Trouble recognizing realism?

I have this problem too! I thought it might be because some BJD are quite cartoony so it's kind of difficult for me to tell if they're posing like a real human or a badly drawn comic character

I think you're right about the joints throwing off judgement, since I noticed some poses look much more realistic when the doll's clothes are coving the joints.​

 

For me it's a mix of seeing their joints & the angle from which I'm looking at them. Sometimes when I'm taking pictures I won't realize that something looks off until much later, small things like forgetting to re-position a hand, or having the torso a bit tilted-- while it might be realistically posed, it might not look aesthetically pleasing in that photo.

 

I always take gravity into account. As in, I make sure the weight looks distributed as it would on a human. It's very easy to ignore on a small scale, which makes for awkward and stiff results.

 

it is true that some poses will never quite look right and that it will likely be due to 'mechanical' issues because it's a doll and just cant do what we do. An example is with Iplehouse dolls and the mobility joint.... it will 'never' look right uncovered because what we do 'flexability wise' at our hips has to be 'faked' with a 'second' joint further down the leg. I think being able to 'see past the compensating' elements is what is hard.. You literally have to get used to seeing wrong in some ways. But ya i have this more when i get behind a camera because i look at a posed doll, then grab the cam and think .. 'no that's not how it looks to my naked eye. And fyi ever tried t "pose" real ppl... it's almost as hard. in photography 'how to pose a subject is a whole section on it's own... so nope not strange idea at all... I have more than once asked someone to 'do something' so I could try and copy the pose with my doll.... btw eventually these ppl stop thinking you are nuts and just do it.... my Dad does now XD lol

And i have a few poses I am STILL trying to get my dolls to look right doing ie guys down on bended knee ><

 

While there's definitely hobby-specific factors in how this happens for us, speaking as an artist, it's not a problem exclusive to us! It's almost surprising how little understanding most people have of the mechanics of the human body. Back when I was doing a comic, I constantly had to get into poses to make sure they worked; a comic artist friend of mine would actually get people to pose for her so she could take reference photos of certain poses (I have some of these, too). Heck, I "ruined" a drawing for a friend of mine last night (she's doing a character design contest, and linked me another entry she liked until I pointed out the character's leg and foot were where her arm and hand should be... Ouch, man.)

Admittedly, we have a few advantages, in that the structure of our dolls prevents some of the more "painful" poses I've seen in art, but we also have some unique disadvantages, too. Not just the weird way some joints can look or move, but a temptation toward complacency that can come from forgetting that BJDs and humans don't move in exactly the same way.

Or, tl;dr, nope, it's not just you, and not even just this hobby.

 

I'm often taking photos from a slightly different angle than I'm looking at them without the camera (or lately phone, because I've gotten lazy). And what looks good from one angle can look weird from another, so that's the biggest issue I have.

 

I'm sorry for butting in, but I just had to mention that it can also be the other way around. You can have a real human making a normal pose, but it still doesn't matter because from that angle it looks freaking weird in the photograph (or even more if you're making a drawing, 3D object => 2D plane always will be somewhat difficult). Humans simply are a tricky thing to depict. I think it's because we can bend and stretch in so many different directions at once.

So... FYI, humans are weird, art is weird, everything is weird