What are some of your favorite character concepts for your BJDs?

All my characters begin from my stories so ah, let me share just a couple. Just don't ask how I come up with stories, I usually pick a theme I want to talk about and just go ham at it...

Iwai Durga (Iplehouse EID Leonard) is a half Indian, half Japanese middle-aged man, born and raised in France with his mother and his three sisters, while his father passed away when he was relatively young. He had a fairly normal childhood, nothing too dramatic there, and eventually ended up joining Interpol (which, incidentally, is much less flashy than most media give it credit for) as an adult.

He arrives at the south of Japan as a caseworker assisting the local police in Fukuoka when he crosses paths with defense lawyer-to be Hakkai Shouyou (Kanadoll Eden, owned by my friend) and falls head over heels in love. The two of them so happen to start joining forces on cases (indirectly) and a few years later they move to Tokyo and get married (which is impossible in real life because of Japan's laws, but the story isn't exactly set on 'real-life' earth, but one which is influenced by humans being split in castes by different means which is meant to discuss the different ways in which inequality occurs no matter how many 'problems' are solved).

Soon after they end up biting more than they can chew and the people they end up pursuing as part of an interconnected case lure them into a setup and convict Hakkai on the grounds of presenting false/forged evidence in court, while Durga gets recalled back to France. In the meantime Durga thinks Shouyou didn't trust him enough to collect the evidence needed and ordered the forgery, Shouyou thinks Durga didn't trust him to come out on top in court without the forged evidence, and the two of them go down in flames, filing a divorce and putting an end to their relationship amidst everything else.

Eight years later, Durga is now some 47-48 years of age and returns to Japan on the trail of another case, while also swearing to at the very least find out the truth about what happened in that court all those years ago. He meets with Shouyou again (because he's stubborn as a mule and doesn't know when to give up) which doesn't go down too well (and ends up with Durga sporting two broken ribs and Shouyou with a mini stroke after an epic shouting/ fistfight). Eventually, they begin to unravel what went wrong and are soon joined by some old friends. Joji, Durga's nikkei (half Brazilian, half Japanese) friend from the police department in Tokyo, Ryuji (Charmdoll Ethan), once a big court reporter now turned yellow page writer, and Shirou (Angell Studio Lanling), Shouyou's professor in his university days, chief prosecutor, and youngest man to prepare to claim the title of chief justice (at only 55 years of age).

Collectively, each of their own accord and from their own ends, both played a role in the case eight years ago, but are also now trying to uncover who is behind all of this needless suffering, as similar cases begin to crop up left and right as mushrooms.

 

I write novels and I also draw comics (just webcomics for now, but looking to transition to trad publishing in the near future... fingers crossed). All of my dolls so far have been characters from the stories I've written, though in the earlier years, buying the dolls was more of a substitute for actually doing the creative work (i.e. instead of drawing the comics/writing the novel, I'd shop for wigs and feel like I accomplished something creative, even though I really didn't). At the same time, the dolls do also sometimes serve as an inspiration for me while I'm working (for example, if I was having a real problem with anxiety while working on my very first novella that I completed, I'd pull Anka out of her box and sit her next to me while I wrote her story), so I'm not quite ready to tell myself that I can't have dolls based on my projects, though I'm beginning to think it might be a good idea.

In the mean time, I've typically bought dolls to fit the protagonist of my story, which seem to fall into two camps:

- Genius snarky inventor or fighter, who gets pulled into the story against their desires and have to shoulder the burdens of others, loudly denying that they care while continuing to do things for other people (those were my past dolls and stories).
- Genius earnest inventor or fighter, who charges head first into adventure to try and do something no one else has ever done before/discover a secret about their world no one else knows (Anka (Mydolling Heeah), and hopefully eventually also Dot - iMda Amellia was originally supposed to be Dot but uh... they both had other ideas).

Leonie/Amellia is my newest girl and she's a deviation, because she gets pulled into the story reluctantly and eventually finds her footing and confidence in the process. And since I already had Amellia lying around with no character (since 2020!), who just happened to be the right fit visually for Leonie... I decided to give it a go.

 

Anything that lets me do character creation is my jam.
So far, I've let the dolls tell me who they are once I have them in hand. I try to look, think, and feel it out beforehand but that hasn't worked out at all.

