible common matches as described by @overlordu , asked about specific hybrids as well as general advice about hybrids for the companies you look at and still haven't found anything there are two possibilities: 1. You are asking the wrong qestions and/or need to set your frame for what you consider a match a bit looser. 2. There is nothing to find because the match isn't very good and nobody have bothered making the comparison.

What possible matches do you have so far?

 

That I could not speak to because I am some kind of social media neanderthal with no Facebook page. I would email.

 

As someone with over half of my crew as hybrids, it's extremely rare that a color match is ever near perfect. Even a head and body from the same company but different years/batches often aren't a perfect match. As others have said, the size and proportions are more important than anything. If the head doesn't match, it can be blushed or airbrushed to match, I've seen some near perfect matches using those techniques! I used to be really picky about color matching, but now I'm like @Teddy My own body parts do not match at all, so I'm not that bothered about my dolls, unless it is just horrendous, like, say, a yellow tinted white skin head on a bright pink body.

 

And again - the same for me - My poor MerryDollRound Merry head that greened while her Luts Delf body yellowed was a tad too much of a difference, for exmple.

Teddy

 

There are also companies that can do colour matching. From what I heard the result may not be 100%, but still a decent match.

 

I third what was said above. I'll also point out that once you have dolls a long while you will notice a difference in the head and body color due to yellowing differences from a sealed head vs an unsealed body. Despite the fact that my dolls almost never see any light at all, my oldest dolls (from the early 2000s) have this difference even though I know they were a perfect match to start with.

Unless you plan to be constantly selling your older dolls, color mismatch on some level is something you'll probably need to accept.

 

I'd go for it but only as long as you can use the body anyway even if it's not a perfect match. I think some good blushing (I'd feel safer doing that than dye baths, but that's just me being a chicken! ) would take care of the problem anyway! Or maybe some clothes that distract from/cover any differences in color.