What do you think about Hybrids?

Oh, anyone is free to comment of course. I would just like to hear the opinions of people who dislike hybrids as well. I'm repeating the question actually.

If we're talking about artistic integrity, completeness of doll, direction of the artist's idea, then why is swapping resin parts so different from changing wigs/eyes/clothes + modification?

The reason why I said not 'good enough' if change was made is because someone mentioned that as a reason for hybridization and said it was disrespectful.

In my opinion, people will choose hybrids, change face-ups, customize their dolls either because they do feel something's not good enough or they want to complete a vision they had in their head which is not possible with the default doll. In either case, I don't see what's wrong with that.

It is one thing to appreciate and respect a company for their work. It's another to completely believe that the company can do no wrong, can never be corrected, can never be improved upon. If a person believes that, it's up to them. But to expect others to do so as well, is impossible.

 

I have a Girl Ani (Luts) hibrid 'cause I don't like Lut's Kid felf girl body.
I have her in a Souldoll Girl's body that's more mature and fits my girl better oo/

I don't think hibris are inaceptable. Actually, I really like hibrids 'cause they make you have more options and criate the possibility of having even more kinds of characters for our dolls ^^

 

I don't think it's unethical whatsoever, so long as you are not selling it to make profit off of something that is not yours. Now if you were selling a color resin and saying it was exactly like **** company, then you have a problem. Even Angell Studio uses the words "like" instead of "matches." They are keeping themselves safe there. As too is Dollmore by saying that you should only buy their doll bodies. Why not? What vacuum cleaner salesmen says "Yeah, my stuff is way overpriced, you can buy my high-quality nozzle head and place it on another vac for a quarter of the price." it's just not going to happen. That would hinder the company greatly.

I would have no qualms with hybrids if I knew how the matches looked like, the neck pieces, and what quality the resin is. If they were cheaper, I would probably do it. However, I have no qualms with modification that seem to be looked down upon, so I wouldn't really care what people thought. It's not illegal to do so, therefore, I will do so till' my heart's content.

 

i think that hybrids are ok. doll companys say that they encourage customers to customise their dolls with faceup wigs and eyes. Hybrids are just taking it a step further in customising dolls. especialy with character dolls.
EX: i will have luts El and Moon heads. my moon will be a tough buff dude. the luts body isnt very buff, so i prefer the AOD body for him. But my El wont be a hybrid (he is right now tho) because the luts body matches my vision for him.

 

Put me down for two of them. Can we get a scaffold with those, and maybe some rotten tomatoes for people to throw? XD

They're an abomination? Really? I can't believe someone actually said that. *lol*
I...honestly don't understand what the big deal is. A doll is a doll is a doll. They're all big expensive hunks of plastic, when it really comes down to it. On this point, at least, they are most certainly not srs bznz. I don't understand how they can possibly be wrong or not okay, unless you're (general you) talking counterfeits, which I presume most people would not find okay in any case.

Changing something about a doll doesn't mean (or doesn't always mean) that it wasn't good enough to begin with. Sometimes it just means that a person doesn't like the body/head a company makes, or has a different vision for their doll/character. Me, for example. I have twin Dollzone boy heads who are on Fdoll bodies. It's nothing to do with Dollzone bodies not being good enough for me, since I can appreciate that, yes, they are fairly nice bodies, however they are NOT what I wanted for my guys. In terms of my vision for the characters, their body type is not quite what the DZ boy bodies are, and, TBQH, I don't like DZ's boy bodies all that much. I was not about to spend my money on something I didn't like just to preserve some supposed artistic integrity or so that I didn't somehow offend someone else. That is, at least my reason for hybridising.

For some people the reason for hybridising a doll is about cost, and I can't see anything wrong with that. Some people pay upwards of 1K for a head alone sometimes, so I can understand if they don't particularly want to shell out another five hundred for a body from the same company just to make hybrid-haters happy or to be able to say that their doll is from only one company rather than because it actually makes them happy to have a doll whose head and body are from the same place.