Hooooweeever, the most common thread in all of them is they are an outlet of some kind. Mostly leaning towards taboos or things I cannot socially indulge in out in the wild. (At least not in my circles or lifestyle)

The most innocent would be my kids: a soft, adventurous girl and a hot-tempered, brooding teen boy.

After that, I got a bougie witch guy, a violent war demon, an obsessive ghost and a horny angel.

Not all are in-house yet, but they fuel my creativity and I let characters progress naturally as I muse.

 

None of my dolls are from anything I've written. I used to write, but health and financial worries during the past 7 years has robbed me of all desire to actually put anything down in writing. It's all still in my head, however.
When I started collecting, I was into writing fan fiction of the characters in Final Fantasy computer games. But I lost interest in writing fan fiction, and so now those dolls are just ordinary modern day characters.

I do have backstories for about half my dolls, but they are actually based on aspects of my own life and personality. My main guy, is an anthropologist doing research for a museum. He reflects my interest in that area. His "wife" who is the first female SD I bought, is an author of children's books. Another male is a private detective and his wife is a theatrical costume designer. They reflect two main aspects of my life, in that I LOVE British detective fiction and also that I was a theatrical costume designer as my real life career..

My Miro Doll Mika has the most unique character in my doll family. She is from New Orleans and studied dance. She is part of a performing troupe of tap dancers. I was inspired to create her from real life tap dance performer, Savion Glover. I got the idea that she is from New Orleans, because my mom was from N.O. and studied tap dance as a small child. Oddly her wife if my Bobobie Rui, a half elf who is into herbal healing.

 

Current icon is a portrait I commissioned of Jack, back when he was just my D&D character. His backstory writeup turned into a hundred pages detailing his start as a spy-turned-adventuring rogue and his romance with the kidnapped husband who fuels his travels across the continent. I originally wasn't thinking about getting him as a doll, but I was just having so much fun with his character, and when I couldn't get the body I was planning for another doll, it made sense to go ahead and shell Jack instead.

I haven't yet shelled all the roleplaying character inspired dolls on my wishlist, but he's the heart of a project there for sure, and the perfect starting place.

 

My most personal doll is Vidania—she’s a dnd character with a hyperbolically dark backstory. She’s a Shadar kai—An elf from a different realm. She doesn’t know how to self-regulate in this plane because her plane has an edition already dampening effect. She drinks her way through the first year of college off her plane, commits minor counts of malicious mischief, sleeps with a large fraction of the girls in her grad class, and gets told that she lacks the skill, discipline and compassion required of a healer. She then throws everything she has into getting into third year’s specialization into healing, and she gets it. She does have the skill, and she has the drive, and the sheer spite. She uhauls her way into a really damaging relationship, elopes just before grad when her partner has to disappear, and doesn’t get the degree. She and her partner tough it for three years before her holy symbol gets stolen and she loses her powers, just shortly. Her partner dies. She does later, at the hands of the people who were looking for her partner. Gets resurrected. Goes on a “the crow” style revenge quest we call ‘serial killer road trip’ and meets friends somehow—real friends. She learns to heal again, instead of just killing. Fights the apocalypse and it’s agent, her ex. Has a thing with another adventurer as damaged as she is, but can’t be happy with her—they have very different coping mechanisms and very different needs. Starts over, finishes her degree, and works as a travelling healer. Eventually meets a girl she had two separate anonymous hookups with, and she doesn’t know what they are but she does know that it feels right.

she’s also a dnd character I played for half a campaign once, and I’ve written tens of thousands of words of varying points of her canon. Everything I’ve gone through, I’ve kind of put into her to process it—usually without knowing! She’s also a project doll which helps me bond with her physical shell.

Shrike is the other huge favourite. An assassin for a guild in the service of a god, who started work too young and now has chronic pain, and keeps the job both because the god’s magic is holding her together, and cause the others in her guild are family. Her name is actually the title given to the guild—in their uniforms they’re indistinguishable, and rely on that misdirection. She’s spent time in an energy God’s dungeon, and buried a lot of friends. She also falls in love with the enemy’s cast off daughter, and the two of them end up being his doom. I’ve had this character for almost 17 years, in varying permutations. What’s always constant about her is that her job is at the harsher edge of magic, and she chooses to be compassionate and to not become the world she lives in. She’s also on the greatest body in this hobby: a twigling body, and she’s one of my favourite sculpts. So partly I kee her because of that, partly I keep her because she’s beautiful, and partly I keep her because she feels like a part of me. Her character has been through so many shells: Withdoll Adriana, Withdoll Cecily, and a couple of off topic fashion dolls, and a Polly pocket, and she looks nothing like her earlier incarnations, but the character kinda endured beyond the dolls. Ironically her last shell became Vidania, which feels pretty full-circle for me.

