I've been wondering if we could have a discussion about collector's (your) preference for a certain material of a finished ball jointed doll. Classic bjds often come in resin, then there are often porcelain dolls like the beautiful dolls made by Marina Bychkova. Other doll artists make their ooak dolls from air drying clay or cast with air dry slip or similar products. Obviously the list is long and there are a lot of materials that can be used to create a wonderful doll at the end. And people also prefer different materials because art is a matter of taste. I hope this makes sense have you experienced that a certain doll artist has less buyers or people who love his art, just because they don't fancy the used material? Maybe we could just share our taste and preferences here with one another to see if this topic can be generalized or if the opinions strongly differ from one another. Are you strongly pro resin, pro porcelain, pro this and that? why? or why not? Okay, so here we go. I personally love porcelain dolls because of the exquisite character of the material, the soft touch and also the idea that i have a very valuable object. However, I must sadly admit that a porcelain doll is too expensive for me at the moment so i would comfort myself by saying that porcelain has a cold vibe anway. So this means I would chose a material that is more affordable and transfers more warmth. Coming to an end I would say that besides porcelain I don't have a certain preference when it comes to dolls, I would just go for the looks and the artist (besides aspects like: do I want a non-breakable doll, a delicate doll etc) I am curious to hear about your experiences (as doll artist or company) and as collector or doll admirer ) edit: oh come to think of it: I DO have a preference besides porcelain: i LOVE LOVE cernit dolls because they can look very realistic and I am thinking of making a ooak bjd of cernit one day.
Hi! Nice topic =) I personaly dont have a strong prafrance in the material that a doll is made of as long as I fall in love with it. As for making my dolls I think all materials have positives and negatives...for instance, resin has to be kept out of direct sunlight, air dry slips arent really waterproof, and porcelain takes so many firing cycles. But for now I do really like working with an air dry slip and it has nice features like its not toxic, its not that expencive, its pretty hard when dry.
I love resin dolls. I can't say I've ever had a love of porcelain dolls, except Marina's, but hers are so expensive I could not justify paying that much even in my wildest dreams. I have been considering making a tiny doll (3-8 inch range) that I could reproduce in Apoxie Sculpt (or similar material like Magic Sculpt). My reasons are this: AS is stronger than polymer clays, waterproof, unlike slip casts, and do not need to be fired like porcelain. They would also be cheaper to produce than resin, since AS could be press-molded in a plaster mold and colored uniformly throughout with regular pigments before casting. I was thinking of marketing them as a "bjd for a BJD", a much cheaper doll you could buy for your own dolls. I have yet to try it though. But it's a decent idea in theory.
I don't think they have liquid apoxie sculpt. So this would mean your 3-8 inch tiny dolls would all be OOAK right? For me, I've discovered that the transparent sculpey III works very well for sculpting small dolls and I don't mind having small ones made out of it. I like resin, and vinyl. I guess, I'd love any kind of material doll as long as the doll was special to me
No, I mean it would be a press mold, which is a little different than a mold that you pour slip or resin into. Here is a link to the polymer clay artist who originally gave me the idea. This is a tutorial on how to use one of HER press-molds. I would make a press mold for each BJD part. Since AS has a working time of a few hours, I should be able to use it the same way. http://www.patriciarosestudio.com/html/tutorial-2d.html
I've made a double press mold like that. It's difficult lol. I suggest when if you do it, make very VERY distinct registration keys so you line the molds up perfectly when pressing then together. The problem I had was they wouldn't line up even with registration keys and my robots I was making kept being weird looking because the front was slightly different from the back...
