What do you think about Hybrids?

I actually love the idea of Hybrids. I was skeptical about them at first but after ordering my first doll and looking for a second, I'm finding that I usually like the heads and not the bodies (because of poseability/joints/how it's sculpted/etc.) and sometimes the bodies but not the heads, hence my wishing for list. Other times I like just the legs or just the chest. Sometimes it'll take a lot of effort to get how you want your Hybrid to look and sometimes it may cost more/or less than the full doll. I remember saying a couple of times to myself: Oh man, if Company A had this and this body parts and that head like Company B then I'd definitely buy it!

I think I understand why some companies wouldn't want their heads on another company's body or bodies with another company's head. In Soom's case I believe that the Gem artist probably doesn't mind selling of heads seperately while the others only intend to sell full dolls. I know that Crobidoll used to sell heads seperately too but are going into only selling full dolls now? It could be a case where the artists may have "self pride" (I'm not sure what to call it but I hope you're catching on?) or the company is not doing well and aren't selling the amount of bodies that they expected to. Then there are the company's that only sell heads like Migidoll, SNG and others--and the only choice for them is Hybriding.

So in the end, despite what some "Hybrid-haters" may say, it's our money in the end so we should be able to do what we want. It's an extension of creativity and although I may sympathize for some sculptor's wishes (or the company's) I'll probably make a Hybrid out of whatever anyways if I'm able to. So I don't see anything wrong with them. I actually admire people who are able to make well matched Hybrids! (And the fact that sometimes they might be slighty daring).

 

I think you should be allowed to do whatever you want with your own dolls and parts, they cost enough didn't they? lol
And once it's purchased it is your property, you can do whatever you wish with it.
I personally love the idea of hybrids. How else would you get the perfect body to go with that head, how else would you be able to create the perfect doll from the character you made for it?
I think most hybrids actually look amazing, especially if the resin is a perfect match. A friend of mine recently bought a new body for her AIL head, and he looks so much more perfect with this body than he did with the previous one.

My only hybrids are a DIM (whiteskin) Claudia head on a Dollmore WS body (btw, PERFECT resinmatch!!! Dollmore WS and DIM WS are both paperwhite, I can see NO difference XD), and a Dollzone Lola head which also shares the Dollmore body. Though the Lola's WS is slightly more ivory than paperwhite, it still matches nicely.

 

The doll that i hope to partially get for my birthday this year is going to be a hybrid. a Minifee girl body with a Ninodoll Woo. U head. It fits perfectly in the sense that the minifee body is my favorite and the most amazing poser ive seen and in the sense that the head is what I've wanted since the day ive seen it. It doesn't fit in the sense that im pretty sure that the skin tones are different and that the neck of the head is about one and a half inches larger than the neck of the body. the thing is i WANT a mismatched doll. i WANT a hybrid that doesn't really mesh because i find that to be most beautiful and most befitting of the character she will become. Hybrids are fine. They are just a choice. And the artistry of the whole doll collecting field is just enhanced by the possibility of this choice.

On another note, I like that im getting a Hybrid all the more because she'll have to go through a real birthing progression. When you get your doll in a box (as i got my first doll) you know he or she has been completely formed in this body and his or her whole 'soul' is placed in this body. With my hybrid, if i get the head first then ill have a head floating around waiting for limbs to express itself, and then the body will come and it will have to pick up the head and meld with it. i may be getting too spiritually into this but i feel that theres a certain strange organicism to this hybrid business that I'm excited about

 

There are very few doll bodies I really like. It will actually cost me more to not only get another body, but then have it customized even further via modification. I can see why a company would be personally irked when people want to change their creation, but that's kind of the point of bjds in the first place. They need to get over it. Why should I be obligated to buy a body I'm lukewarm about or outright dislike? It costs too much for me to not be absolutely happy.

 

I personally don't think there should be any debate here. I have hybridized my Euclase Meditation head, and plan to hybridize my Bygg OE head. It's not a big deal to me. I found a body that fit the character (wasn't to muscley, and yet looked proportional; in this case, a dollcatch body) and stuck the head on there.

The big difference between BJDs and other collector dolls to me is, among others, the level of customization easily achievable. My meditation head is now in NS through faceup/blushing because the body is NS. To me, this just makes sense. I spent a lot of effort getting the right tone, of course, but once I had it, it was a great achievement. To me, when companies say "We don't want to see our dolls' heads on other bodies" that's being awfully selfish. Really, it's just them saying, "We don't want you to spend money on other companies", which makes sense, but if it really bothers them so much, they can make new bodies that better fit what people want, I.e., more muscles/more streamlined, bigger/smaller breasts, etc.

