Recasting a company's doll in unavailable resin

I'm being devil's advocate now...

Would it be ok to recast a doll to make a twin? If the dolls were just yours, you weren't going to sell them on, but you had a limited doll and your story called for twins, would it be alright to then recast so you had two?

 

I think part of this debate could possibly extend on to the doll's or person's nationality. For example, look at the Japanese. In the US copying someone else's work is considered plagairism. But in Japan "refining" it, so taking the origional and making a copy with the differences you see that would make it better, is considered to be a great honor and tribute to the origional. That in being said, it's still better to be legal about things... and seeing as most of us are in the U.S....

Also, as far as Artist Heads go and such, I believe it would be permissable to contact the artist and explain that your dream doll is this head in such and such color or whatnot and see that if the artist won't do it, if you may have his/her permission to recast yourself (or get a friend) to do so (possibly paying a fee for it to the artist too).

 

I agree with this.

Maybe I'm missing something important because I don't see where the assumption that anyone who re-casted a head would claim it as their own, original work came from. From the first post:

If anyone feels that that it is wrong to re-cast a doll for personal use only with no possibility of sale, I respect their stance on the issue. I also agree that it's a copy. However, I think we ought to differentiate between a copy for personal use with no possibility of sale, versus a copy with the intention to claim creative ownership and/or distribute, as it is two separate situations.

Does the first situation qualify as plagiarism? Well, when I think of plagiarism, I always think of the brouhaha surrounding David Gemmell's Dark Prince (read all about it if you are interested). Using that as my litmus test, no, it doesn't.

 

I don't really think it's ok but if you want to do it I'll pretend not to have ever seen this topic so long as you never sell the copy.
I do really think you should just buy the sculpt you want and dye the doll instead....there was a tutorial somewhere around here, I'll post it when I find it again

 

Actually isn't that copyright infringement (at least in the US)? If you rent a DVD and make a copy of it that is against the law, even if you don't sell it and keep it for personal use. Seems the same might apply to making a copy of a doll (even if it is not for resale) without getting permission from the doll company.

Downloading music for free, or even borrowing a friend's CD and making a copy of it for your use isn't exactly legal. It's stealing. Period. Remember Metallica's lawsuit against Napster?

I find it frustrating that people feel so entitled to do whatever they want because they bought it (the doll). A talented artist worked hard to sculpt that beautiful doll and to recast for whatever reasons one would have seems wrong to me. And I completely agree with Armeleia.

 

If you wanted twins, you should have bought two of them.

 

For me I would love my Soo Dark Human by CP/Luts to be made of Volks resin. Looooooooooove for it but obviously not possible. There's no way that I could ask Volks and Luts to come together to make my perfect doll Hush in a way I think is best. My preferred sculpt and resin company choice is not an option.

Would I break into Luts and steal the SDH mold and then break into Volks to use their resin? Um, no.

But we all have the ideas of what dolls should be and what doll companies should do. Sadly they don't share our ideas or can't do it. Okay, in my case, I'd get laughed out of town.. But we can all dream.

 

But if it just so happened that you were lucky enough to get one of the OOAK molds? How would that work?

 

Well, that's the point of limiteds isn't it? That there are only so many worldwide. I don't know, justifying recasting a limted seems just as wrong, even more so to me.

 

I think recasting to learn casting is okay. Its true that this is often done in classes or workshops where casting is taught, because it's nerve wracking to learn casting on a precious one of a kind object that is you've sculpted yourself. The first original is usually destroyed in the casting ---- In my experiance - anyway. So a head used for casting practice would be something like a head used for face-up practice. Only far more likely to get destroyed.

 

I think the issue being brought up with dying is that it's very unreliable when it comes to getting an even color.

You could test it on the hands, but even if they turn out evenly colored, it doesn't mean that every single part of the doll's body will react the same way. Sometimes some parts take dye better, while others don't, and then you end up with a multi-shaded doll.

 

Metallica are not exactly people whose actions of recent years I want to emulate, or have anything even remotely to do with. Setting that aside, this is a rapidly evolving area of law and there are usually good arguments on both sides of the issue. There are also many, many disagreements between different legal jurisdictions, even within the USA. Unlike for patents, we do not have a single "copyright court" that resolves all the issues of copyright law, so unless an issue gets to the Supreme Court or all the circuits decide the same way, it's more or less still an open issue. Therefore, the fact that somebody brought or even won a lawsuit really doesn't mean diddly, particularly when it's a completely different technology involved.

 

I really don't think that recasting a mold, even for personal use, is okay. I have no problems with modifying/dyeing a doll, but recasting another company's mold is borderline plagarism IMHO (please don't be offended by this). I could never bring myself to do this personally, but I certainly won't go after someone who chooses to do so. However, if a company did indeed give you permission to recast the doll, I would have no problem with it. Unfortunately, we do not live in a world where doll companies would gladly collaborate with each other in order to provide a person's dream doll.

 

The only reason I mentioned it (and not because I'm some Metallica fan or anything) is because of the person who I was replying to's comment. And yes, duh, it is a different technology involved but the concept is the same.

 

I'd imagine that would wreak havoc on the original mold and the new mold wouldn't look as it should. Somehow dying a different color doesn't seem as bad, even though Volks obviously didn't intend for that doll to be blue, in this case.

