Is there pressure to make your BJD the BEST?

Playing devil's advocate here, but there is a difference between wanting dolls to look proper and dolls that are wearing the best. I also read the thread you mentioned - heck, I even posted in it - but I din't read these responses as: "well, dolls should always look their best with high-quality eyes/clothes/face-ups etc". I read them as people wishing dolls to look nice (so no sharpie face-ups, poorly fitting baby clothes etc). You don't have to have a famous artist painting your doll to make it look well-kept, you can do that yourself with a little practice.

 

I didn't read the other comments but the first post. There's no pressure to make my dolls look the best or epic unless someone decided to compare their dolls with mine. Then maybe I'll make mine epic just to beat them. Then they go back to being their old selves...either dramatic or plain...since I have a mix of both in my dolls...

 

I mostly keep my dollstories to myself and very seldom read those long multichaptered stories that some write for their dolls as background. So I don't feel pressured because I don't even know what I should compare to. I still think it's impressive that some write so much about their dolls and spend so much time putting together an entire novell about their dolls' background.

But I must admit that some of my characters are really odd, though not in an epic way. I want to have odd characters because it's so much more fun to make photostories with runaway princesses, transexual alien interchange students and part dragon girls. I'm more into the slapstick and interactions between the characters than their backgrounds.

 

While I enjoying seeing some of the more 'exotic' dolls on the forum via the gallery posts and such... I honestly don't feel the need to try and attain that for myself. I like regular clothes and fasion and normal people. I've had some fantasy characters and that's enough for me. I probablly wouldn't be happy with my dolls if they were all crazy super exotic looking, although I'd like hooves/horns to play around with for the rare occassion/messing with my neighbour.

 

nope. i'm completely happy with the way my doll is, default makeup and all. ^_^

 

i thought about this several tims my self when i would see really crazy looking dolls i feel like mine needs to be out of the box but the i think thats not really what i see my doll doing i really much perfere my doll to be an evryday sort of doll so he could have a much more deeper feeling to him the just a creation i thought up.... he should be himself

 

I looooooooooove looking at people's fantastical dolls, I do find it really inspiring. Everytime I see a doll that makes me go "WOW!" it does sort of give me inspiration to work on my dolls to make them just a little bit better in my eyes. Which I don't see as a competition so much... I get lazy and need a good kick in the butt to finish an outfit or faceup etc.
Do I try to make my dolls exactly like which ever doll inspired me? No, not at all. I have my own ideas about what I want my dolls to look like even if I don't have pre-made characters for them. And mine are sort of the "bland" type but to me I get a sick twisted joy out of sewing a perfectly in scale button up shirt with actual working buttons and having my sister in law say "OMG you should make me a shirt like that!"

 

yes i want to make my doll the most beatiful one in the world, i don't care for the money i spend on their amazing dresses or fancy makeups, i just want them to be beatiful. but still, my shooting skill is not good enough, so they may be not look so good in a photo : < which makes me feel really depressed. but dressing them in bland clothes is also very funny and surprisingly good, anyway, it's your doll.

 

I personally just want to make my doll the best for me and atleast presentable towards others c:
I want my doll to reflect what i want in him to be, but still try to keep him looking nice so that he isn't messy or anything too bland. I find a lot of inspiration from other people's dolls, and just like the usual artist i may grab a piece of it to remember with me, but I would never EVER copy it. So in a way my doll is an art project, and everyone knows all art has pieces of other people in them and nothing is completely original in that sense. c:
I won't lie, I will try to buy good quality stuff for my doll, but i won't go out of my way to find the most famous faceup artist to paint him or the best most expensive limited outfit! Things that will get the job done in a fashionable manner is good enough for me. c:
I find if you let competition get the best of you, your doll might lose that personality that made him/her your doll ^^;

 

Mogi, Nina, and Claire are all normal kids living their lives in a beautiful port town based off or the Maine Coast (think bar harbor, albeit less of a tourist mecca)
Then there are the mystic creatures, who mostly live deep in the forrest surrounding this town. but a few apear in my story, namely Pippin Marie, who although shes technicaly a Deamon Half-cat. Lives the normal life of a little girl, even adopting Mogi Nina and Claire as her Siblings.
And then there is Cassie, who is a Ghost of a human girl, with a tail. why she has a tail nobody knows. but this tail serves as a device to seperate her from my living characters, although nobody does realize she is a ghost, they mostly assume she retains her youth because she is half elf (it would not be the first time its happened in this town.)