In the end, it's the aesthetic that appeals to me. I buy dolls for the sculpt of the head, and if I don't like the body, I just get a new one. BJDs are customizable, and it's for that reason that I'm still in the hobby. If I couldn't customise my dolls the way I wanted to, I'd just look at pictures online, rather than spend the money to buy a doll. But that's just me.

 

When I was young(er) and foolish I told myself I would never have a doll hybrid because it just seemed "wrong" to match a head with another body.

Thank God I got down from that cloud real quick. XD;

I mean, heck, hybridizing is just awesome really, cons like extra shipping costs and funky resin matches aside. I for one want bodies that look good and pose like a dream, and if one comes without the other I'm the type who might never consider it again. Okay well if it looks daaaarn good but the posing's just meh, or if it poses freaking awesome but doesn't look as terrific as I want it, I might give it a second thought.

In fact, I've got two dolls currently, one of who's a hybrid, and out of the three confirmed dolls I want in future two of them will have to be hybrids too (since they're Migidoll and I do not like that new body, no).

If a company doesn't like the idea of hybrids, tough luck, s'what the customer wants, no? In the end we still pay them money for what we got from them, in the event they don't sell their head and body separately.

 

The idea of hybrids making doll owning cheaper is odd to me. I have bought bodies and separate heads in the hopes of uniting them for their different aesthetic appeal and almost always ended up having to purchase yet another body because the first match didn't work.

I have no problem with hybrids. Other peoples combinations have inspired my own creations and spending. I think that can only be a good thing.

 

Of course it's okay!

 

I don't think there is anything wrong with hybrids. I have two of them. I got a luts summery head and needed a body to go with him, and a RS body was a lot cheaper than buying a luts body to go with him.

 

I love certain heads,while i need that the bodies are well posable,so definitely i like to hybridize and i'm not afreid to do that.

 

A large number of my dolls are hybrids. Those are my expensive dolls Mostly because hybridizing is very hit or miss, since you can't judge how well resin will match or size aesthetics will work until you have that particular head and body in hand, and for one doll I have had uh, 6 bodies? looking for that perfect match. (Found it finally). But even within one company, the heads are not all the same size (looks at Luts), so if you want your character doll to be right, you have to go look around for another body that works for that size of head. And hybridizing takes some skill--you have to know the quirks of different companies and be willing and able to sand, blush and epoxy as needed--it's a very "hands-on" style of doll ownership, and different from the collectible cabinet-dwelling species.

Neither style of doll ownership is intrinsically "better" than the other. You could make an aesthetic argument that for fullsets the original doll artist's vision should be maintained--but when the fullset is an edition of 100 and the parts are assembled by less-inspired workers who just want to get the things together and out (I know this because I used to be in an atelier who made "limited edition" things just like that, and I was one of the two worker bees who tarted up and assembled the pieces), I think it somewhat dilutes the "unique artist vision" aspect of it. I like to think of dolls now as "collaborative art pieces".

 

Sometimes hybrids are done for economic reasons. Let's say that a whole doll from company A costs $600 ($150 for the head and $450 for the body) and a body from company B costs $200. If you really like the head from company A and are fine with that head on a body from company B, you can have a doll for $350 instead of $600. You do have to pay for shipping twice. Once from company A for the head and once from company B for the body, although buying second hand and locally can decrease shipping costs.

I have a CP Delf head on a FantasyDoll body (=much cheaper), but I liked the extra mobility of the F-Doll body and the price was a bonus. I also have a Volks head on a LittleMonica body and I openly admit that I didn't feel like paying the secondhand market price of an SD17 body, which can be two to three times higher than the price the LittleMonica body I have.
I also have made hybrids with expensive bodies, one of them was even discontinued and cost me an arm and a leg to get. Once it had arrived it turned out that it didn't match with the head I had. I sold the head to replace it with the same mold in a different resin colour. That was expensive.

 

I see nothing at all "wrong" (interesting how that word is thrown around) in hybridizing and would do it more, but I don't have the money to order bodies willy-nilly. My all time favorite doll is a SD girl with a body to die for, but I can't stand the head sculpt and would have to replace it. But it's out of my league money-wise!!

 

My SD girl is hybrid out of necessity.
I won her head on Ebay, but failed to win her damaged body (listed separately.) The head was Jolly Plus, and I was having a hard time finding a first-gen Jolly Plus body at the time.

So I bought her a BBB body, which matches almost perfectly! I like BBB hands, and it's been a good match for the doll. I will say that if I hadn't made a hybrid doll, I wouldn't own an SD sized doll today, and I love her.

I say that customization is the name of the game in the BJD world; get the parts you want and put them together any way you please!