Bonus: some characters refuse to un-shell. I wrote out Tacet for backstory reasons. So far she’s reappeared in:
-Aura, the daughter of a god we see with Shrike—unlike Tacet she’s still pastel but not goth. She got Tacet’s distinctive bleached hair. Unlike Tacet, she got support, and she wasn’t raised by the god
-Amor, aura’s twin, raised by the god, been through hell because of it. She’s a black and red themed girl, unlike Tacet, and she still has a whole world around her, and was mostly raised by her half-siblings in spite of the god. Not Tacet because she still doesn’t hit the villain-arc Tacet did.
-Cole, not even from the same universe as Tacet, but she’s also kind of pastel goth, had the same maladaptive coping mechanism, the same being an outcast but with a high-status family, and the same “I need to be known but I can’t take getting there.” She got with Vidania.
-finally, I went “how many dolls can one girl turn into???” And reshelled Tacet. There are still 4 of them. Once she’s on a body again, I’ll do a pic of the 4 of them, because I’m a little stunned. Some characters/some dolls just don’t seem to leave.

 

To me every aspect is important, but I’d say how the character ends up looking more than the backstory of them.

 

Well, I know that I'm making a JRPG dream team out of my doll crew, and I'm not ashamed to admit it, ahah.

I don't shell preexisting OCs anymore (tried it before and failed badly), these days I mainly look for a doll that inspires an OC in my imagination. I find that both of them synergize -- the sculpt is source of inspiration for a character, and as I develop and visualize the char I try to dress/style the doll in the same way, and as I keep styling the doll that inspires more character development. So char dev for my doll OCs happens in realtime as I play with my crew, get them to interact with each other, take photos. Their stories and backstories keep fleshing out as time passes, it's fun and I keep daydreaming more about them.

One of the fun things about this realtime char dev is that I can use actual IRL circumstances as inspiration -- how my dolls came home/how long I waited for the preorders, something that happens as I'm playing with them, the kinds of clothes/styles/colours they look good in, what kind of chemistry they have when they're standing/sitting next to each other, etc. It doesn't have to be an exact match to IRL, but I think inspiration comes from everywhere, and it's kinda fun to take my hobby experience and use it to build out my cast's personalities and backstories.

With character personalities... I clearly have a "default" personality and it's some sort of calm, quiet, shy, serious, melancholy, dour, stoic, aloof... sometimes with a hard or ruthless edge, and always highly competent. In other words, MY own personality. I've tried repeatedly to start from a different default but I always end up gravitating towards some variation of the Strong, Silent archetype. Even the mischief-maker of my chars is pretty lowkey in mischief and has a serene side.

I also like to think of my dolls as a cast of characters. After all, they live in a shared world and interact with each other, and I love developing relationships of all kinds between them. This keeps me invested in them as a whole ensemble. I recently discovered that my crew of 5 fits perfectly into the five-man band trope and I absolutely didn't plan this at all. I'm waiting for more dolls, and I'm sure more ensemble-cast tropes will appear over time. To get back to JRPGs, I've noticed that a lot of my inspiration for my doll crew as a whole, has come from playing team-type video game RPGs. I like giving each doll a place in a team, it makes their character meaningful on both a solo and a group level. I even have RPG-type stat sheets for all of my dolls...

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Edit...
I had a look at the OP again - I rambled off on a huge tangent and didn't quite answer the question, so I'll try to do that here.

So far, the personality traits that have stood the test of time are the ones I never planned from the start. Something unexpected happened with the doll(s), it stimulated my imagination to think of their personality/backstory in a different way. And as I explore the new angle on their personality, I get more invested in the character and the doll too.

