What is your faceup preference?

It depends on the sculpt and if the default faceup is cute! I really disliked the Volks Miku DD faceup so I sent her off to an artist. But my Volks Anna SD13 I won’t ever send for a faceup because hers is absolutely so adorable!
I guess for me Dollfie dreams will always need faceups and the super dollfies look fantastic the way they are
I have tried my own faceup before and I use drawings of anime characters as reference to get the look I desire~

 

Using Photoshop/other programs to design faceups on blank sculpts is a lot of fun! I do that myself quite a bit.

I also tend to buy sculpts blank - I prefer to let them sit around blank for a bit while I think about the character that fits the doll. Sometimes faceups mask the virtues or vices of a particular sculpt and it is nice to be able to see it exactly as it is.

Aside from that, my preference is for realistic faceups. I love freckles and skin texturing, lip lines, contrast (dark hair/brows on light skin, light hair/brows on dark skin, etc.), and I prefer fine, delicate eyelashes. I tend not to be drawn to "makeup" heavy looks that incorporate intensely red (or black, purple, etc.) lips and lots of eyeshadow.

That's just for my own collection, though. I greatly enjoy seeing all kinds of faceups, even those that are the most extravagant and "fantasy/sci fi" on dolls belonging to other people.

 

I like company face ups best! Doing my own sounds like it could be fun to try but since I have zero materials for it already and MSC requires so much prep (PPE, humidity, etc) I'm just not sure I would actually end up liking doing my own. Plus I'm not much of an artist.
I only have one doll ordered without a company faceup and I will be sending her off to someone else for both faceup and blushing after I receive her. For her I'm starting to find some images online for inspiration to send to the artist to use as a basis

 

So far I have gone with company faceups. Recently though I have really been admiring several faceup artists work on instagram and here so am definitely considering going that route in the future.

 

90% of the time I like to plan the faceups myself. It's one of the main appeals of the hobby for me, being able to customize a doll to be uniquely my own. Also, majority of the time the companies just don't have the look I want to go for with my doll. I've paid for a company face up once, and i have 2 other dolls with a company faceups because I got them second hand and don't have the heart to wipe away such pretty work (this also goes for another second hand doll with another artist's faceup). So out of my 24 dolls, 1/24 has another artist's faceup, 3/24 have a company faceup, and 20/24 have a faceup done/will be done by myself.

When planning my faceups, I like to mock them up in photoshop while I'm waiting for the doll to arrive. It helps the wait feel less grueling and gets me ready to work on them as soon as they arrive. Not to mention it helps me figure out what I do and don't like for the makeup, which helps prevent me from having to redo a faceup if I decide I don't like it.

 

I've been really lucky so far with the company face-ups I've received and haven't had the urge to change them. My face-up skills are still pretty basic though so if I were to make any adjustments they'd be super minor. I like to practice face-ups on practice heads I have though. Maybe one day I'll have enough skills to actually give all of my dolls custom ones. We'll see lol.

 

I also like to do my own faceups though occasionally (mostly from not having time/energy) I left a doll with the company Faceup a long time. But I like to paint them myself and I don't really make a hard copy plan almost ever. Normally I only resort to that on a head I've already found difficult trying to get right. In that case I doodle on paper. But I often just mull it over in my head and sometimes search for random inspiration and file it in my brain. Often enough I even paint intuitively with no solid ideas before I start working.

 

I pretty much only do my own faceups as it's something I enjoy and since I shell characters usually, most company faceups don't match the character in my head. I also am the type of person to pay for a commission and then get annoyed that it's not exactly as it is in my own head, so I've never paid for a faceup.

As for faceups, I have only recently started gathering up pictures for faceup inspo and execution. Most of the time, I keep the characters' vibe in my head as I'm doing the faceup. For makeup I do a little more planning, but it's honestly not much more than what I did before. I've been going into faceups partially blind for most of the time I've been doing faceups, and only just now am realizing that with some planning I've been having better results.

 

All my dolls have default face-ups! I tend to always like most companies' standard face-up.
However, if I have to send a doll for an artist to paint it, I always liked either natural-style or colorful fantasy face-ups. ˙ᵕ˙

 

I like commissioning artist faceups. I do like some company faceups but I shell characters, both my own OC's and anime and they have very specific looks or markings at times. I usually always buy blank dolls.

I do eventually want to do my own faceups (put the painting and color theory classes I took to use finally lmfao) but I'm so busy with grad school and work I never find the time.

Only doll now with his company faceup is my regulus which I will eventually get redone but his faceup is rather nice and works with his styling for the time being (Plus I have so many other heads that need painting!).

 

I bond with my dolls by giving them faceups! When I look back on the dolls that I’ve sold, a good chunk of them were dolls where I felt I couldn’t wipe the faceup (because they came to me with the company faceup and was too nice to wipe) Otherwise, I always order my dolls blank if I can! Since I don’t really sew or do other crafts for my dolls, faceups are the main thing I like to do for them to make them feel like mine!

 

I do my own faceups (whether I like it or not). While I admire the skillful artist-commissioned work and some company faceups I see, and wish I could manage the same symmetry and beautiful delicate lines, there's always something I would change. "This is gorgeous! ... but I'd want lighter lips, a different freckle pattern, or a different blushing technique on the nose, more/less texturing..." Etc. As a customer, I'd probably either insist on way too much control or stuff my true feelings for the sake of politeness and end up quietly disliking parts of the finished work, yet feel forevermore unable to justify wiping it due to sunk cost and respect for the artist's effort. In the end, I suppose working on all aspects of the doll is what makes them feel truly mine, which I'd say is integral to my satisfaction with the hobby as a whole... moreso than having a 'technically perfect' looking doll (though I'll never stop trying to improve.)

