Why are you into BJDs?

I have always loved dolls in general but when I found bjd it took doll collecting to a new level. The customization is what I like about them, mass produced dolls have limited diversity. BJD invoke creativity when you can choose a variety of sizes, shapes, sculpts, creatures, resin color, eyes, wigs, clothing style, etc.

 

I have always been fascinated by them, and they bring me a different type of joy other hobbies can't really offer.

That, and I can also really see how the BJDs are an artform itself, and is made as a labour of love by the artist. There is no same BJD either, as every make and mold can be different. I really respect the art that comes into it as well as the hobby itself, which made me all the more drawn to this community!

 

I loved to dress up and play with dolls as a kid. Found out about BJDs from pictures online and found face-up artists. Eventually, I found YouTubers who were collecting at the time, and the way they were making up the character and finding the right doll to represent that character looked like so much fun.

 

I used to love RP'ing in the heydays of Yahoo!Groups and create original characters because of them. When the groups died down, it was the BJD's that gave me the opportunity to bring those characters to life. Some of them had their stories evolve gradually but I am still happy that I can hold and appreciate them, a memento of those happy days.

 

I love dolls of adult ladies. They are dolls of adult ladies (and gents, but I only collect female dolls). Boom.

But no, in all seriousness, I think I like that they combine what I love about antique dolls (my other main collecting focus)- beauty, quality, and artistry -with technological doll advancements that never existed in the eras I like best for my antiques. Jointed dolls DID exist in the pre-1920s era, even dolls with ball joints, but the range of motion wasn't nearly as good. I can also take them out and do things with them- they may be rare, expensive, and somewhat fragile, but I won't feel like I'm destroying over a century of history that survived generations only to end with me if something happens to one of them, you know?

The customization aspect is nice; however I'm not really into doing faceups myself- I suppose it's fun getting a doll back from the artist with their interpretation of my vision for the character, but that's not a main draw of the doll "genre" for me. And wigs and outfits can be swapped out on other types of doll. Mostly it's the poseability and durability, in terms of comparison with other dolls.

(Also, there's a much bigger community for them. I adore my antique doll friends and I'm active in Facebook and Reddit groups for them, but it's just not the same as the massive hobby world around resin BJDs!)

I admit, I do wish more of them were made of non-plastic materials- yes, resin is a kind of plastic -or that more non-resin BJDs were on-topic here!

 

There are a few things about BJDs that tick off a few boxes of things I like. They’re dolls, they have moveable joints, and they have the specialness of being something collectible.

The BJDs of this forum are hardly the only type of BJDs out there though. Porcelain is lovely, but I like to play around with my dolls and this medium would not be suitable for moving them around as much as I like. I don’t really like the feel of vinyl either, it’s a texture thing for me, otherwise I would be interested in Ellowyne Wilde dolls too. Resin ends up being a nice doll medium for what I like most in a doll!

Then finally there’s the aesthetics. I’m picky about what I want to be in my surroundings when it comes to dolls. There’s a whole lot of on-topic BJDs of this forum that I really like but don’t quite feel the urge to actually own. Still, this enhances the hobby for me quite a lot since I like being active in the community and seeing what everyone else has, how they customize their dolls (or not!). I guess this is also an aspect of what I like having in my surroundings, because I like stuff about ABJDs specifically, and don’t, for instance, join communities that are more generically doll related.

The customization is also really fun for me, but I am also learning that sometimes I like leaving a doll somewhat the way it is. Some of my dolls look different from their promo photos, while others have remained inspired by their default states. I like having the option of doing what I want with them.

 

For me, it's all about the possibility of having my characters fleshed in a form I can see.

I suffer aphantasia (the inability to form mental images of objects that are not present) and that makes it harder for me, for example, to be able to draw without having lots of references at hand. I think that's the exact reason why, as a kid, I quickly turned to writing when most other kids my age were drawing and I've always resorted to gathering lots of images (or sometimes commissioning artists to draw them for me) and make detailed files to describe my characters physically.

Even if I've had dolls before (Barbies were huge on my childhood), when I discovered BJDs and the endless possibilities of customization, a whole new world opened up for me. For the first time, I could have the closest thing to the characters in my writings as a physical thing I could see whenever I wanted, and I could even interact with them, make them interact with each other, or change them too if I needed! Nothing can beat that.

 

I fell right into BJDs because they're sort of "futureproofed" for me in a way that regular dolls (like OT play-line ones) or figurines can never be. I'm trying to be mindful of over-consuming things, which is way too easy to do with anything that I can buy, throw directly on a shelf, and forget about. More often than not, I find myself disinterested in those things almost as soon as I receive them, because they're "static", unless you want to wreck them through customization. And if I'm bored with them, end up disliking a particular character due to its development later in a series, or the character creator/company turns out to be rotten, or anything like that, I'm stuck feeling like I've wasted my money.

Not a problem for BJD! Even if I bought one that was based on a licensed character, everything about it could be completely changed into something original.