Like the way two of my dolls became a couple - it was an out of the blue, "wait, what if I made them hold hands...?" moment and it turned out perfect and inspired me to develop their backstories. With another doll, my first attempt to hybrid them to a body failed, but it got me thinking about worldbuilding, I fleshed out a whole lot of lore and much more of this doll's personality, and they're now quite an important character. I never planned these things, but it all inspired character development and worldbuilding, and it's more interesting than anything I could've come up with beforehand.

 

Though I have yet to receive her, I am really excited at the idea of having a shiny hunting pokemon trainer concept for Little Snow, tentatively named Nova.
I want a desk companion and she was the perfect size and I enjoy shiny hunting Pokemon (I almost have a completed shiny dex for Legends Arceus!)

I found some pokemon cosplay clothes on Etsy with a purple theme to them, a switch prop, and the perfect Espeon Keychain to be her companion. The concept of her keeping me company and hunting together brings me a lot of joy and I can't wait to see more of her personality come out when she is home!

 

For me, it's always the stories first and the very elaborate personalities through which I tell all these stories. And yes, I know that most of my stories are only in my head so far. I'd love to release all my stories into the world, but I'm an extremely lazy procrastinator.

Aesthetics is a wonderful thing, I admire many of you who are visual artists first and foremost - you who can paint and sew and make things and photograph like gods.

But when I know in advance that a particular doll is primarily a shell for a character in my story, the variability is drastically reduced and I have to submit to the story that wants to be told. That's why I always know in advance what style the new doll will have, what character it will have, who it will be on good terms with and who it will not. I know what my dolls' secrets are. I know exactly who I'm buying. I have a character plan laid out long in advance, hampered only by my inability to buy certain limited models and my inability to transfer the face I see before my inner eye to the doll's head. I wish I had more artistic ability, time, space, money and energy to see all my BJD projects through to completion.

 

I don't make elaborate personalities or stories but I many times I am inspired by fantasy literature, the dolls don't have stories their story is that they are my dolls and stuck with me poor them lol

 

Well, I'm a bit of an old timer by now I guess. My dolls didn't have complicated narrative backstories but I have quite a lot that have weathered over a decade with me, who are personalities I can picture very vividly. I think the personalities are created after I understand the topics I want to think and talk about creatively.
My most beloved characters are ones that live in a world/atmosphere that I can clearly visualize and want or need to spend time in. My main atmosphere themes are about peaceful/ idealized escapism, reflection (nostalgia & dark nostalgia), surrealism, and some experiences of mental illness: from euphoria into to the abyss.
Characters have to be fun and valuable parts of these subjects for me. They tend to have a symbolic purpose, moral characteristics I'm wanting to talk about and they have personalities I would either enjoy being around myself, that offer a poignant lesson or insight, or they are part of a supporting dynamic with another character.
I'm not sure any of that is super helpful but that's how I do it. With my dolls I mostly make cool friends to spend time with who can participate in the creative topics I find most interesting.

 

Your favorite BJD's basic story/character concept? And how did you go about "assigning" a personality to them?
Writer here and loving both reading and creating backstories! Everyone in my crew has a detailed backstory because it is needed for me to bond with them. The process can be challenging or the easiest depending on the doll (I've had a doll with me for thriteen years and only last year I discovered who she really was xD) but usually they have to spark something on me. I like to create the character before I buy the doll even if it's the doll that has caught my attention in the first place. If I don't manage to create something for them, maybe the doll itself is not for me. Depending on what the doll sparks in the first interaction, I will go different routes about creating for them, but I usually get some basic hints of their personalities and think how they could have ended being that way (while also relating them to the other characters in the same story if there are any).

If I had to share some stories, my most interesting ones are those of the tiny anthros. They are all part of the same story with goddesses and inter-dimensional... Their individual backstories are somewhat related to the ways the real animals live because the biologist in me couldn't help it. I love that this thread has appeared so I get a chance to tell them to someone besides myself xD