Other people hybridise because some companies don't *make* bodies for their heads. Should people who like those heads either not buy those heads because they can't get a body from the same company for them? Maybe we should demand that they make bodies for their heads RIGHT NOW, no matter what their ability at sculpting bodies might be, purely so that we have a body from them to put that head on?

I thought part of this hobby was customisation, yanno making our dolls the way we want them? That could be by modding, doing a faceup or hybridising. Once we pay for a doll, it is ours and the company that produced it and the rest of the world have absolutely no say in what we do with it.The company has already received my money, I don't owe them anything else, so I don't give a flying fark about whether they're okay with what I do with them once they're in my hands. If they don't want people to change them, they need to quit making it so easy to do so, and to stop selling heads and bodies separately. I don't understand the thought that hybridising is a slap in anyone's face. In making a hybrid, two companies are getting money. How is that hurting anyone? I would think that, if anything, both companies would be happy to be getting someone's business. Take one of my guys, for example. Dollzone got $150 of my money for the head. Fdoll got $188 for the body. Tell me, who lost out? Dollzone, who wouldn't have gotten my money at all if there hadn't been an alternative to their body? Fdoll, who also wouldn't have gotten my money if there hadn't been a head I liked to put on their body? Instead of one company *not* getting my money because I didn't like the head+body as it was presented as one complete doll, two companies *did* get my money for the bits I liked from each. Seems to me like everybody won.

I truly don't get why some people are so concerned with what others are doing with their dolls. Don't like the fact that someone has hybrids? Don't look at their dolls, or don't make friends with them (as at least one person has said they won't). Don't buy them, don't make them yourself, don't acknowledge their existence, if they bother you that much. Just...don't tell those of us who like them that we're wrong in some way or that there's something wrong with our dolls.

 

I think I should also add that companies that do not want dolls to be sold separately will not sell a doll head without a body. My Souldoll had to be ordered as a whole, even though his resin matches with dollzone perfectly. They even have a ridiculously hard Neck Chip to discourage it from happening. However, after you own it, I think you should be able to do whatever you want with it. But I think the reason some companies do so is primarily because they won't sell the bodies otherwise (Or at least less of them.)

 

While none of my dolls are hybrids in the true sense I have two, soon to be three dolls that have been pieced together through a combination of splits, auctions, and buying heads separate from bodies. In one case I bought head because the mold was being discontinued by the company and only had the money for the head at the time and got the body from the marketplace later. Sure, I ended up with a body from the same company as the but if someone hadn't decided that body wasn't for them it might have been much harder to get that match otherwise. I think one of the benefits of hybrids within the community is for every person that wants one style of doll there is often someone who wants something else and by selling and trading parts people are able to get the doll they want.

 

Even though there are so many responses to this topic, I feel that I have to weigh in here. I don't see any ethical issue with hybridizing dolls. The whole point of BJDs, as has been mentioned numerous times in this thread, is that they're customizable figurines. Part of that customization process may include hybridizing. Is it wrong? Not really. We're not talking about a doll owner stealing the original company's creative product.

I do understand the issue of "opportunism" in the head-only companies, however. These companies did see an opportunity in the market and they began creating a product. Technically, they are indeed "opportunists" in a sense. From a business perspective, this doesn't make the company wrong--they're not making profit from other companies' misfortunes, and they're not taking business away from these other companies. If anything, they may be making more business for companies who sell a good body but the head sculpts aren't as desirable.

Doll companies make these dolls so that the owners will enjoy them, customize them, and make them their own art piece. And, as someone mentioned before, if you're going to talk about the ethics of hybridization, you have to include the hybrid accessories: wigs and eyes. Are we only to buy eyes and wigs from the company that made the whole doll? Does the same hold true for the doll's clothing? It's a slippery-slope argument, to be sure, but it's a valid extension. If you believe that hybrids are an abomination, because they incorporate non-company parts (e.g. Iplehouse head, Volks body), then you have to also consider that non-company eyes, wigs, and clothing are part of the hybridization process. I have a doll that is a complete Iplehouse sculpt, but she has eyes from Ethereal Angels and a wig I bought here on DoA. Technically, she counts as a hybrid because she has non-standard parts. (I don't consider her a hybrid, but I wouldn't have a problem with her if she was. She's my first doll, so I bought her as a fullset.)

