Poseability ratings for doll makers

Posing can be really hard to judge sometimes. There are posing options for a variety of poses. Then there is just plain stability and the ability to maintain that pose. I do agree that Luts makes really stable dolls with a lot of posing options. I love their centaurs. My Fairyland dolls are outstanding at posing with lots of clicking joints and flexibility. It's hard to choose between the two. But I know they are not the only two companies with amazing posing dolls.

 

Hm, what you're describing sounds more like stability than poseability. For example, my Dollshe Rhythmos body is very solid when standing, I'd rate him 9/10. But he doesn't actually pose much- he has single joints and they don't bend very far or stay in position easily. For that type of posing I'd rate him 5/10 maybe. And then there's natural posing versus action posing. Fairyland dolls are notorious for being capable of extreme poses, but aside from the wow factor I don't find such poses very practical for photos or displaying dolls on a shelf. On the other hand, old CP Delf's have nowhere near the range of motion of a newer Fairyland doll, however they are so easy pose in a natural way. They just fall into natural looking positions when you plop them down somewhere.

I don't care that much about dolls being able to do crazy poses- I care more about their ability to stand up without falling over, sit upright without falling over, and I want it to be easy to pose them naturally. So I don't like tons of joints that spin all around and can get you weird unnatural poses by accident, even though that type of jointing can allow for some neat stuff. Basically my point is that poseability is relative so it would be hard to have a consistent rating system unless you broke it down into categories. XD;

 

Hmm I've toyed with a ratings system before too but mostly just by giving my dolls little tests. Like standing on one leg, touching their toes and, my favourite, the plonk test - can I plonk the doll down in a standing position and expect them to stay upright for at least a moment or two?

A lot of dolls don't behave brilliantly out of the box but are better once they've been sueded or restrung so they would probably earn two different scores but it would be nice to have an idea of what they're like.

 

Okayy I'll rate Iplehouse EID woman body (Old + no thigh joint, though):
Standing: 10/10
Anything else: 2/10
Maybe I ask too much? No but really, she can't even sit straight or hold her arms, and I have her tightly strung. After some modding and hot glue she's able to sit up, at last! But anyway I find the engineering of this doll terrible.

 

I've got two 1/4 boys at the moment and this is with comparing them with each other:

Little Monica (Little Harmony) - I'd say 6/10, he not a brilliant poser but it's not awful either, his posing is limited because of the jointing systems that the Little Harmonys have but he stands like a rock and I would happily trust him to stand by himself while I leave the room.

Clover Doll - He's the opposite of my Little Monica so I would give him a 6/10 too but for different reasons, his posing is really good and I've had him hold multiple positions but he's an issue to stand so I would never trust him to stand without me being ready to catch him.

 

You have to keep in mind with poseability that doll makers sometimes aren’t consistent across all their lines. One person who has an SDGr or SDMidi body from Volks would probably say they’re great posers, whereas someone with a single jointed SD10 would probably say their posing is limited. Companies are innovating all the time (and sometimes they innovate their way into less poseable dolls for aesthetic reasons), so each new edition of a body has the potential to pose in a wildly different way than the last. Also, in general a smaller doll is going to have more stability than a big doll just because they’re lighter. This is sometimes not very obvious for some companies (I would say that a Kid Delf has a similar range of motion and stability as a Senior Delf despite the weight difference) or really obvious (a Littlefee is a lot more steady on its feet than a Minifee even though they both have similar ranges of motion). *cough* I’ve owned a lot of dolls over the years.

If we’re just recommending decent posers, I could say that I have a bunch of LUTS hybrids in the house (SDF65, SDF4, and New Delf) because I find their recent bodies are a good balance of range of motion and stability. It’s probably like 9/10 for stability and 7/10 for range of motion just because they need sueding to really get a full range of motion with their arms. I don’t ever have to bring stands to photograph these dolls outside, which is a huge point in their favor because that’s a big part of what I do with my dolls.

I’m also ridiculously impressed with the Peakswoods Dandy body. It’s a 10/10 on both counts. I feel totally comfortable leaving him standing on the edge of a table while I go grab something without a stand. He stands like a rock even with his knees bent, and he has an absurd range of motion in arms, legs, and torso without sueding.

But it would take me all day to go through all the bodies I’ve ever owned, and this is a really subjective topic. For example, a lot of people say that Fairyland dolls are super great posers, whereas I ran through quite a few of them before I realized that their jointing systems just didn’t do what I wanted them to do (and magnets, I hate magnets in dolls so much). Your best bet if you’re looking into a doll that you like the look of is to research what owners say about it in terms of what you specifically like to do with your dolls. If you just need sitting and standing, you’re probably good with any company (besides some of the big Iplehouses, *cough), but personally it drives me nuts when a newer doll can’t touch its face so I always dig through owner photos to make sure the elbow joints work the way I want them to before I buy. Some people can’t stand one part torsos, so they’d need to check that. YMMV.

 

I'm guessing it's the boy body verses girl body my boy has been able to stand perfectly regardless of the terrible stringing etc i put him through. That's a strange one.

 

I'd guess it's the uneven sueding, because my unsueded Little Harmony girl has no issues standing at all.

 

Another thing to keep in mind it that even the same body from the same company can vary slightly from doll to doll.
These dolls are cast in silicone molds and silicone is soft. Even with the best bolds and the best casting routines, every now and then a mold will get slightly misshapen and warped. The difference can be so small that the joint will fit together just fine but the difference between two dolls can still be enough that one stand very well unaided and another stubbornly buckle at the knee. Usually this sort of casting flaw is tiny enough to not be noticed even by its owner and the end result is simply a different impression of the doll.

For example, I have an old Iplehouse body with a casting flaw at her knee, keeping the knee from being 100% straight. I have a Luts body with a slightly deformed shoulder socket that makes posing that arm tricky (she can’t hold any in-between poses, just straight down or straight out), a friend has a doll zone body with knees that really don’t like to support her weight, but I have seen other dolls with the same body who is working just fine. And so on.
In all these cases I have seen other dolls with the same bodies that did not have these problems.

It is in the nature of these dolls. When hand casting using these methods and materials, this sort of thing sometimes happen.

 

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