Polyurethane Resin??

I'm a bit of a newb but would saying they are made from cast "plastic-resin" be accurate?

 

Throwing hundreds of dollars at a plastic doll sounds ridiculous, resin sounds so much better, but the reality is they are plastic aren't they?

 

I agree with others in that "plastic" reminds me of the cheep toys you find in walmart... Not only that, but to others who dont know what it is, "polyurethane Resin" sounds fancy, and fancy sounds expensive.

Its funny, I sometimes see other, non jointed, artist's dolls and think, "Wow, why are they so expensive? They aren't even jointed, and they aren't resin!" But if you think of it as plastic it does sound a bit silly ("Why is that doll so expensive, she's not plastic" LOL) It just sounds like your comparing to Barbie

 

*shrugs* I usually answer with "It's made of resin, which a type of super strong plastic." That's so far as far anyone's interest has gone....usually they are too bust freaking on the price anyway

Like JennyNemesis, I don't bother getting huffy or insulted on any of it, I mean jeez I'm a 44 year old adult carrying a DOLL!

 

That's how I feel about it too, and how I reply. I will say that to family and friends when explaining for a few reasons. One being if I just say plastic they automatically think of things like the millions of little cheapy plastic dolls I had when I was 5 that broke over and over and over again, and they'd hate the idea of me spending $500-$1,000 on something so breakable.

Another reason being alot of people I've showed them to think they're made of china, an even more breakable material, so I correct them with resin, which they almost always ask what resin is, and I reply like Toshirodragon does, it's a super strong type of plastic.

As for getting huffy about it, I'd never dream of it! I'm guessing alot of people who get upset about it don't actually know 100% what something is made of, what the differences are (how very subtle they are) and get offended, assuming the person saying that knows nothing about BJDs.

 

I don't get offended. But I do correct for one purpose, resin is plastic but it can still break. When young kids ask if its made or of glass, I say yes. >_>; They know glass breaks, and plastic doesn't. They don't even know what resin is.

Plastic has always been known to be durable right? If I were to say its made out of glass/porcelain they'd be more careful, if I say plastic.. they would probably be more care free with the doll.

I don't want someone to think that it has the strength to be flailed around as a plastic barbie doll. Some people might not know what resin is. But it sounds fragile doesn't it?

 

I actually had no idea resin was another form of plastic. I always thought it was closer to the ceramic family. Very cool to know!

And I agree with the consensus who says plastic brings along a connotation of Barbie or similarlly priced/manufactured dolls. In my , about plastic brings to mind a mass-produced, easily available (and dare I say cheap) image of a toy, where is resin sounds more refined and mysterious. And breakable.

 

Honestly, nobody I know would go "OOOh! That changes things COMPLETELY!" If I corrected them for calling the doll plastic. They don't care/have the doll knowledge to really understand that difference in connotation between plastic and resin. At most, they'll probably just nod their head and assume somehow resin is a more high-quality material because that's what I made it sound like. It seems like compairing bananas to plantains to someone who's never eaten either. <_<

 

I tend to say that dolls are made of polyurethane resin and if pressed for more explanations, I just say that resin is a type of plastic that looks and feels like a more durable porcelain. It's expensive to produce and even more expensive to produce well.

 

To me resin sounds more expensive, plastic just sounds cheap. I'm sure that it is only because of associated meanings. It would be interesting to know more about the different hardness scale of resins -or- what makes some dolls heavy.

derk

 

It's like people calling anime cartoons. It's got the wrong connotations and stereotypes. If you say you have a doll made of plastic people will tell you to grow up and move on from barbies. If you say you have a doll made of resin it makes it sound more mysterios since not too many people are commenly familiar with resin. I don't like it when people call anime cartoons, Hiyao Miyazaki and Spongebob are so different, just as Barbies and BJD's are so different. I don't want people who don't know about these things getting the wrong idea of the culture.

 

I actually had this conversation with coworkers today. One of the ladies hadn't seen my dolls up close and thought they looked like porcelain. So I gave her the spiel on resin and she asked if they break easy and so I talked about chipping and breakage at joints where the resin is thinnest. Then we talked about her porcelain doll that had broken...

 

Whenever someone asks me what they're made of, I just say that it's a heavy, high quality plastic. Non-doll people don't usually give a crap what the answer is anyway, and giving them a spiel on resin is kind of pointless. So is using a word that means nothing to them ... yeah. The purpose of language is communication, so I try to avoid using words I have to explain. It sounds kind of pretentious and snotty when you correct someone or throw the word "resin" out there if you're pretty sure the other person knows nothing about plastics.