 

I'm pretty mixed on whether I'll do a faceup myself, commission, or go with the company faceup, as it seems! Two of mine have commissioned faceups, two have faceups I did myself, three have company faceups.

For the commissioned ones, I was just getting into BJDs and didn't want to deal with all the supplies and safety measures that a faceup entailed, so I sent them out. One company one, I waffled on whether to get the doll blank or not since there were some minor tweaks I was considering, but decided to get the faceup in the end. The other two were secondhand/in stock dolls that already had a faceup. Last year, I decided to brave the cost of supplies and trust that I could follow safety measures to get into doing my own faceups!

With planning the faceups, uh, I didn't, really. Both, I decided to go with a less makeup-heavy appearance, but aside from that and some general concept/character thoughts, I just went for it. I think they turned out all right.

I have to admit, sometimes I feel a little, I don't know, basic or something when I really like a company's faceup? I know the point of the faceup is to enjoy it! There's some gorgeous company faceups out there! And sometimes there's things I just don't have the supplies or desire to do myself (like airbrushing). Just my silly brain getting worked up about things that don't matter. I'm the kind of person that "bonds" most with my dolls by handling them rather than doing faceups, anyways.

 

I'm all over the place. All my dolls have their own characters/personality/backstory, and I spend time thinking about them and developing an inner vision of how their characters will look. But this inner vision can be informed by the company faceup -- sometimes the company faceup is a major inspiration for the doll character, sometimes it isn't.

If the company faceup is major inspiration, I'll try to buy the doll with it. Currently I'm getting a doll on preorder with a company faceup, because it influenced that character's development a lot. But if it doesn't match my inner vision of the character, or if I can't get a company faceup anymore, I'll buy the blank doll and paint it myself. Same if I receive a secondhand doll with a faceup, company or commissioned -- if it works for the character it stays, if it doesn't it gets wiped.

I have commissioned faceups in the past and they have been great. I recently started learning how to do my own faceups and finding it a lot of fun, so I'm less inclined to commission now. Plus there's a risk of a commissioned faceup not matching my inner vision, which is a sad thing. (No matter how good the artist is, they'll never be able to read my mind.) I much rather paint my dolls according to my inner version of them, even if my skill isn't as good as more experienced faceup artists.

I don't really plan a faceup beforehand. I have moodboards for inspiration and references for eyebrow/lash shape, colour palette, overall feeling. I look at those moodboards before I start painting, but I put them away when I start and just follow my gut and the shape of the sculpt.

 

I enjoy getting blank dolls specifically to customize myself; I've always been a doll lover/collector, so what I felt was missing from my life in my earlier years were easily customizable dolls. I always admired people who were willing and able to customize Barbie. I love Barbie, and she'll always be one of my favorite dolls to hoard. Having said that, painting tiny faces was always super intimidating to me. That's why when I discovered these dolls, I was super happy, to finally find dolls that were meant to be customizable, despite their cost, I felt like I couldn't possibly ruin them if they were meant to be customized (unlike mass-produced Barbie, that's already meant to be ready to be displayed!).

My first three BJD I got with custom face ups from their respective companies. I was still intimidated to paint my own dolls back then, so practiced on Volks smaller customizable line, their Dollfie fashion dolls. Once I got my first large resin blank, I created mockups in Photoshop, of what I wanted the doll to look like. As a traditionally trained artist for my whole life, it was a royal pain in the gut-hole, learning that painting thin crisp lines is not as easy when the canvas is not flat and as large as a wall. Lol! I also do my modifications on photoshop first, so that I know what I want to add/subtract, that has always gone well for me. The face up part, not so much but it does help quite a bit, nonetheless.

Now, I am more heavily into customizing 1:6 action-figures/dolls, although I was always interested in the style of painting, they use to add realistic skin textures even as early as 2007-ish, when I got back into 1:6 figues. I was looking for tutorials about their painting style -- however, back then no one in that genre of customization was willing to share their process. Now, there are people on YT who do share their process, and I was for the first time able to apply their method onto one of my custom 16 head sculpts. I did try to add skin texture to my DIM Minimee heads a lifetime ago, because I found it fascinating and thought it would breathe more life into them. However, I always did it with pastels, the way I did face ups, and found the end result to heavy looking/make-up like, so I am pleased to see that the actual method used for 1:6 looks closer to what I was looking for from the beginning (I just need a thousand years of practice, because apparently, I suck at customizing toys). I am looking forward to applying that method to some of my larger resin BJD heads, once I am ready to work again on those as well. Despite sucking profusely at painting tiny heads, I still enjoy painting things so much, I don't mind if I have to take a thousand years to get the results I want. My mockups for all my toy re/painting are still done on Photoshop, because it's easy, quick and painless. (:

 

It depends for me. A good deal of my dolls do have their company face ups - I liked what I saw and paid for it!
But a few of my dolls have custom face ups - I liked their sculpt and had another idea in mind for their makeup.
I'm too chicken to try to do my own face ups and I don't have a good workspace for it either.

 

I've always bought blank dolls, as painting the faces is one of my favorite part of the hobby, not to mention that a faceup means extra $ spent... That said, I'm always super nervous to draw on my expensive dolls

 

I got most of my dolls blank. Not that I don’t like having someone do it for me. It’s just I usually don't like company faceup, or don't have luxury to pay someone else to do it. I do some digital & manual drawing to plan too. But many times I search the sculpt on IG and see what other people did with it. Maybe make collage out of screen shots. especially helpful to look up variety of eyebrow strokes and shapes since I don't have all the time to do mockup.