Recasting a company's doll in unavailable resin

With the amount of money you'd spend in training yourself to professionally cast something as complicated as a doll, it'd be cheaper just to buy another one.

 

Whooo ... that sounds like impossible to make only if you already have skills in recasting.
I agree with someone who said that if you really want the blue special color : or you dye the doll or you try to sculpt one yourself and then ... spend many days or months trying to get the perfect shade of blue you so desperatly want.
But you will spend so much money in latex, resin and color that you would have paid for twice the first doll ...
But you would have learn how hard it is to make a doll and how satisfying it is to create something of your own instead of simply copying the art of somebody else.

I would not be the one who would agree with copying art, any kind of art, nor painting, nor sculpting, nor clothing... no art copying ... this is lack of imagination, this is lack of honour to me.

M

 

If you did want to recast a doll from one you owned just for the sake of having another, and not to sell them, I think it's fine - it's still plagiarism but if you're not seeking to make money from it, no one is harmed. At the same time though, it's a copy, and will be inferior to the original, a) because it is a copy of a copy and b) because you own no intellectual property over it, there was no original idea behind copying it. Even if it's in a completely new colour resin, it's not an original idea in the end. It's always just only going to be a copy.

 

While this is true, things can turn out wrong with a lot of customizing people do on these dolls, but people do them anyway, and many of them are irreversable. If someone wanted a certain mold in a certain color, badly enough that they would consider recasting (which could ruin their doll completely) then they should consider dyeing their doll (this of course only applies if they want the doll in a different color, not for other things).

 

On a completely different note, putting legal and moral reasons aside I wouldn't want to have a doll I recasted myself because I wouldn't be able to share it. Yea I could share it with my friends but I couldn't post pictures on DoA to share with others, or have them critique my customization.

I also post on DA and even if I could get away with posting pics of my recast on DA, I might have to suffer the criticism of the people who disprove of my recast, and that woulf ruin the whole experience. For me, there are two main aspects about this hobby that excite me 1) Getting to customize my dolls and bring my visions to life in my very own hands, and 2) Getting to share my doll and love of dolls with other people. Why would I want to damage one of those two aspects of this awesome hobby.

 

I personally think that using a companies doll to cast from is not ethical even if it is for your own purpose.

 

Perfectly acceptable. After all, you have used a bought product to create something for yourself. Imagine on a smaller scale, you have bought two shades of paint, and need a colour in between the two: You mix them together. You didn't create your own paint, and sure you can sell the mix of paint, but what are the chances of that.

Now, creating ones to sell specifically, is lame and unethical. And to be honest, in most lines of business, if you changed 10% of the mould, even legal.

If you think about it, most of the things we use, we have customised to our tastes from things. Painting cups, re-hemming jeans, Dying material. Most things are created from pre-made and bought materials.

 

But I would liken those customizations more to actual doll mods, like eye opening, dyeing a doll, doing a faceup, etc. Because when you paint a cup, you aren't making a duplicate of the cup. It's a different situation, I think.

Personally... as far as the original question goes, I'd be more likely to dye a doll before I tried recasting it (as others have suggested). It's much less expensive and it doesn't end up in that ethical gray area of recasting.

 

A recast is a recast is a recast. It will never be as good as the original because it won't be made from the correct molds, the parts won't fit together very well and you may even end up ruining the doll you want to recast. Dying a doll is a much better method of achieveing the colour you want.

Just because you've bought a doll it doesn't give you copyright over the design. You can customise it any way you want because you've bought that particular doll, but recasting the doll isn't customising it, it's creating a new product, a product you don't have the rights to create. You can't compare creating a whole new doll by recasting someone else's work to rehemming a pair of jeans. The only change to the jeans is either raising or lowering the hem, the jeans remain virtually the same, you don't suddenly get two pairs of jeans from the process. Whereas recasting a doll, you use a doll to make a mould and from that mould you make another doll. So you end up with two products, instead of the original single product.

Plus, once this recast doll has been made, the temptation to sell it on if the owner becomes bored with it or a big enough monetary offer has been made for it would be greater than preserving the artistic integrity of the copyright holder.

There are so many reasons why recasts are not ok. Take your pick.

Good point. Perhaps the question I should ask is; if casting dolls in polyurethane is such a difficult skill to master, why do so many people consider recasts as a good alternative to buying another doll outright?

 

I don't really get the people who say "if its for their own personal use, it's okay" because what would stop the person from making 10? They would have only bought one doll, but have ten dolls... and it isn't like making 10 copies of a cd for personal use, because the cds are all exactly the same.... ten dolls can be customized to look completely different though, so it really would be like 10 different dolls.

And I also agree, if you recast a doll into blue, and told yourself you'd never sell it... I'm sorry, but I don't believe you. If someone came up to you and said "OMG. I'll give you $6,000 for that doll!" you'd take it -_- and if that price isn't high enough, well, just imagine a higher one. There are verrrrry few things that can't be bought for the right price, and even fewer material objects.

 

Apart from the training and practise involved in getting to a point where you can make good molds, the materials are not cheap. Silicone for a 60+ cm doll is going to cost between $1000 and $1500, plus waste ~ and unless you know what you're doing there will be waste. And you're (hypothetically) saying you'll only cast one doll? Or you could cast 10 or more and cover the expenses involved in the molding. If you're going to go through all that, you might as well sculpt your own figure and make something that is your own original piece. I know not everyone has "talent" or wants to be or are able to sculpt well, but if you're going to go through all the trouble of making molds, you might as well learn to sculpt at the same time.

 

Why not just dye the doll? XD I mean, I don't particularily have a problem with recasting in this situation, I just think it would be so much easier to dye.