 

Legally, my opinion is that it's significantly different from the Napster issues, but getting into the differences between the two technologies would take this into law-journal-article territory, so I'll just leave it at that, and anyone who really cares can research the issue online.

 

I don't know why, but I figure if you bought it you could throw it in a trash compactor for all that I care. If you want to recast it and destroy the head, do so, just don't try to call it what it was and don't try to sell it. If it's for your own personal use, then go for it. However, if at any point you sell it, since it is a copy you should be arrested, I guess. I dunno. It's a complicated issue.

I'm thinking about it in the light of "what if you just don't want it anymore?" You put a lot of work into it, and you'd like someone else to like this thing you created, because it'd be a waste to toss it in the garbage. Perhaps you should toss it in the garbage, but do you really want to toss it in the garbage?

I don't see the harm in doing it for personal use, however it just opens the door for scammers and shi--crap to run rampant. So in the end it's probably not a good idea to do it.

 

ok well.. try this idea on for size.....[hypothetical, not true]


I have a doll that my niece loves beyond life itself... but she is 4 years old and this doll was almost $400. Now, Lets say she wants one of her own. I don't have a credit card or the money to buy her one.... but I do have money to get a different kind of material that would prove to be cheaper or more readily accessible to me than resin- like clay/porcelain or plastic.

I make a mold of the doll she loves so much by using the typical ways of making a mold without messing up the original doll...[I know nothing of this stuff, dont flame me for this] and I decide to "cast" the mold in clay or I heat-treat plastic to form to the mold's shape. I put it together, paint it up, wrap it up and give it to her for her 5th birthday....


There seems almost nothing wrong with that... what was an expensive item for adults was recreated in a form for child's play so that the child may have one of their own that could very possibly be replaceable without having to spend another $400 or so...

you see... this thread, if you reread the first post, was about recasting a doll with a modification of some sort, be it type of material it was cast of or color... it was not intended for resale but for personal use only. Its artwork, its not a toy... its a sculpture that has been labeled as a doll.... some people are talented enough to recast things, and to those that can, they might simply want a version that they didnt spend a month or two's rent on that they can play with. Maybe its a doll that was discontinued like celestyn or soah, that person may want to keep their original in a case but miss them so much that they feel the need to make one specifically to play with.Maybe they wanted a color that was unavailable, and like someone said in one of the posts, maybe they wanted a kind of resin that was unavailable... I,personally, could never have french resin, It yellows too easily, its too fragile for me... It shouldnt matter what someone does with their doll IF its for personal use....

if this thread was about making to sell... my mindset would be completely opposite, but this thread was started with the idea of keeping it as your own....lets keep this on topic... I'm not going to read through 7 pages of people getting off track... 3 pages is enough...

 

OOAK, limiteds, not always the same thing (OOAK = only one, limited = a few). But yea, it does kind of ruin the point.

I think this discussion would be better to be as a "where do you draw the line on coping?" Because that's really the thing here, People make copies of artwork all the time, sometimes they change it, sometimes they don't. Do they usually get penalized? No.

I think that no matter what, it's a copy and is technically illegal in the US, you shouldn't really be concerned because it's not worth while for someone to sue over a single recast/copy. But lets think about this, we're making a pretty significant change here. Same structure but made out of a completely different material, plus it will most likely be imperfect so is it really the exact same thing? It's your idea for that doll to be in this material, not the original company's.

What if someone was to recast a doll but make some small changes? Add/remove horns, ears, larger or smaller breast, etc. Where do we draw the line? When it really comes down to it, most bjds looks almost alike, no matter what company they're from. Many of these companies are getting the idea from somewhere for the jointing, and usually you use a reference, figure out the trends, and copy what works. So in the long run, I'd say nearly all companies are copies to an extent coming off of one or two mother companies. Sure, they look different, but they're still cast in resin or plastic, jointed, customizable and well, called bjds.


What if someone were to make a copy, not recast, of an image of a doll but changes the resin color?

 

So something like a knock-off DVD is perfectly fine to own for personal use, because the packaging is completely different from the original, and the picture quality is sub-par? Why would you want to own a doll of substantially less quality when it would be so much easier (and ethical) to simply mod a pre-existing doll? It has been stated over and over earlier in this thread that recasting a doll in a different resin color is incredibly unpractical. Besides, you can't just cast a doll in a different resin color and say its yours, because you didn't sculpt the original doll to begin with. With a creative product like ball-jointed dolls, the materials used to cast the doll or the end quality of the whole thing isn't what matters when concerning the "originality" of the piece: it's the artist's process.

There's a huge difference between referencing and copying. Sure, most of these dolls are modeled after a certain aesthetic, and utilize similar joint structures, sometimes it's hard to tell them apart. There's only so many ways you can sculpt a face or a knee, after all. However, to say that all these companies are copying each other because they follow that specific aesthetic and construction is like saying all anime/manga-styled art is the same because they use similar tools and reference a basic style. The differences between all these BJD companies out there is their subtle interpretations of the basic form their dolls are modeled after.

The fascination most of us have with these dolls is that someone had created something incredibly beautiful from nothing. These dolls don't just pop out from mass-operated factories, there's still an intense amount of human interaction and skill that needs to go into the creation of these dolls. That's why it's wrong to slap some epoxy on a doll and say it's an original because it's different from the form it started from. You didn't create that doll from scratch. Someone else did. That's why it's wrong.