• Peralta, the giraffe, the first one I got, was born in a savanna-like planet as part of tribe with no familiar structure, instead, all the adults all take care of the kids. In that planet, there are three clans of giraffes with different colorations, each one devoted to a god. Her tribe had a shaman who worshiped one of the moon and medicine goddess, Sival. Peralta became an apprentice of the shaman and was eventually ready to become one herself (she would need to convince some other young adults to start a new tribe together with her in a new part of the savanna because there couldn't be two shamans) but then received a vision from the goddess herself, asking her to travel through dimensions, and Peralta accepted and was transported to a dark corridor between worlds.
• Murphy, the bat, the scaredy-cat of the lot and the youngest, was born in a planet with full of caves and holes. He lived in a bat community but had only a father because her mother had died. Being kind of different from the other juvenile bats (he likes to collect stones and had one imaginary friend which he saw as another bat called Nuja). One stormy night, as he was wandering around some deep parts of the caves looking for shiny stones, Nuja revealed herself to be not only her goddess, the goddess of the night and the hunt, but also his mom, and told him she needed him to go through a dark hole because there were some other who needed him. That's how Murphy went through the hole and into the dark corridor between worlds.
• Illack, the wolf, the oldest and most grumpy, was the chief of the Thieves' Guild in his planet. He lived in a fortress in a city near the sea. One fine day, he welcomed the chief of the Pirates' Guild, his longtime friend, Black. They drunk all night and remembered of when they were younger and the stupid things they did and the girls they loved, but Black is in love with the sea, quite literally, because her mistress is Nammu, goddess of the sea and the winds. Black waits till Illack is very very drunk and gets him to one of the balconies, then tells him that Nammu has spoken to him about something that is going to happen but Illack isnt' gonna enjoy. Illack tries to avoid it, but Black pushes him into the sea. And so Illack ends up going through a portal and into the dark corridor between worlds.

Wow, that was quite a lot and that's all I got from memory xD. I have it all written more detailed but those are their resumed individual backstories (with dialogues and everything). From there, they all arrive in our world as tiny creatures forming a strange family that not always work but sticks together and have their little adventures.
I love the way everyone explores creativity differently in this hobby, being photography subjects for some, mannequins to sew beautiful outfits for others... but, for me, it is all about creating these backstories and worlds and then stories.

 

I've learned not to buy dolls with a character in mind as all of them but my Volks Ryoma do not want to be the characters I had in mind.
Instead, I just try to work out their characters by handling them and seeing what eyes, wigs and clothes work for them.
I suppose my favourite character moment in this way was when I got my RS Doll Evan, who was a backward-legged rescue I found on y!j, styled by the company as a pretty boy in a dress. My Volks Mako, the little gremlin, instantly claimed him as her father and now he's less "mysterious beauty" and more "tired dad".

 

Most of my dolls are characters I've already fleshed out with my favorites, already being my favorites in the source material.
I spend a long time searching for the perfect shell for a character. I admit I like the hunt a lot, I'll see a doll and think its gorgeous but not perfect for the character I was looking for. I usually wait a few months after finding the sculpt too. If its still speaking to me I'll buy it.
My favorite doll at the current moment is Salem. Is a reclusive man who enjoys tinkering with machines. He tends to come across as callus. Though he's really just not good at expressing emotions at all.
His character concept was initially more of a villain, although he ended up more like a tragic figure than a villain.
At first I wasn't sure IOS Luce would be a good choice, but I saw one photo of the face...and knew I needed to at least give it a try. In the end it worked out quite well.
There is a lot more going on with most of my dolls as none of them are even human (Including Salem)...instead a godlike species called Celeslidan. But I'll spare the details ahah.

 

I'm usually pretty terrible at writing down the 'backstories' of my dolls- I'd say Yuki is probably the most fleshed out, surprisingly!
While he's based off Volks' description/blurb of the doll, he's evolved into a sort of interesting character. He's a baby angel that lives with an extremely tired human man that more or less adopted him. He's a long lived little being who doesn't really understand human social norms and has a tendency to say and do things that confuse and baffle the people around him, like some kind of otherworldly Yotsuba.

 

As unhinged as it sounds, my dolls choose their own characters and I'm just along for the ride.
I used to buy dolls and plan on turning them into character xyz, but they rarely cooperated with whatever preconceived notion I had for them. Instead, they arrive and immediately assert that they are actually character abc and any attempt to shoehorn them into being character xyz anyway results in difficulty bonding and I quickly lose interest. Once they settle into their "identity" with me, I'll often put together a character profile and backstory that fits them, which often grows more complex over time. These days, I just buy dolls I like/pine over for long periods and let them "tell" me who they are. I like to think of my dolls as being a long journey of collaborative discovery between the original sculptor(s) and myself until I end up with something that makes me happy and feels right!