Making Dolls based on shows, games or art

Honestly I think nowadays there are as many people with dolls that ‘cosplay’ or are based on characters of their own making as there are people who just have dolls. It wasn’t as common years ago but seems to be as big a part of today’s BJD scene as anything else.

I see ‘cosplay’ and ‘based on’ as two different things although some use the term cosplay as an all encompassing term.
To me ‘cosplay’ is when you’re making the doll (or yourself) into that precise character and therefor clothing, wig, eyes, faceup are going to have to follow strict guidelines to achieve that. It’s still open to interpretation though as we all see said characters or people through different eyes.
‘Based on’ however is just another way of saying ‘influenced by’ and is fully open to one’s own interpretation. @oneironym if you use that mind set then you don’t need to feel intimidated by your intended project. It is after all your doll.

As previously mentioned certain companies used to make heads and there are a few independent makers that have recently began producing sculpts of well known faces or characters but that’s playing a dangerous copyright infringement game which tips over the moment they cease being for personal use and become part of the product line no matter how you try to justify it.
DIM kind of tiptoed along the middle of a very fine line by mostly selling the heads as commissioned pieces and not going for 100% likenesses, the pressure did get to them in the end though and they ceased production.

Collaboration dolls are different as the two companies are working together with permissions and licenses.

From the view of my own collection I intended to make one based on my FFXIV Viera character using a Minifee and using my other FFXIV Lala as inspiration for the look one of my Realfees will have.
I’d quite like to have Sandman/Morpheus doll, have done for many years as I read the graphic novels way back in the 1980s when they originally came out but I think it’d be very much inspired by Tom Sturridge’s version, I do love the way he played him.
I’m also waiting for the rerelease of a particular SartoriaJ sculpt because of his resemblance to a particular person however the look will be again more inspired by rather than exact as that feels a bit stalker-ish to me, I’d be uncomfortable handling the doll.

 

This is the route I happily went down (thank you @Blodeuwedd for your excellent synopsis of this topic.) As I was building my collection, I fell in love with creating characters much as one does in certain video games. It just seemed like a natural progression to extend that to some of my dolls as well. From my love and delight of Pokemon games, I’ve created a small group of trainers to reflect the ones I play in the games. And I even have a couple of favored ones from Diablo and Heroes of Might and Magic as well. When you spend so many hours playing your characters, I think it’s only natural (and certainly a whole lotta fun) to create them in doll form because they come to feel so real to you over time as you play them, it’s nice to have a representation of them in your collection. Basically anything that inspires me is grist for the bjd character mill, so I’ve created one from the cartoon “Beyblade” to remind myself of the countless hours spent twirling those spinning tops with my young grandsons. And I was so inspired by the manga series “Chobits”, I jumped at the chance to buy the mechanical-bodied Doll Chateau Gladys to make my very own discarded “early prototype” chobit.

 

I'm not brave enough to do it on a bjd, but I've made a custom American Girl doll to look like Ahsoka Tano from Star Wars! I have brought her to meet Ashley Eckstein twice someday I'd love to remake her on a bjd, though!

 

There are lots of media/characters-based dolls out there. For example, I know I've seen a Link from Legend of Zelda on IG recently, and I remember there were a fair share of Final Fantasy based dolls when I began collecting dolls back in 2013. I do have 2 dolls myself (one completed, one on the works) that portrait characters that belong to Marvel (Doctor Strange and Storm), though both are my own iterations of the characters based on a series of fanfics I've written.
Having your favorite characters from video games, movies, books, etc. is an idea as good as any other to form your collection as long as they make you happy (and I love KPop Demon Hunters, so I'm sure they would be awesome as BJDs!)

 

I've made a few dolls based on my favorite characters from books, comics, or movies. I have a hand for of dolls base on the original Oz books alone. A few Marvel, and DC superheroes and villains. I've Puck from a midsummer's night's dream and am working on making Puck from Gargoyles.

Also Volks made dolls of my two fav NPCs from the MMO FF14 so I didn't have to make them I just had to order them. XD

 

I have a few dolls that are inspired in varying degrees by media I've enjoyed, from vague concepts of how those worlds work to being inspired by specific characters. I have a head with an artist friend at the moment for a character-inspired faceup.

I don't think I could own a pure character doll because I feel the ideas would be limited for what I could do with that doll, and how it would interact with my other dolls.

 

I have recreated the Trailblazer trio (Caelus, March 7th & Dan Heng) from Honkai Star Rail, and I've recently gotten a head to be Sunday as well (because he's part of the little fam as well) because I love them so much. And although I'm recreating their hair, eyes and several of their props (and even some costume pieces) I'm treating them very much like real 'people' than cosplay, so I dress them up in things I think their characters would wear in different scenarios rather than their in-game costumes. That's just a lot more fun for me and I never have to feel limited by having them look a certain way.