 

I asked this similar question theoretically about recasting the Dollfie Dream body into resin (as its a vinyl doll and I wanted it to better match a resin head) entirely for personal use. My thread was promptly locked with harsh words from the moderators, so I'd have to say your idea is also a no.

I wouldn't particularly see a problem with it.

 

I understand why someone might re-cast a doll to make one more to their liking, and I don't think it's wrong to do so if neither the original nor the re-cast are sold. However, I would never be able to do so myself as the idea doesn't sit quite right with me. I feel the same about art; I think it's okay to trace someone else's picture for practice as long as you never post the traced version anywhere else, but even if you're not selling it, calling it your own, or showing it around, it's still copying. When I was younger, I used to trace to improve, but as I've grown older, I can't bring myself to trace someone else's picture - even if only for personal use. Doing so only made my style look a bit like the original artist's, and I couldn't stand that. Each person's style is their own individual interpretation of the world around them, and I don't think it's right to steal another artist's style that they've worked so hard to improve upon.
Likewise, the idea of copying/stealing would stick with me if I were to re-cast a doll. Even if my style in 2D art or dolls is horrid, I'd much rather make something in my own, crappy style then rip off of something that isn't my own.

 

You guys have gone off the idea of the doll recast, and are going into the human act of being greedy :P
Hypothetically, if you are going to recast a doll -purely- to make it into another colour, and destroy the original, and are not going to cast more: It would be ok (imo), because you are ending up with one doll, customised in a way that is impossible to do any other way. Like making a new pair of jeans, but cutting the threads of one pair, and using the pattern to make another pair in a different material, and then tossing the original pair. You have bought a pair legit, and have used it to make another pair, and end up with one pair.

Anything else, is added theoreticals. Yes, you could make copies and sell, but the topic isn't on that.
And like I said, if you did do the jeans thing, modified the pattern 10% and sold the ones you make out of the new pattern, is actually legal.
Yes, it's a jerky thing to do, because seriously, have some scruples and pride. Learn to do something legitimately.

The doll isn't the issue with selling it off, that is just people being greedy jerks, nothing to do with the idea of recasting, except that it involves a recasted doll.

 

This actually is not true. There is no percentage amount you can change something to evade copyright laws. If your copy is recognisably a copy, even if you have changed some parts, it will still be considered a violation of copyright. The percentage law is something that (apparently) has come from art schools, and then escaped onto the Internet as a 'common knowledge' meme. It's legally baseless.

There's also a lot of misinformation in this thread - making moulds won't destroy your original unless you use cheap silicone, and shrinkage won't be noticeable unless you use cheap resin, and resin copies aren't inherently inferior in any way to originals if you know what you're doing, and learning to make moulds or cast resin isn't difficult or dangerous at all. None of this changes the fact that recasting dolls is illegal, though.

 

As far as I know, recasting isn't illegal - selling it as the original would be, as would selling it claiming its a new thing. It is like a kid copying a picture from a storybook and then parents posting it on the fridge. Or singing a song without it being taped and sold. Not sure on that last one, I think some songs you can't record at all without permission. Personal use laws are pretty lax as far as I know. To be honest, copyright law is one of the biggest B*$%^$%es in the universe, worse than criminal law.

The percentage law doesn't apply to everything, but it does apply to clothesmaking, sorry >_< that's why I used that one XD It's a bitch of a law that the major fashion houses are trying to get removed, but for clothing it's hard as a lot of patterns would be really similar without people trying. It does however not apply to anything else, art etc btw guys :3

Also, casting resin IS very dangerous in some situations. It's not hard though, if you study and pay attention.

 

Oh, I completely missed that you were talking about clothing there, sorry. The % rule comes up in these sorts of threads all the time, usually applied to drawings, sculptures, or music (where it doesn't legally apply). Maybe the confusion is coming more from the fashion industry, then, rather than art schools o.O

I do think there is a difference between a child tracing a picture (professionally replicating the picture with a photocopier would be a better analogy, and that is illegal, and companies who offer copying services to the public cannot allow them to make copies of copyrighted artwork), and singing a song (a better example would be burning a CD, which is again technically illegal unless for back-up purposes).

Under what conditions is casting resin dangerous? I've had lessons at a casting supply store, and spent a few years casting at this point. The only dangers I can think of are insufficient ventilation (which makes resin casting roughly as 'dangerous' as spraying with MSC), and the damage resin dust can do to lungs (which is an issue with sanding resin, not casting it).

 

Yeah that resin ventilation thing is the only bit (a lot of people are really really unaware about that, and in the MSC threads there is CONSTANT questions about "is stuff going into my lungs that is chemical dangerous", so I just thought it needed clarifying, sorry!)

The % thing comes up allll the time with art, which is a product of copyright law being so Freaking hard to understand. A lot of art schools did teach it because they were taught it and the cycle continued @_@ I think way back when, it was actually semi legal or something.. but then it was changed, and basically no-one got around to telling anyone, and finding the info is like me finding a friday night date /ba dum tish.

But yeah, copying anything really, is I guess techinically illegal >_< doh. I guess we just wanna be able to do stuff too much to admit it to ourselves XD Personally, if I was going to go through all that hassle, I would actually like, dice the original thing while crying. Stupid morals.

 

In the US at least, clothing differences are not protected under a % rule. At all.

In fact, clothing is just plain not protected -- it is considered a 'useful article' and does not enjoy copyright protection in the same way as a painting or sculpture. That's one reason knockoffs abound and very little can be done about it. It's also one of the reasons you see distinctive fabric prints used by certain designers who want to protect certain looks -- the fabric prints can be protected -- and people covering designer items with their logos, since duplication of the logo to make a knockoff can be prosecuted as trademark infringement.