The arguments against hybridization only get more ludicrous. If you argue against hybrids, you essentially argue against customization which is the entire foundation of the BJD hobby.

 

Yes, but comparing hybridization to changing aesthetics would be like apples and oranges for someone who opposes hybrids alone. It's not that the non-hybrid owners have aversions to change, it's more so that they may want to keep a consistent artist "brand" for both the head and the body. If you take a Volks doll, tweak the facial features, repaint it, change its sex, mod it for better mobility, and throw on clothes/wigs/accessories from another company, it's still a Volks doll. Following the handbag analogy; if someone takes a designer handbag, refuses to substitute in a cheaper shoulder strap, but sticks their slogan buttons and decorative trinkets all over it, it's still a designer handbag.

I'm not trying to be difficult, but it really seems like people are using some sort of straw man argument based on a narrow take of artistic integrity, claiming that non-hybrid owners must be operating on terms XYZ despite what other people have said to the contrary. A non-hybrid preferring owner may not be adhering to the BJD artist/team's artistic integrity as other people are implying, but rather their own based on preserving the brand name. Which is why the LE fullset argument still doesn't mesh well. As I mentioned before, all dolls (regardless of standard/LE runs) start off bald, naked, unpainted, and eyeless from the sculptor's hands. Perhaps non-hybrid owners prefer to keep the basic empty "shell" of an artist/team's brand name and consider everything else to be icing on top.

A fullset LE is usually marketed on head sculpt, resin tone, and/or limited accessories. It still doesn't have anything to do with opposing hybridization. You could strip the doll of everything it has on, but at the end of the day, it's still Soom/Iplehouse/etc. from head to toe. In the case of standards, the point about accessories doesn't hold up at all because again, not many companies make their own eyes, wigs, or clothing from scratch as you would do resin-cast dolls, or require that their standards be bought with a strict, predetermined appearance. On top of face-ups being optional most of the time (if not always), the eyes/wig included with standards are usually random unless you're able to request otherwise. You can also find the same generic-looking eyes or wigs on different websites, not to mention the same clothing brands (ie. Anotherspace). It seems like many companies don't have an inflexible artistic vision for their standards to begin with, which is another reason why non-hybrid owners may see a disconnect between changing accessories and hybridization.

Which brings us back to the point about face-ups. Using the above arguments, a blank/repainted doll still has nothing to do with keeping a consistent head + body artist brand name for strictly non-hybrid owners. The issue isn't solely based on opposing general customization. You could wipe a beautiful LE face-up and it doesn't change that doll x was made by company x, head/torso/limbs and all. Besides, I think it's safe to say that people request face-up/blushing commissions (to disguise yellowing in many cases) a lot more than they go out of the way to replace yellowed dolls after a single year. The cheaper alternative usually wins out.

Just throwing this out for the sake of debate, because no one seems to be arguing that they oppose changing company defaults and hybridization at the same time. Maybe some people do, but I don't think it's illogical of them to see wigs/eyes/clothes changes and hybridization on different levels. Based on what has been said, artistic integrity seems to be more of a brand-preserving issue with a complete head + body than it is about keeping every company default intact. The bit about "abominations" and piggybacking on other people's success is another can of worms altogether.

And as much as I think that there is no ethical issue with hybridization, I don't think it's an issue that hybrid-owning people need to feel defensive or persecuted over, either. The more I read, the more I see "lol silly non-hybrid folks, why don't they mind their own business" posts. Aside from a reiteration of personal choices, I don't think anyone actually claimed that hybrids should not be owned based on some universal sense of artistic integrity. If you (general) don't want your artistic vision for having hybrids disrespected, perhaps you shouldn't disrespect other people's artistic vision for a whole brand name doll and claim that they must be doing x if they prefer y.