Most of my characters dress as normal people I would see walking down my street every day, but i do not consider that Bland, its somewhat more of a harder thing to find in the BJD marketplace, especially for my Yo sized

 

Not at all. As long as there presentable to the general public (clothes on, faceup done, eyes in, wig on.) Then I could care less what people think of them. As long as Im happy with the way they look thats all that matters.

 

For me, not at all. I have currently one doll and I am very, very new to bjds and everything that comes with owning them.
Also, she is an Angel of Dream doll so she is on the lower price end but, I did a lot of research about what 1/4 doll/body I wanted. And I read a lot of good things about AoD even though they are inexpensive. So I feel like there is not point trying to be the best when she will be compared to Volks, Dollmore, Fairyland, etc. But I have my doll for me and as long as she makes me happy that is all that matters.

 

Yes, there is a sense of a peer pressure that one should make their doll the best possiable. You get it on this site alot, if nothing else but from lack of comments for 'boring' dolls, or snide critics meant to be helpful. You have people who look down at amateur face-ups, hand made clothes, etc... I've felt the pressure from others to do stuff with my dolls, but the question is more do you give into the pressure, do you let the pressure effect you?

I try really hard not to let the pressure get to me or affect me. I get dolls I like and do what I want with them. However I'm not likely to bring a doll that has bad clothes to a meetup, or do photos of it, expecially when I have another doll that is well clothed and ready to go. Almost all of us do this sort of 'filtering'.

Because I know the pressure is out there, I try to go out of my way to make others not deal with it. I try to find something nice to say about a doll, expecially if others maybe ignoring it. I just have learned to appreaciate that the doll brings a smile to the owner's face, so who am I to judge.

 

Not really. I just customize my doll based on what I want them to be. I've seen some pretty elaborate dolls out there, but I don't feel pressure at all for my doll to look that way. If I want them to be elaborate, it'll be due to having a certain character in mind and not pressure.

 

I am not bothered. I came to this hobby with little skills and a lot of love for any resin I buy. I am blown away by the dolls shown and the skillfullness. I know myself well enough to know that reaching this level of BJDism is not exactly why I am here. I appreciate learning new skills and improving on them, but whether others like my dolls or not or go 'WOW!' or not is not high on my agenda. My BJD crew is there to fit me. And whether they are out-there or the best is neither here nor there.

 

While I love seeing the super amazing dolls that other people create in this hobby, I myself don't feel any need or pressure to make my doll(s) super amazing. I consider Nadeko (and this applies to any and all future BJDs too) to be the best doll ever, bland as she may seem to other people. She makes me happy just the way she is and that's all that really matters (to me).

 

No, I guess the "best" bjd really changes from point of view.
I don't want them to be the best, I just want them to be cute and Make me happy. So long as they cheer me up and keep the creativity flowing, they don't have to be the best.

 

I'm always in awe of those owners that really kit out their dolls in wings, and horns, and mods, handmade wigs, unique face-ups, custom clothing, etc. I doubt I will create that type of character though. And I don't feel pressured to change my dolls or that they don't measure up somehow. I suppose if my dolls were in some kind of judging contest for something specific then I would feel pressure. But I think we're all in this hobby because we want to make something personal for ourselves.

My happy niche is making my dolls appear as ordinary as possible, slice of life. I think there is a beautiful nuance in being able to translate something that occurs daily and quite possibly taken for granted into a celebration of life. I like the idea that if someone were to magically "bring my doll to life in human form, they would completely blend into that illusion of normalcy.

 

I would definitely agree with you. I like the whole slice of life type of dolls and they've tended to be my favorite out of other people's dolls that I've seen. I will have one non-human doll, but not with a crazy fantastical backstory. He'll just be a non-human living with humans and minding his business.

 

I have personal standards that apply only to me, I like to live up to those. I don't feel any outside pressure, it's not the aspect of The Hobby that interests me. I just want to do art and have fun with dolls. If someone else happens to like it, cool. If not, that is also fine.

In a lot of art hobbies there's this mad scramble to be the first to do something whether it's really something that suits you or not, just not into it.