"Specialness:" What made BJDs/your BJD uniquely attractive to you?

What makes Ball-Jointed Dolls special and unique for me personally is because off how they are fully customizable, you can create a own character from your writings, drawings or even choice a already existing character from a movie, TV-show or even from a book. You can be able to make the clothing for your doll that you wish for it to have, if you don't like sewing you can commision someone to do the clothing for you. Like me, my sewing skills isnt the best, hehe. The same goes for Faceups, you can do it yourself or send the head out to someone that you really like their art and work.

What i truly enjoy more than that the dolls is fully customizable is to photograph them. Outside and so indoors, i think it's so much fun and i improve my skills with my camera. To create stories is also something i enjoy. Since i was little i have always loved and enjoyed to make stories and so for drawing and i can pick that side from me in this hobby again! To see and read about somebody's characters is very interesting! I can also bond with the doll easier with a character it's based off.

There are so many things you can do in this hobby and i think it's one of the best hobbies i myself have joined. Quiet some time ago i collected PVC figures from the Animé/Manga shows, they are like just there in their glass cage from IKEA that i got for them, and i cant do that much with them more then to look at them and think it's a nice collection. But with BJD's there's so many things you can do make/create and build for your dolls. I thinks it's a great community and i have got new lovely friends here worldwide!

 

I have always collected barbie dolls as a child, so i was always interested in dolls.
These dolls a more like (not all of them of course) over sized adult dolls!
And just I love the fact that you can really customize that in almost any way imaginable.
When I saw my dream doll, DZ Hong, I immediately fell in love. I had to have one!
He resembled my favorite character so much, who'm is Sephiroth from FFVII.
Looking further into the hobby than that, I found about that this BJD world is so huge and there are so many wonderful dolls.
And so much inspirational crafty people!!
Even though it took a few years for me to buy a doll, I couldn't be happier.
I don't have him yet, I expect to receive him around a month or two.. but i'm sure he is worth the wait.

 

For me BJDs are special because of their unique aesthetic. When I first came across BJDs and was researching them, I found Fairyland dolls and fell instantly in love (first with Shushu, and then more so when I saw Chloe). I think I like the dolls so much because they have just enough anime influence in their sculpts to make them really appealing to me (big beautiful eyes, delicate features) and are also realistic. I actually personally don't like the straight-up anime dolls like the Dollfie Dream dolls. They're okay, but they aren't for me. The BJDs I love are what I consider the perfect mix of fantasy and realism. And when I learned everything you can do with them (making outfits, buying wigs and eyes, creating characters, etc.) the creative part of me was really excited about all of the possibilities. Those two things together are what made me really want to get a doll and get into the hobby.

 

My favourite things about dolls, as stated above, are interactability and customization - it's just really cool to me that the same mould can produce so many different effects in the hands of owners!

For my particular dolls; with the Luts Lemon, it was just how soft and lovely the doll looked in their photos. With the Spirit Doll Lemongrass, it was that he looked closest to the character I wanted and was the right size - the sit pics actually almost turned me off him. Also I don't own him yet, but the "WANT" moment with the Island Doll Veranoen I'm saving for was a combination of his half-closed eyes and white eyelashes, how versatile his expression is, and that outfit.

Needless to say, I'm uh. Probably just going to buy the Veranoen as a fullset. But that's also something great about dolls - you can make them exactly as you see them on the creator's site, or how you see them in your mind. If you have the skill/want to learn/money, nothing is out of reach in terms of character design, outfit, and props. That's pretty cool to me, too.

 

Even if they are of the same company or even the same sculpt, each and every one can be different. This is also the one brand where they encourage you to play and mod the dolls as much as you like. Unlike other fashion dolls where they loose value if you open the box or porcelain dolls that you're afraid to touch due to extreme breakability.
These are just two reason why I opted more to BJD's and why I like them so much.

 

The fact that you're supposed to handle them and style them and take them out of the box. Plus the fact that if something does happen, 99% of the time, it can be fixed. I just had one of those "uh oh" moments realizing one of my girls' lip paint is chipping off, followed by the realization that I can either fix it or get it fixed if it gets worse.

 

There's a couple of things for me. The biggest one is that customization is not only encouraged and a major part of the hobby... but that it's easy. You've got literally thousands, easily, of combinations of head, body, gender, size, build, and color to start with, before you even start adding in eyes in different colors, sizes and styles, and wigs in different colors, lengths, styles, and materials. You can do any kind of painting. You can cut them, add onto them, and reshape them with heat. You can swap parts between them (sometimes with a little effort involved). And it's all relatively straightforward, with a wealth of information to help anyone exploring the idea.

Before I got into BJDs, I'd looked into kitbashing action figures. I've always wanted little 3D, poseable figures of my characters, and for a long time, I thought that was the only way. When I properly started looking into BJDs and discovered that the bases were there, and it wouldn't take me that much work to start making those figures a reality, that's what really hooked me into the hobby. I have more dolls that are "stock" (no physical mods whatsoever) than not, but I've also had the freedom to alter them and make them truly look like the characters I've had in mind all this time, as well as some new ones that have joined the doll party. And all much easier than the other routes I looked at in the past.

The other major thing is poseability. I absolutely hated Barbie dolls when I was a kid. They couldn't stand on their own, they couldn't sit properly, they just rigidly kind of laid there with their permanently bent elbows and permanently straight legs. At least my MLPs didn't pretend to be articulated like Barbie did, so it never bothered me that they had no joints at all, as compared to the whopping five on a Barbie doll. Now, I have dolls that can stand, sit, slouch, lounge, do headstands, crouch, kneel, and move and balance in ways Barbie could never imagine in her wildest plastic dreams! And without that rictus grin of hers, too.

 

The option parts! I love love love fantasy dolls, and BJD's offer so much variety