 

Oh man. If there's nothing wrong with a faceup, I just can't bring myself to wipe it off, even if it doesn't suit the character I want. Heck, I've got dolls with marked faceups, and I still don't want to re-do them because I like them so much.

*cough*I'vedonethis*cough* Actually, there have been plenty of times I've given the customer a choice between the expensive and less expensive option, and... Most of them have gone for the expensive option. And they've always been grateful that I'm obviously not trying to rip them off.

If people think something is worth the money, they will pay for it. Even if Dollmore didn't tell me to only buy their bodies, I'd do it anyway, because I like them. (I mean, heck, who'd buy a company's bodies just because the company tells them to?)

 

I think you might be missing what people are actually complaining about--and it isn't personal choice. It's having a dislike of hybrids on an ethical level. The very few people who have been carrying on about how hybrids are 'wrong' do feel it's immoral, because it disrespects the artist (artistic integrity) and/or causes a company to lose sales. It's one thing to prefer having an entire doll from one artist and quite another to get into a tizzy, because people should have entire dolls from the same artist. No where has anyone said that everyone must love hybrids. What people have been saying is that it's silly to attach an ethical dilemma to them.

That is the can of worms that this whole thing is really about though.

 

It's always fascinating to come back to a thread like this after a couple of days.

I have to say two things. One is that I actually appreciate comments like those from Ravendolls. She doesn't like hybrids, but she explains why and says that she understands that this is just her own position and your mileage may vary. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

In fact, having experienced a fair amount of "ARRGH! It STILL doesn't match!!" I can appreciate the distaste for not-quite-there resin matches all too well! Soooo irritating to have it be not-right after you searched high and low...

But I also want to toss out there this notion. I have hybrids that I have purposefully put together in order to save money.

The reason I'm saying this flat out is that I *don't* see anything wrong with that, and I don't think we ought to feel compelled to add some kind of qualifier to that effect all the time.

I love finding "rescue me" heads in the Marketplace, or parts at a really good price, and snagging them for later use. Well what am I to do? I couldn't buy them as a full doll, so I'm going to *have* to buy another lone part later on. And maybe even the part from the same company isn't going to be an exact resin match. So maybe I go with a less expensive option that IS.

I understand the desire to disavow doing things for financial reasons. It makes one look cheap (or, as per so many people who seem to be channeling baby birds these days, "cheep" ). Frankly, they're ALL expensive toys, and I don't see why we should feel guilty about having fun by using less-costly parts.

(As long as they aren't less-costly because they are bootlegs!)

 

You aren't alone I've had floating heads and sat at my computer stalking the marketplace for good deals on bodies--if I can save money and find a body I like, why not? Besides, bargain hunting can be really fun. The idea that cost should be completely thrown out the window as criteria for choosing dolls/bodies is one that gets really overemphasized IMO. Hybridizing is one way to make dolls that would have been unreachable actually doable for people, and that's pretty cool (this is of course assuming that the headsculpt was the major draw to begin with).

Now, I've had some that didn't save me anything. Finding Lorry a body was really difficult, because not only did I need him to be shorter than the average SD sized doll, I needed a body that could handle his Chiwoo melon head of doom. The Serendipity body ended up working really well, but it was not a low cost body. However, due to the requirements of his character's very specific height and build, there just weren't as many options to choose from. Cait and Aiden were much easier in terms of fit and build, so I was able to dig around for bargains for them. I love love love the body I found for Cait's head too--it ended up being perfect for her and cost less than buying a girl body from the same company.

