Do your dolls have same face syndrome?

How do I say this... I have 2 pairs of twins (dolls of the same mold, although not necessarily twins as characters) That's how much I like certain types of faces! I was also going to buy a head I was eyeing for some time, but then my mum pointed out it looks A LOT like one of the heads I already own, despite being a head from another company. That was a revelation to me, honestly. I am now paying more attention so my dolls don't look too much like each other and trying to put an end to my love for twins lol. But it's harder to have a diverse collection when you mostly collect dolls of the same gender, made by the same company to boot

Anyway, I don't think it's a bad thing, because that's simply your preference, but if you want more variety, then go for it!

 

I don't think so. However, I have definite preferences for a certain roundish square jaw face shape and there are other features I gravitate towards as well. That being said I have dolls who look better and worse together and I think I have some different styles in my collection, so it's probably not excessively uniform.

 

For starters, I think the fact I have 14 Fairyland Alans means I'm not afraid of "same face syndrome"

That said, I think my collection is fairly diverse facially. Duplicate sculpts have drastically different face ups, or different wig styles that emphasize different parts of the face. I've tried to buy dolls based on knowing I had a similar one I liked before when I couldn't find the blank sculpt anywhere, and ended up disappointed. I have dolls generally grouped stylistically (MSDs with larger heads and eyes that make them look younger, mature tinies, SDs who are in scale with each other, etc), but there's several groups and they all look different.

 

I would say they all have their special and different features but almost all of them have „sleepy“ eyes. I only have one doll with big round eyes. They may have similarities such as eye shape or elf ears but i think they don‘t really look alike. But i have also have a thing for blonde dolls and i‘m actively trying to get more colour into my collection, so maybe they actually look all the same and i just don’t see it

 

I would say that my dolls aren't super same faced, but nearly all of them do have some facial features in common... the one thing that gets me every time is a specific lip shape, and as a result most of my dolls have pretty similar looking mouths.

 

I'd like to say mine have quite a bit of diversity and I don't really think any of them look much alike. But I guess it really depends on the person. Of my 24 1/3 dolls, 9 of them are from Migidoll. I see diversity in the sculpts, but others might not. Most of my girls have pretty faces with thicker lips and big eyes, even though they are all different companies except for two. All of my 1/3 crew are human sculpts (though my incoming girl will be green, she's still a human sculpt).

But my tinies are kind of all over the place! Huge range of sculpts, companies/artists, colors, species, fantasy/anthro/pets....nobody's looking much alike there!

 

I have an elf army so all must have elf ears of some type. Minus the dolls I allowed in as non-elves. I would say they all look very different (which make me wonder if they look good together) but because I tend to have 2 from any given company, it works!

 

And, I've been looking at a face that's the literal twin of a male sculpt I have. Roughly the same expression, but it's on a female head.

 

I like anime style faces and so that’s 95% of my bjd collection. I prefer to have my dolls look similar, so ‘same face syndrome’ doesn’t bother me. Even with similar anime faces, each doll has their own personality and distinctive look, but look like they belong together as a group.

 

I want to say no, mostly because being in this hobby has demonstrated to me that I have some pretty bad face blindness So I'm naturally drawn to faces that have big stand-out features because it helps me remember them. I think there's probably some sameyness in the fact that I collect multiple sculpts from the same sculptor/studio, so they have sort of a "family resemblance".

My anime style dolls all naturally have very similar face sculpts, though. I'd like to think that my faceups do a lot to distinguish them from one another, but that may just be that I've spent hours looking at them.

 

I pretty early on made the vow to only collect one of each sculpt but I ended up with somnia choyo twins bc the second one had a beautiful faceup and I thought it would suit her. Generally tho, I do really love a good smiley sculpt, or the other extreme, really grumpy. Half lidded eyes are also some of my faves too

 

I have a pair of Unoas so naturally they are more or less the same (and I'd do it again!) I feel like otherwise I'm quite good but when I take a look at my wishlist/dolls I would consider buying I realise they often have a very close resemblance to dolls I already own (Nuoyi's small nose, pouty face - if I put her next to any Peaks Woods, they're gonna be sisters; Michi's pointy nose and big eyes are gonna match a lot of Volks heads I like etc). I find it a bit hard to find new (to me) dolls that don't fall into either stylisation sometimes.

