Would you ever intentionally damage your doll?

Even if I had a character who has damage, such as my BF Sarang, whose character has heavy scarring on her legs, I could not do this. For example, I know the character's legs were torn up, but I could never, ever take a knife and start chucking pieces out of the legs or something. It may be silly to say this, but I love the character and I would feel sick if I "hurt" or did something violent to her. It's the same thing as how I can't shoot characters I like in video games; I always have to have someone else do it so I can continue in the game.

As people have pointed out, there are logistical problems here. Say you know your character fell off a cliff. So you want to drop your doll and let it sustain damage. You may try to make sure the height is not such that her head will fracture open, but if you want enough height to do the damage to remove fingers and such, this is a definite possibility. And you lose your "realism" if your doll's head is in pieces. Looks like your character didn't make it.

The bottom line is that the injuries you want will be more realistic if you mod them on. Painting over a hole that fell off does not make a "scar," it would make a "crater." Resin does not burn like skin; plus, burning it probably releases toxic fumes, so it's not safe. Modders work wonders, and your doll will be much safer AND come out looking more realistically damaged if you send your doll to a great modder. Trust me. AND it will be cheaper than replacing your doll when it's in a bazillion pieces.

If I knew someone who wanted to do this, I would try to talk them out of it. In fact, I would feel anxiety for the doll, and for the waste of money in the making. I hate to be like, "Dude, this is a bad idea" but trust me. My opinion is that this IS a BAD idea.

 

I find the whole character driven doll phenomenon interesting. Its completely foreign to me and I never encountered it in my lifetime of doll collecting until coming into the BJD community.

For example, I would never let whether or not I had a "character" in mind decide whether I bought a doll or not. If I like a doll, I buy it. Some dolls may get renamed, most I always think of with the name they arrived with. Their personalities evolve over time with me. Even if I try to make up some name or personality, it generally doesn't stick to the doll once its arrived. Personally, I could do without boy bits and girl bits since once they have clothes on it doesn't really matter and for the most part male BJDs look feminine.

While I find it interesting that people mod dolls to have scars and wounds, etc. I would never do it to one of my dolls. However, I do believe its your doll, and your money so you definitely can do whatever you like, though I'm sometimes sad to see a thing of beauty (and occasionally limited in number) treated "badly".

 

Interesting idea and I don't see anything necessarily wrong with it, I would just worry that the damage would probably not come out the way you had planned. The opposite might be more fun, if a doll gets accidentally damaged you could incorporate that into its character.

 

I recently purchased a second-hand DOI Luke who, in shipment to the previous owner, had two fingers broken off. They have since been put back on with epoxy, but otherwise the hand has not been replaced. He's currently in transit to my home (hopefully without any further injury!).

The character is a member of an elite guard, which means he's going to have got into a few fights in his lifetime. I plan on treating the damaged hand as a recent wound from one of those said fights, wrapping it in bandages to hide the epoxy, until I can order a new hand for him. Even when I do get a new hand for him, I may mod it to show scarring on those two fingers, but it will be done only with paint rather than an actual break.

As for damaging a doll intentionally... With how much anxiety I'm going through and hoping he gets here unscathed as it is, I couldn't possibly imagine doing something on purpose to damage the doll.

 

I think it's an interesting idea in theory. Letting chance decide how injuries play out like that. I've turned accidental scratches or chips into parts of a character's story before so I can sorta see that.

But at the same time I don't think I could do it that way. I might be able to do something like take a pencil or some sort of pen that would wash off and make marks with my eyes closed or something to decide where to mod scars, but I don't think I could break a doll without having control over where they were going to be broken.

 

The concept is fascinating, but I'd never do that to any of my dolls~ It is so permanent...

My dolls don't have set characters, I like to change their personalities. If I'd intentionally damage one of them, I'd narrow down this dolls versatility. Onwards I'd always have to incorporate the damage into the new personalities...

 

Uhhhh. Interesting idea, but I'm going to have to echo the masses here. I doubt you're gonna get the results you want. Sure, you can paint over stuff, but that's not gonna help much. Dolls just don't break the same way that people break. And with that much money at risk, Murphy's Law is going to be HAPPY to step in and break a face open or shatter a doll if you sling it out the window.

I tore heads off of Barbies as a kid because they were cheap. BJDs are not. So no, I have never intentionally damaged my doll, and no, I never plan to.

 

no no no no no no i would never do it o purpose if i wanted scars or some kind of damage i would just let someone mod it

 

I have no desire to break something I spent a lot of money on and invested emotional energy into.

I rather like my dolls.

 

There's nothing wrong with scarring a doll to fit their character/story, but I don't really care for the idea of purposely causing "natural" damage. It doesn't really strike me as being natural, since the owner is the cause.

And, you might get lucky, and like the result, but 9 times out of 10, arbitrarily damaging a doll will turn out poorly. You and your doll would be much better off planning out the mods you would like done.

(Note: You = everybody.)