I love building characters, but my character designs evolve with me over time. It's nice to know that if I buy a BJD, but my character concept for it changes slightly, I can refresh the design anytime I want. I still feel a bit guilty due to the sheer amount of money involved, but I don't get buyer's remorse the same way I do whenever I cave and buy an anime figurine and my interest falls off a cliff in a year or less

 

This is so very true! I had the inspiration of a brand new character begin to take up residence in my brain late this spring. And you know how that goes…I just couldn’t get her out of my head. But I already have a substantial collection after so many years in the hobby, and I’d promised myself not to increase my numbers…no sense in being greedy since I was already at critical mass space-wise and not willing to sell any of my pre-existing darlings (nor even alter their existing faceups.) But I’d fallen in love with this character, so I found the perfect super-cute head for a bargain price in the marketplace and decommissioned another of my characters to hybrid her body (with that pre-existing head becoming a decorative hat stand model for my wonderful collection of SD-sized hats.) Now I have an exciting new character to enjoy and spoil this summer without adding to my numbers. It’s a win-win because of the amazing customizability of these dolls!

 

Oh, that's such a good bit that I totally forgot to mention! Hybrids, those are a huge reason I've fallen hard for BJDs. That's something that isn't easy to do with anything else I enjoy, and is entirely impossible (barring extreme modification) with statue-type figurines. But with the power of ball-jointed darlings, you can even completely change the "species" of a character, if you want to go that far.

I love [X Character], but what if he was a merman instead? No problem, I can keep his face exactly as-is, and find a different body for the new concept, and it'll work as long as the proportions are similar enough! I can't think of many collector hobbies that have this level of flexibility.

 

I, too, love the customisation aspect, and also how they can be photographed - almost like humans, especially compared to other dolls and figurines which tend to be quite static. I can just whip one out of the box to take pictures instead of finding a common time with a friend who won't let me dress them in a weird outfit I also love that the size isn't limited like most playline or display dolls tend to be - even 1/4 are quite large and hefty when compared to say, a Barbie, and there is so much variation from big to tiny.

BJDs are also quite nostalgic and reminding me of a certain era on the internet which I dearly miss - I'm quite sad that the art and photo communities, as they used to be, have more or less disappeared and replaced by social media as it is now. I loved seeing and reading about people's hobbies on their blogs and creative or fandom forums, which is also how I first encountered BJDs, even if I just admired from afar then. I don't think I'd have been so enamoured by them to still get into the hobby over a decade later if I had first witnessed them on, idk, Instagram as it is now, where you never get the time to yearn for things for so long or learn about your internet peers' other hobbies.

Annnnd lastly, I love sewing and crafting but don't have much space to make human-size stuff constantly so dolls are a great compact compromise

 

The posability was the first draw for me. I first found out about BJDs back in the late 00s, early 10s maybe? Definitely the era of fur wigs and alt fashion! I was already interested in dolls as a creative medium; as fun as drawing is, and as impactful as visual art can be, a part of me has never been able to get over the impermanent feeling of doing paper crafts, which isn't a problem when you have a solid doll, fabric clothes, and all that. However, the dolls I had access to had, at absolute best, single hinges at the elbows and knees, because I wasn't buying teddy bear joints or internal armatures for my cloth doll experiments. So dolls with jointed wrists and ankles? Torso joints? Double joints??? The way people posed them??? They were an absolute dream!

Nowadays, I also love their sizes and creative versatility. I like that my 1/4s and small 1/3s are good for carrying around, for holding, and for sitting with. I like that they need a bit more attention than a Barbie or other playline doll, so I need to make sure they're sitting right and won't fall when I put them away instead of tossing them back in a box. I like that if I want to change someone's hair, I don't have to rip a bunch of nasty glue out of their heads! And I like that a lot of limited fullset dolls have basic versions so there's options when a cute doll shows up.

 

For me, I've returned to the hobby because it's one of the only creative outlets I currently have as an adult. When I first discovered BJDs though as a tween/kid, I got into them because of their aesthetics and though they've evolved and changed quite a bit, I've enjoyed the general direction of aesthetics enough to 1) come back to the hobby and 2) get more into them! I've honestly gotten into the social as well with attending conventions and branching out to other hobbyists on SNS and through transactions for services and goods.

All in all, I can't wait to continue to customize and refine my boys' looks as my style continues to evolve with the times and with learning more about doing customization myself work as well (fingers crossed with faceups, blushing and styling wigs!)

 

Truthfully, I don't know what my life would look like if I wasn't into BJDs! They've been such a staple in my life for over 15 years that it's impossible to imagine how different my hobby life would look like if I hadn't gotten into them at all. I'm a creative type, and the primary draw of BJDs over other dolls (playline, Pullip, etc) is the ability to customize and pose to my heart's content. BJDs as a medium are only as limited as my creativity and the risks I'm willing to take to realize my vision.

More than vision, though, is how the physical presence of my dolls informs their character development, allowing me to flesh out my characters and stories more robustly than I otherwise would. For me, developing a character for my BJDs is a collaborative effort between me and the doll itself/their original sculptor, which often leads to new and interesting traits that I don't naturally gravitate toward when creating characters that are strictly for writing or art. This broadens my horizons as I dig into those character traits and interests in order to portray them more accurately. All in all, it vexes my creativity more than any other medium I can imagine!

 

An artist I followed back in the day posted pictures of her Volks dolls. They were unlike anything I had ever seen in my life. She started a Ya-hoo! group that eventually became this forum. That artist explained how every aspects of these dolls could be customized. Her vision, her dolls are what really drew me in initially.
I used to make my own art dolls and art and this hobby let me explore everything from building, sculpting, to sewing and painting. The doll hobby seemed to kind of bring that all together. It still seems exciting all these years later even though I mostly lurk.