 

I never thought it was wrong to make hybrids, and I think that because these dolls were designed to be customized there's really not much the original creators can say about it. Naturally companies would prefer you to stick to their products, but that doesn't always work. I was reluctant to try hybrids at first, but now that I have, I'm quite willing to swap heads and bodies around to get what I want. In one storyline I expect to have four out of five to be hybrids, to get the variety of heights and builds I want .

 

Ok, so two years after I posted this I finally can say... Oliver finally will have the body he always should! A Delf body, of course! The B&G body made his job for three years and now has to go (it's a great body, but I'm sick of it!)
BTW, the Delf body is on its way to me now, yey!

So, the only hybrids that will keep being that way forever are my Thor girls.

 

Even though i don't see anything wrong with hybrids, i dont see myself hybriding a doll. I don't know why. It's just i like to have a full doll that has its company parts. But i dont mind mind when other people have hybrids. :3

 

(I realize this comment is old but I thought I'd still comment on it)

Before I say anything, I want to preface it saying that both of my dolls are hybrids and that I totally understand the wanting-my-doll-to-be-what-I-want view. (It didn't help that they are both Migidoll).

But I think what bugs me about this comment is the assumption that every artist of BJDs does so with the customization aspect in mind. I have considered being a BJD artist so I can only come at this from how I would feel about it... I have specific ideas about the kind of dolls I would like to make, and for me the intent would be to make dolls of a theme that others can enjoy. Yes of course others could customize them as everything would be removable, but that wouldn't have really been the intent behind the creation of the doll (I've thought about only making very limited numbers to kind of combat this). Some BJD companies make their dolls as a blank slate--no faceup, hair, eyes, clothes etc. And in those cases, yes the intent was very much to customize. But some make only fullsets that can only be purchased as fullsets... and there I am not convinced that the intent is customization so much as selling a specifically themed doll. Just because they are both BJDs doesn't necessarily mean they are the same -kind- of product.

"They need to get over it. Why should I be obligated to buy a body I'm lukewarm about or outright dislike?"

because BJD makers are artists... sure there are other BJD artists out there, but I am confused about this sentiment of having to tailor sales for accessibility to other companies... If I made BJDs, I would be making them as LE or one-off fullsets for individuals to enjoy my vision, much like other subcategories of the dolliverse outside of BJDs, much like people buy paintings to enjoy the vision of the artist.

No, I would not be able to control what people did after it left my hands... but I don't understand why that would need to affect what I did while they were still in my possession.

This is ALL for the BJDs-as-complete-art-pieces kind of bjd maker, not for BJDs-as-customizable-figures thing.

And this is not to say anything against hybridizing, but more the "Company X should sell all parts separately" sentiment.

 

Here's my case. I wanted a Migidoll Ryu. At the time, Migi didn't have a body to go with her heads. Just when I started looking for a Ryu head on the DoA market place, someone informed me that she was going to start making bodies. So I waited another 5 or so months and bought a Ryu head and a Migi body. Just by looking at the pictures, I could tell that I would most likely not like the body, but I gave it a try. It didn't work for me. The body just looked too juvenile (young) for an adult male. Plus there was the fact that I was doing male and female Ryu twins. So I didn't have a female body to match the male body.

So in my case, doing a hybrid was really my only option. So I personally don't think there's anything wrong with hybrids. And sometimes people want a head, but don't like the body, or vice versa.

I can understand how a company (sculpture/artist for the company) could be offended that someone doesn't like their work. But that's what it is. As the saying goes, you can't make ALL of the people happy ALL of the time. You're bound to have some hit and misses. And if you're a company and you don't want any of your dolls being used as a hybrid, then you probably shouldn't be in the BJD business, because hybrids are just bound to happen.

 

I keep coming back to this thread! Fifth time now, and I now actually have a hybrid. I bought an Everpurple Iris head on the Marketplace last year. I'd always wanted Iris and couldn't afford her when she came out. Aria wasn't selling bodies at the time, so I started looking around. After trying her against a lot of dolls at meet-ups and such, and an extensive conversation with Lindsey over at MoC, I decided upon a Loongsoul body for her. The resin match was probably close, since both Loongsoul and EP supposedly matched Volks, I wanted a taller body for her than the original 56.5 cm. one since the head was so large (23.5) and the Loongsoul impressed me with its posing abilities. The six month layaway didn't hurt either! Of course, right after I put the Loongsoul on layaway, Aria started offering bodies...

I'm pleased nonetheless. The resin match is good, and she looks very proportional with her body. I've currently got a Narvy and an Infiniti Hue heads coming and I'm going to probably hybrid them both.