What is one thing you’re specific about your doll choices?

I thought I would be into realism, but at my beginner level and lack of money, my only criteria is that the head and body be of the same maker. This helps me learn how each brand 'handles' and I will feel more confident of what I like best when I spend the big money. And I'm so glad to have been able to attend a doll meet-up. That introduced me to many dolls at once, and it is so nice to meet fellow doll peeps!!

 

Anthros. That's what the majority of my collection is.

 

I generally only have dolls with double jointed elbows and knees because I've found I get too frustrated with the limitations of single jointed ones.

 

Everything I've ever said I'll always or never do turns out to be a lie. I just like too much variety to stick to my rules!

Though one pretty consistent one is no dolls with open mouths. A little bit of teeth showing is fine, a big toothy grin is ok sometimes, but if the mouth is actually open, like you can see tongue or the inside of the mouth, it's not for me.

 

I'd say the only thing I strongly follow is no 2 with the same body, if that counts.
Everything else has gone out of the window over the years haha.

 

I like dolls with good joint engineering. The only ones I forgive for just being cute lumps are my Dearmine Beans. xD
A doll has to have lots of other good points for me to forgive joints that can't do much.

 

My 'specific thing' has changed over the years. My very first doll had thise lovely melancholic look to his face (SD), but then my second doll looked cheerful (SD). As long as i had a 'story' for them, they could be mine. Then my break happened and i realized that the thing that's the most important to me is the weight of them and how happy they make me feel.

 

For me it's absolutely no single jointed arms... I've had single jointed bodies in the past and they're just frustratingly useless. I'll accept single jointed legs on very rare occasions, but single jointed arms are just a no-go.

I have some other guidelines but nothing else I'm as strict about. There are dolls that are perfect in every other way that I refuse to buy because they have single jointed arms. u_u

 

There are a few things that inform my doll choices and most of them are pretty flexible and depend on context. The one thing that has stayed firm so far is no horror/gore, especially permanent mods or design that look like an untreated injury. It's distressing and it squicks me out. I have no problems with other people's horror themed dolls but it's not my thing.

 

@Seafoam Shade
Yeah, there's a pretty wonderful bjd on DoA: freakin' Jack the Ripper. Well designed, but, I wouldn't be able to look at that doll without remembering what I know about that history. I collect for ENTIRELY different reasons. But, I confess, I would consider a Sweeney Todd, lol. (Harold Prince version!)

 

Size. I don't have that much space, so anything taller than 67 cm is an absolute no.

I am pretty open to everything else. Usually, there is a face that I can't get out of my head and I start planning from that.

 

Consistency. So, if the company consistently makes products that I know will have good quality resin, face-ups, sculpts, outfits and shoes, wigs, etc. Also, price ranges so I know how much to save up for whenever something I want comes up. This also leads to how consistent they are with bringing out new products or familiar favorites (like if I know that they tend to throw a physical event at a certain time of year or have certain limited editions available, etc). From there, it pretty much goes into open territory as I like stuff that goes from super realistic to anime style to contemporary to fantasy from Yo-SD to the tall men. Haha.

 

For me, it’s decidedly a lack of realism! I prefer a more stylized old-school look for my unique characters. While I greatly admire realism in other’s collections, I learned years ago that they just won’t fly here. I have too much of the real world in my everyday life, thank you very much, and I need my dolls to be an escape into fantasy.

 

My one hard and fast rule has always been that dolls who are meant to be posed or photographed together, as a pair or a set, absolutely HAVE TO look like they go together in terms of sculptural style, scale and proportions.

Dolls don't have to match across groups... I have all kinds of scales and levels of realism over here... But I'd never pick a 65cm realistic Iple woman as a partner for an anime-esque, bobble-headed 60cm CP/Delf, for instance.

 

I just buy dolls that I like the look of, the only thing that I never go for no matter how much I like them is dolls bigger than 40 cm. Sometimes I think that’s to big too.

 

That's a hard question - I suppose the thing that most of my dolls have in common, no matter the size, is that they're children. A small number are younger teens, very few of them are older teens or adults. Other than that I can't think of a single defining factor of my choices.

Teddy

 

Most of my hard rules I have made exceptions for here and there, but there is one that I'm a stickler on:

Child-like. Whether that be dolls that look like kids or infants, or have stylistic features associated with youth (big eyes, small nose and mouth, puckered lips and/or cheeks, etc.) Admittedly my very first bjd had all those hallmark features, but I lost interest in her rather quickly before leaving the hobby for a good several years. She and I parted ways once I got back into the hobby, and I've stuck with keeping more mature SDs (and a couple MSDs) since.

I guess in contrast to that my must-have rule is that a sculpt has to look like an older teen at minimum in maturity to become a part of my crew. (that excludes animal dolls, and only applies to humanoids)

 

Proportions are basically it for me, and the main reason why I stopped purchasing BJD over a decade ago. I don't mind hyper-stylization, and do own a few dolls (or maybe too many) outside these that are extremes of stylization, but I like to keep my more expensive ones, to more proportionate looking bodies, even if the heads or facial features are stylized to no tomorrow. I like more realistically proportioned bodies, unfortunately, that doesn't seems to be a thing that's happening anytime soon within this genre of dolls. The more proportionate bodies that are available now, are not my cup of tea aesthetically, so I get to spend my money elsewhere (which is a good thing, I think!). (: