People who like hybrids, why?

I prefer not to hybrid dolls, but all of my doll represent my role play characters and sometimes the perfect head doesn’t come with the perfect body. I only have one hybrid right now, and that’s because the Dollshe Amanda head was perfect but my character needed to be shorter and with a male body base. The Amanda default body was far too tall and too feminine to work right. I looked for other heads that might come on male bodies but nothing else felt right. So Sixx is a Dollshe Amanda head on an ALM Doll 60cm boy body that has been modded to be even more perfect (breast augmentation and extra fingers—something NO sculpt offered straight from the box.)

 

Simple. I'm shelling characters. Sometimes a doll has the perfect face, but the wrong body; hybriding the doll fixes that problem. It opens up the option of pairing up far more heads and bodies than if you stick to just the single or few options available from the original company.

 

I tend to avoid hybrids as I would rather not have to hunt around for a suitable body, but have still ended up with some since I have:
a) heads from companies that used to just sell heads
b) heads that were event gifts
c) limited dolls that I only bought the heads of as I couldn't afford the full doll at the time but was still deperate to have them...
d) boy dolls that were originally only available as girl dolls or vice versa
e) 2nd hand dolls that were hybridized by their previous owners

 

I think some people just don’t have a choice to have hybrids. I had a floating head that was gifted to me with a purchase. I didn’t have that much money to get a body at the time and then the company discontinued the line up. *shurg* It’s why I personally tend to avoid buying heads only.

 

Oh nice question!
A big thing for me is that buying a whole SD can be quite expensive... Buying dolls in pieces and getting cheaper bodies is less cost prohibitive for me I’m not exclusive to hybrids and have bought full dolls when the price (and doll) was right. It really just depends on the doll and my plans for it.

My first doll (Elfdoll Sooah) was a hybrid because I found the head for sale second hand. Even if the owner had been selling the body, they had a male body which isn’t what I wanted. So like one hybrid creating another lol. I managed to get a sleeping Sooah head on a Mirodoll body for a good price. It ended up as a “cheap” and easy hybrid without the worries about proportion and resin match Maybe this good experience makes me more keen to try hybrids haha.

I contemplated getting an IOS body for my Valentine head but I heard they are tricky to pose and are quite expensive to boot! So I’m thinking I will go the hybrid route for him as well. For now he shares a body with my Migidoll boy. Slight resin mismatch but not that noticeable.

The last doll I have planned is a male head for a female character. Was gonna go with the company’s female body for simplicity but they discontinued it! Might try a resin matching service for this project!

Here are my current two hybrids just because (ignore their hands):

 

Proportionality. I don't really like it when the doll's head is too big, so I chose a hybrid for myself

 

Several reasons:

• Saving money: More money that can be spent elsewhere. Like more expensive heads. Or more heads, perhaps.
  
• Head+body aesthetics: The heads that I like and the bodies that I like don't come from the same companies.
  
• Poseability: Many bodies aren't as poseable as I'd prefer.
  
• Uniqueness: There are so many great bodies out there. Why limit myself to the same body for multiple dolls?

Of course, hybridizing isn't always the cheaper route, and I'm still contemplating whether or not I want to try hybridizing multiple dolls.

 

I only started hybriding this year because i wanted to upgrade my older doll bodies! Then i got so into it i started buying heads only to find nicer body for them.lol But i not too concern about colour matched so its ez for me to find bodies.