 

But I would take acceptance as acknowledging a person's right to create a hybrid and not attach ethics to it. Accepting something is different than liking something and/or wanting it for yourself. People can personally decide that hybrids don't do it for them and accordingly reject them on a personal sort of level, but when it turns into attaching an ethical dilemma to creating a hybrid, it becomes morally wrong for anyone to own one.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if artists' right fell into it somewhere. Though, since the people that had serious issues with hybrids to begin with have not continued to elaborate their position, it's partly speculation. The way it has seemed to read (to me, and I may not be entirely correct), is that being against hybrids on an ethical level is related in part to a sense of brand loyalty/loyalty to the artist (it's damaging to the company, taking advantage of the company, etc). I also remember a poll in GD a long time ago about what people thought about hybrids. One of the choices was something along the lines of "I don't like them; it's rude to the artist', and a very few people actually did choose that option. So the whole business of artist's rights isn't that much of a stretch.

The reason it maybe continuing to come up in this thread is that it's actually kind of an interesting tangent. Artistic integrity beyond the ethical hybrid dilemma and how it relates to customizable dolls would be an interesting debate topic on it's own, as it is something that can encompass more than just hybrids. However, I do think the question of artistic integrity was raised here in relation to people who have ethical issues with hybrids not just people who have a personal preference.

That is not to say that the above doesn't come into play too. There are probably multiple factors. There's a number of people who get upset at the notion that cost-cutting comes into people's decision making processes. People can get funny about things anytime money is involved, and no matter how much bargain hunting you do, this is still a very expensive hobby.

Yes, certainly. What's really too bad is when some people (though I'm convinced it's a minority) are determined to let their personal ranking of dolls determine how they interact with their fellow hobbyists. The hybrid part of the 'elitism' thread that got locked, was an unfortunate example of that.

 

Although I understand your point of view Dezarii, I would like to state that we are all here to have fun. We all love the dolls and we are all spending a lot of money ( Yes, even the cheapest dolls are expensive! These are not barbies after all) in something that most of the world doesn't quite understand why. So I really do not see what is the problem with the hybridism after all. For whatever reazon the person has! None of my dolls are hybrids and I am just waiting for the first one. The body and head will arrive soon. I bought the body because a) I liked it; b) I saw good reviews about it; c) It was less expensive! And I really, really don't see why I should bother with that if it is something for my pleasure ultimately! But that is just my point of view...

 

This is something that I've never been able to understand. If cheaper dolls always looked worse, then I might be able to get my head around it. But... there are plenty of owner pictures of cheaper dolls that look nice, and plenty of owner pictures of more expensive dolls with bad faceups and messy wigs. So the idea of more expensive = better just strikes me as snobbery, plain and simple. If the doll is sculpted well, poses well, and is made of strong resin with a nice color (that matches )... Then, what more can you ask for? A good doll is a good doll.

(Granted, cheaper dolls are more likely to be owned by people new to the hobby, so it's inevitable that some of them will be a bit scary-looking because the owner has yet to figure out how to do faceups properly, or whatever... But that still doesn't change the number of unfortunate-looking expensive dolls I've also seen.)

That said, I can understand that production costs will vary from company to company, hence the broad spectrum of prices. I don't begrudge some companies for charging more than others.

 

I wouldn't post here normally, but I had an unusual experience with hybridization. When I bought my Shiwoo heads to turn into a pair of girl dolls, I got distinct pressure from a few people to buy inexpensive bodies for them--specifically, Bobobie. I didn't like the Bobobie resin (too shiny compared to the toothier Luts resin I was used to), really disliked the hand sculpt, and though I wanted one girl to be smaller-breasted, the body they showed me was immature, which was not what I was looking for. I was still madly in love with my Delf at the time (not that I'm not still!), and to be honest, to put my girls on non-matching bodies would have made me feel like I'd settled for second-best for them. It actually took some time for these friends to accept that, for whatever bizarre reason, I was going to save up for CP bodies rather than jump at quicker gratification and significant savings. Am I the only one who's gotten a touch of reverse snobbery about "wasting" my money on pricier bodies?