Making characters based off of dolls that you like?

I do something similar, in that I buy dolls who look like they'd have interesting personalities. I love creating characters, but shelling the ones I already have is difficult for me, so instead I go the other way around and make my dolls into new characters. I think it's a pretty fun method, all in all ^.^

 

I'd say over half of my dolls are "whoops" in terms of I saw the sculpt and was like YES... for the record I have 27 so that's a lot of "whoops"....

 

I bought one or two sculpts for characters I’ve already had established, but most of the dolls I buy because I like their look. Their characters tend to come later.

Although I have bought at least two where they arrive and I realize they’d fit perfectly into an already-established story and I sort of create them from there.

 

All of my dolls have characters I’ve created for role play. I don’t enjoy having a doll with no character and usually I do have a character created first, then look for a doll to match. However, sometimes I do find a sculpt I love and build a character to fit the doll so I have an excuse to buy it.

 

I buy dolls because I like the way they look and I create fashions for them. They are my dressmakers dummies or models and they change images by a whim or fascination with a designer, era, idea or cosplay.

 

I’ve definitely done this! All of my tinies have had their stories written after they’ve arrived. The only doll who has had a story before I purchased them is my SD, and that’s only because I had written him years before.

 

I can completely relate to Jhiggi, my dolls are my muses, they inspire me to create fashion of many eras that fascinate me.
I will say that two of them were chosen on their look and what I could see them wearing.

 

When I got my first doll I definitely hadn't realized that buying dolls to fit original characters was so popular. The very first time I saw a doll was around 2007 and it was DOD's tender Shall nun fullset. I saw that she could be bought blank without her fullset and wondered why the heck would anyone want a blank doll when they could buy a doll in such a beautiful outfit. More than a decade later I finally have bjd's and they all came blank. I didn't have any plans or character ideas when I bought my first doll. She was pretty, and I just wanted to enjoy her and sew things for her. Reading on here got me thinking about making a character for her. I like writing and have several different storylines I occasionally think about. I thought that it would be fun to have a few dolls that were all in the same story together and each had their own character. I took one idea that I've had for a while and adapted it into something that I thought would match my dolls. I only have one doll that was bought with a character in mind (and I have a sculpt picked out for her boyfriend), but the rest of my dolls had characters made for them to fit in the story after I bought them. I don't have any real specific look in mind for any character. If a doll is cute, and I think they'd work in the story them the doll gets added to a wishlist. I'll try to think of what kind of character would suit them and where in the story would they fit in.

 

Every one of my dolls simply must have a character, but I usually do it the other way around...I come up with a character first and then hunt for the perfect doll to shell it. However, there have certainly been a handful of times where I‘ve fallen in love with an unusual sculpt and the character came later (usually while I paid off their layaway or awaited their arrival.) I absolutely love creating characters, and my mind just seems to do it automatically. In fact, now that I think about it, the last 3 dolls I’ve purchased are developing their characters as afterthoughts to the sculpt purchase which is rather unusual for me. I think this is because I’m currently working on finishing up my collection and seeking out some of the fascinating sculpts I’ve missed along the way.

 

I started embodying one already existing character of mine in my first doll but the rest have been the other way round.
When I see a doll that I like and might work (in terms of size and face features mostly) with my current family, I start designing a character for it (thinking, writing, sketching...). If I finally get a character that is appealing to me and that makes sense in their own story, then I will definitely buy the doll.

 

My split goes about 50-50. Some were established characters before they arrived and others I molded after I had fallen in love with a sculpt.

 

While Vince, Pete, and Billy all had a character idea to start with and then they changed once I 'got to know' them, Marigold and Party Martian were both one hundred percent 'I LOVE THIS DOLL SO MUCH I MUST CREATE A CHARACTER'.

Marigold, I saw these cute little deer centaurs and I immediately came up with a whole little fantasy world for her (and eventually I would love to bring home the other three seasons)

With Party Martian, I'd loved the Clever Littles, and all of Batchix' work, but when I saw HIM at the convention, I fell in love at first sight with the hot pink artist's pour. He was so PINK! Rather than a high fantasy elf, he felt like a mischievous-but-sweet cosmic traveler. So I was coming up with a character and story not for a sculpt that time but for this one particular doll.

 

Most of the time I will buy a doll I really like and then create a character that suits that sculpt. Creating OC's is easier this way for me rather than creating a character in my head and then shelling. I am actually trying to do that right now! I have a certain character in mind and I just bought a floating head to shell her, but I'm starting to get a little nervous that the head won't suit her character. I think it will turn out fine though!

 

I go both ways: I shell existing characters in dolls (or will soon), but my first doll had the character arise from the sculpt and some things I put together because I liked them. There's one (two, but the other is lower priority) more doll I want that I'll make the character for later, so in looking forward to that too.

 

Which came first, the character or the doll? XD I've gone both ways, actually. Most of the time I'll get a doll, then come up with a new idea for them, but there's been a couple times I've seen a sculpt and gone "Oh! That's [insert character name here]!" or "Hey, this might work for [name]."

And then there's been the few times I've made a character for a doll then merged that character with a preexisting character of mine since they were compatible.

 

I have been writing and roleplaying one character for a long while, a few years anyway. I have only discovered this hobby about 6 months ago, but I have bought an SD that when I saw her, I thought, "That's her!" As for other dolls, I saw the doll and she just hit me as so lovely that I want to make a character for her! Still working on that, but with some writing and roleplay she will feel fully fleshed out.

 

For me, I've done a bit of a subversion of this for a few of mine. Most OCs I've got in my crew were full fledged characters when I shelled them as bjds, but I've had a few where the ideas for a character were there, but they were a bit nebulous.

A good example of this for me would be the case of Azabian. I had a bit of an idea for their character before I got the Little Rebel Kai sculpt for them, but Kai really helped me to visually give them their identity beyond just the basics. Kismet Jaide, my Minifee Mika/Mir is another weird case of this. Kismet's character was actually created years earlier for another story idea I'd back burnered for quite a while. When I received Mika/Mir, she gave me the idea to use her as the shell for Kismet, and also helped me flesh her physical form out more fully (as well as get me interested in her story again after being practically forgotten for years).

In a sense, it's been an amalgamation effort with my examples. It wasn't really a case of finding a sculpt and creating a character from there, but it did involve having the sculpt develop a bare-bones character further once they arrived and I started working on them.

So, yeah—a bit of a subversive example, but still an example nonetheless

 

I think this is what I have been doing while looking at sculpts. The character can come once I have found one I like. But then again when i was doing a dollhouse project I planned for one thing and then it changed 180 degrees as "the house told me it wanted to be like this instead of like that". So for my future BJds I think i will plan but ulitmately see how the sculpt/doll wants to be.

 

Most of my dolls I bought because I liked how they looked and then created a character for them later. Some of them don't even have characters, but more so embody an idea or theme.