 

Unoa 1.5 faceplates are among my favorite head sculpts but their bodies have single joint legs and I don’t really like the male body version enough so my B-el is on a less expensive but much more pose-able hybrid body with jointed hands added. I preferred to spend the $ for his hands and a custom faceup so it was not just about the economic aspect though with hybrids, it can be.
I have one full Unoa Lusis and I love her ‘as-is’ but there are a myriad of other Unoa faceplates and I wanted companion dolls for her of varied heights and different pose-ability. For example, my Sist is on a Dollmore Ballet Kid body because it fits her role and I really enjoy posing that body. My Lusis Akubi faceplate is on a Dikadoll body, it’s a younger-looking, shorter body and really fits her character as a ‘crybaby little sister’ better. I remember when Souldoll discontinued a bunch of heads in a group kind of suddenly but let people purchase a head-only option for many of them so sometimes that’s how it starts. I have a drawer full of floating heads because it has often been more economical to pick up a second-hand full doll for my hybrid, then I’m left with the head. I’m trying to decide whether to trade or sell them off someday or just paint a bunch of sugar skull faceups on them and keep them all.

 

I do have one hybrid currently but it's more that I happened to have the head and the body lying around as opposed to having sought out to create a hybrid. I've had a luts lu wen head and some secondhand body that I bought from the second hand market years ago (I think sometime between 2013-2014). It was more for cost effectiveness since I was planning on modding both and I wouldn't want to buy a new body from luts just to mod it - and the head was already pretty yellowed so the resin match wouldn't have been great anyway.
In general, I'm not the biggest fan of doing hybrids if I can avoid it since I hate dealing with resin matching but I do have a penchant for scooping up second hand dolls for my crazy projects.

 

It started for me as an obsession with heights and proportions. As I model my dolls after specific characters, it's very important to me that they are at least somewhat accurate in doll form when it comes to height and build. It would bother me way too much if, say, I were shelling a specific couple where I knew one character was significantly shorter than another, but the default doll bodies were the exact same height, or worse, the short one ended up being taller! And as I have quite a few short characters, quite often the default body was simply way too tall for what I wanted, and so I turned to hybrids. This extends to build as well, as some default bodies are just way too muscular or slender or whatever than what that specific character calls for.

Additionally, it REALLY bothers me to have dolls with the exact same body. So if I'm interested in multiple dolls from the same company, they absolutely can not have the same body. It's just too weird because absolutely nobody in the real world has an identical body to someone else.

The only exception to all these rules are my dolls that are meant to portray children. So long as the default body is cute, I tend to go with whatever is available since I find it a little uncomfortable to get too hung up over a child's body (unless I'm looking for like a specific fantasy version or whatever, but that's different).

 

Some places do not sell bodies or heads alone, I have an incoming Ke head by Musen my BF got me, far as I could tell there was no body option at all offered. So I'm going to have to find him a body, which means another hybrid, but I don't mind the hunt.

My first real hybrid doll was just putting an extra floating head from Soom onto another body. Did the same with a Iplehouse extra head later. I have one doll where I fell in love with head and face up, however once I got him home HATED his body. The site didn't show enough body photos, and it in my opinion it poses poorly. So I found a body I loved in a close enough skin color and replaced the body. Now I have a doll I love to bits vs one that made me sad.

I've another kind of Hybrid one within same company Iplehouse use to offer full choice dolls that let you get their YID boy and EID female heads on their SID male bodies. However they stopped letting you order any non SID male heads for the male SID bodies. I got the last crossbreeds of YID male head on SID model body, and EID female head on male model body. I had to sand the neck a bit, but to get the dolls I wanted it was wroth it. I love my male SID Aurora elf and SID version of vampire Chris.

 

Is it ok for an artist to first only sell heads? I’m atm sculpting my first for sale BJD ( I did freelance war game miniatures, mostly elves before but wanted more artistic freedom and pose ability ) and have two heads done but the body is surely taking a few more months...maybe I should test her head on a fitting body, I assumed this was not ok but it seems I’m wrong about that. I’d love to see her on a body.

 

There's a lot of independent artists that only sell heads, two that come to mind immediately are Lost Chronicle (though they are working on creating a body as well) and Little Rebel. Back in the day I know Migidoll and Switch basically exclusively sold heads and I'm like 80% sure that La Legende du temps also used to exclusively sell heads though now all 3 offer bodies. Point being is that selling just the head is totally normal!