 

Ehh wellll, I've sawed my doll into half before. She's supposed to be a handicap. Not to worry though, she's not a BJD, but a Hujoo^___^

This is how she currently looks like:http://black-kuro.deviantart.com/art/Time-has-stopped-for-her-146606924

I'm going to see if I can mod her further to stick her IV tube in.:/

I'd prefer to be in control when "damaging" a doll. Plus I don't think smashing your doll to smithereens would do any good in emulating serious injury, unless you want your doll to look creepy. Like those sad, abandoned, broken ones. :/

 

Intentionally damaging something that costs $500+ is a bad, bad idea as far as I'm concerned. I've worked and saved long and hard for each of my guys, and I want to keep them in decent condition now that I have them, thank you - breaking them is definitely not part of that plan :/

 

As much as it seems like these dolls chip and break easily, they're actually pretty rubust in many ways, and weak in other. So I think in order to drop a doll such that enough chips and scratches happen to look like a car wreck, you'd have to do it with enough force that you risk seriously cracking resin in ways that don't emulate injuries at all.

I don't see anything wrong with intentionally throwing your doll on the ground if that's what you want to do with your expensive toys, but I don't think it will get the result you're going for.

 

There's no way you'd get realistic "scars" fom doing this. Not only does a human not chip and crack like others have said, but humans certainly don't dent like dolls do. If a person is injured by something sharp, there will be a slash or cut mark. If they're injured by something blunt, there will be a bruise. If it's a large or deep injury, the scar protrudes out from the skin rather than being sunken like doll damage would be. Also, in the face of danger, humans react. If something is going to hurt you, you shield yourself with your arms/hands and get defensive wounds. If you fall off something, you try to land on your feet, but you might break your legs. A doll just lifelessly flops if you toss it. Also, I know you said you wanted fingers broken off and such, but would you want their nose broken off? Do you want the space between their eyes broken off leaving one big gaping hole? It's likely to happen. And it will look like what it is: a broken doll. People's body parts don't cleanly break off. Flesh is soft, it has to be torn or cut, it can't break. To make an amputated finger or nose, you'd have to do a lot of modding after the break anyway to make it look realistic.

 

No.
I don't like to intentionally drop anything that I've paid lots of money for.
If I want damaged look on my doll, I'd like to have full control of where I want what. Trusting gravity to do its job is a risk I'll never take.

 

No. Never. I have a doll who has scars. But they are not permenat. They are made with pastels and the same gloss I use on their lips. If I don't want the scars anymore, I can remove them.

 

No way! Never intentionally! First off, doing something like dropping your doll from some height, you never know how that resin will react. You may end up having a body that becomes so severely damaged that it becomes impossible to pose, or falls apart when it's strung.... and pretty hard to sell at a normal market value. Plus, as others have pointed out, that damage isn't going to look like realistic 'people' damage. It's just going to look like a broken and abused doll. If you want random scarring and damage, maybe toss some confetti over them or something, and give them 'damage'/'scars' where it lands.

I have done modifications to one doll that aren't reversible, but this was because the body had a lot of issues. (They were mobility and aesthetic mods). But I wouldn't consider it damage. (At least not intentional)

Mostly though, if my character is going to have a scar, it's going to be done in gloss, or glue- something removable. I think those look like more realistic scars anyways (having a few of my own, and different kinds, I can compare). Other then that one doll, I've paid a lot of money for my dolls, why would I want to permanently damage them? Something that's that expensive, I'm going to be handling it very, very carefully.

There's something about BJDs too, they have such a presence, such personality. You can almost feel a soul in there. I think this is why a lot of people base a doll on a character, become so close to them, or believe that there really is a soul in there. Purposely harming them feels like purposely harming a living being. (Maybe that's just me but... )

I could never do anything like that to my dolls.

 

The only thing that comes to mind here is that this doll will eventually be sold in the market place with a sob story to go with the injuries.

 

The mere thought of this makes me cringe.. and honestly I find it repulsive.

I would never, ever intentionally toss my dolls in an attempt to create "injuries." In my eyes, they are works of art. Expensive works of art. If I want to break a doll, I'll buy a one from my local Wal-Mart. I got upset enough when my girl got a dent in her eyebrow from face-planting herself on the lens of my camera.

I am all for creativity and expression, but this doesn't sound natural to me at all. I have a character who has scars on one side of his face from falling out of a tree, but when the time comes I will commission someone to mod those injuries. I would never throw him literally from a tree. I want some type of control over the situation... not to mention "scars," as opposed to a shattered doll.

I know people are free to do what they want with their dolls, but this is definitely not my cup of tea!

 

I'm with most, that even when attempting at mimicking an injury by doing a "similar" damage to the doll would turn out very unrealistic even if it was refined by modding/painting into a more "realistic" injury. Simply because you'd have to consider two things if such an idea would even work. One is if your character is a living doll/statue (kind of like the Rozen Maiden concept) and therefore damage would be "believable" because damaging a doll in those manners obviously will produce that kind of "injury". Two is if your character is an "actual" living being, for like it has been mentioned, damage appears much different on living things, for one thing is because you're not dealing with "dead" weight and the body is more pliable.
Sister-of-charity has a good point, that there are a lot of factors that produce specific injuries on a person in real situations. You'd have to consider how such injury would look on a real person and how "fresh" you want the injuries to appear. Cause there's even a big difference in the look on fresh to old injuries. And depending on the type of accident, how many actual injuries would there be on the body, where would they be, how would it effect the mobility of the character, and so on.