 

Sorry to go off topic, but anime is a form of cartoons though. Sure Miyazaki and Spongebob are rather different, but what about Miyazaki and Disney? Sure the general level of quality from western animation is low aside from what we see in the theaters, but it doesn't change the fact that they are cartoons. Anime just tends to have a wide audience range while western cartoons tend to cater mostly to children (or adult comedy shows).

Resin = Plastic, just a type of it. It's the same idea. Not all plastics are the same, not even close, but it's still plastic in the end.

 

I'm of the trying to make people realize they aren't the same as Barbie's mentality. If someone asks if they are made of plastic, I say, very politely, that they are a plastic resin. In my experience, people seem to take this as it being a higher quality, heavier form of plastic.

I'd never get rude and huffy if someone called them plastic, because they are. But for the sake of making them sound fancier, I would called them resin rather than plastic in conversation.

 

Well it's like that not all rectangles are square thing that they teach you in elementary school... all anime are cartoons but not all cartoons are anime.

All resin is plastic, but not all plastic is resin. It's all about being more specific and descriptive. While it's definitely not something to get upset over, I think it does give people a better idea of what bjds are like since plastic can mean all kinds of things, including things that are very very different in look and feel from the resin bjds are made out of. My obitsus are also made out of plastic--they're very good quality, so it isn't even that, however compared to my resin dolls they are very different in both appearance and feel when you pick them up, and have different maintenance requirements. The really cheap dolls you get at the dollar store are also plastic, and are nothing like either obitsus or resin abjds, and so it goes. The term "plastic" is so broad that it doesn't mean much.

 

Let's exchange the word "plastic" with "clay" for a second. You can get many different kinds of clay, even plastic clay. So one might take that nice clay vase or china vase or even a "Sculpy" as being less the value of another made from a material considered difficult to work with.
Either way, plastic, resin, clay or porcelain, it's the art that goes into the finished piece. That's where the cost lies (sp). I still love my dolls and will pay the price for plastic resin and the touch of an artist's hand.

 

Amusingly, Anime is mostly a french term for their own cartoons, whereas the Japanese I know mostly call it animation (sure, pronounced in a japanese way, while they're speaking Japanese.) So yeah, all cartoons are anime, as long as you're french?

It is all about the deeper meaning behind the word. People want to think what they are doing is bigger and deeper than the "typical" dolls/cartoons. Gotta relax and just have fun and appreciate things for what they are.
When I first found BJD dolls I couldn't belive people paid so much for dolls. But then I got into work as a makeup artist, and realise people pay retarded amounts for stuff they love

Although I look at 100 dollar barbie dolls and go "wtf is this? No glass eyes, terrible faceup and not even bendy? Rip off."

 

Lol, it's not uncommon for terminology to differ depending on where you are. In the US (as well as some other Western nations) anime is understood as meaning Japanese animation (as opposed to our own animation style), so 'anime' actually is the word you want to use around here if you're wanting to refer to that particular type of animation (if I were in France, I would try and use whatever word was most descriptive there, but as I'm not in France it's a moot point). Sometimes having people understand you is more important than being technically correct which is why it makes more sense to refer to bjds as being 'resin' as resin describes that particular plastic that our dolls are made of as opposed to hard plastic or vinyl that many children's play dolls are made of. Just as when you say 'anime' most people (in the area I and a lot of other DoA people are from, anyway) are going to associate it with Japanese cartoons, if you just say 'plastic' people are going to picture something more akin to Barbie dolls. It's using a widely understood specific term as opposed to using a perfectly correct, but very general and nondescriptive term.

For some people that maybe true, but I'm really not offended if people refer to bjds as plastic, because they're not wrong--nor does plastic automatically mean poor quality. It's just that if you want to describe a bjd accurately with fewer words, then you use the words that are the most descriptive so that the people you're talking to have a better idea of what a bjd is like. Same goes for cartoons--it's not a matter of being stuck up, it just wanting to be able to differentiate between different styles--it makes things much clearer that way. Same goes for anything really, technically a rose is a flower, but if you want to talk about roses that's the word you're going to use, not 'flower' which can pertain to any number of plants.

 

Personally I don't really consider barbie dolls to be made of plastic XD I always thought it was some weird latex blend or something.. So squishy, whereas to me plastic is hard? So I never really made that distinction