 

I am not afraid of owning same-faced-dolls, as I grew up loving Barbie and still to this day, I still collect Barbie even the basic blonde with blue eyes ones that kind of all look exactly the same (to most of us). Having said that, when I got into these dolls, I didn't want to own too many, and that meant less than ten (for me, more than that number would be too many). Since young, I've never been a fan of giant dolls, so I was afraid I would be stuck with giant dolls, with giant heads as I discovered these types of dolls back in the dark ages, when the aesthetics were all in that similar vein. Luckily, I am very picky when it comes to these types of dolls (not so much mass-produced five-dollar Babies, lucky me! >--->;;.). I seem to own one BJD in each size, mostly mature-ish looking facial sculpts, but also leaning in all kinds of aesthetics and genres. So, not one of them looks too similar to the other and most are not even "in-scale" with each other. I feel like only my first three would seem like they belong in the same universe, let alone look alike.

However, it is not something I planned or avoided at any cost. It just happened that way naturally for me. I would have been completely okay if all my BJD looked like cookie cutter versions of each other. I just happened to fall in love with very different looking BJD faces and aesthetics, when I found the ones that were right for me. (Now, if only that would be the case with OT mass-produced fashion dolls, that would be kind of nice..!) (:

 

I have six of exactly the same sculpt - the RML (Real Missing Link) R-01 or R20J (same sculpt as the R-01 but with optional elf-ears).


I fell in love with it nearly 20 years ago when |RML were still in business, and have been collecting more (and other RML heads, some of which also I have multiples of) as they've come up on thes secondary market in the years following their disappearance from the scene.

Other than the twins, they're all pianted and styled differently and , but since four of them are siblings/cousins, having the same face sculpt works quite well:


Teddy

 

I don’t really concern myself with sameness issues…for me it’s always been all about character, so that sort of naturally lent itself to diversity in sculpts anyway. I set my collection in a fantasy universe, like an ongoing fairytale, where I was free to collect every species and any size to express my individual characters. Of course this meant that after nearly two decades of slowly collecting at the rate of about 3 dolls per year, I’ve amassed a fairly large collection. But it’s been great fun and I love what I’ve accomplished in this hobby. With a larger collection, I feel it’s only natural to come up with some amount of sameness in sculpt styles (although I feel my characters are vastly different from one another for the most part, do to their individual styling.) And occasionally I’ve even deliberately sought out some sameness in groupings. I have two sets of twins in my collection for instance, and a grouping of 4 similar early Volks MSDs in a slumber party setting. I imagine that if you’re concerned about keeping your numbers small however, sculpt sameness might be more of an issue for you.

 

Thanks.

Although I may seem to be obsessed with this one sculpt, they are in fact a small opart of a more diverse range of dolls:


Teddy

 

I own a Dollzone Gray, and am going to purchase a Dream Valley Vine sometime soon. And the one doll on my wishlist is a Doll Chateau Dennis. These all have the same look to them, despite being from different companies. Soulful, is what it's been described as lol. These are the only human sculpts (besides Impldoll's Joshua, in my profile pic) that I'm the least bit interested in, so....yes. I have a type lol. Am I upset about it? No, not at all! I love it for a reason, and if it makes me happy to look at them then there's nothing wrong with having them in my collection.

 

I don't think so, but again, that can be kind of subjective. All my human-looking dolls come from different companies, and I usually purchase dolls to flesh out my characters (not only thinking about liking the doll by itself), so I think that has helped them to be very different from one another. That can sometimes be a curse because you'll have more trouble knowing if they're going to look in scale with each other, but I prefer it that way.

 

I think I have a lot of variety in my collection, but the siblings are similar to each other.
For example:
Wedding VIII - family by Arengil Tajedinápravá, on Flickr

 

I have a sibling who keeps me from adopting the same face over and over again, luckily!

When I'm raving about a new doll and they say very pointedly 'Oh, of course you'd like that. That's the kind of mouth you always fall for", then I know I'd only be buying someone I already have, because they see what I don't see. And I really like diversity in every respect unless I need the similarity for the char I'm inresinating, as in dolls who are related, so...

On the downside of that, the sculpts I end up buying are slowly becoming quirkier, to avoid what I already have. But quirky is good, right?!

 

Two (plus another planned) of my dolls are from the same company that definitely has a particular aesthetic, so they do have similar facial shapes. I do think the features are quite different though - different noses and eye shapes that even my non-doll husband noticed. The planned one does have some similarity to my Dollie (similar nose and eye shape), but it is intentional, since Dollie was purchased as a travel-friendly version of the bigger doll.

Anka is definitely an outlier right now, being very decidedly not doll-like compared to the other two. If I do end up getting her 1-2 new friends, they'll all be ones meant to suit very different roles so they'll have different faces (Anka is androgynous, while the remaining two dolls I'd get would be masculine and feminine, so I could do a variety of styles).

 

This applies to me. My collection is currently single digits and I'd like to keep it that way (for as long as possible!), but I also like variety in faces and bodies. Currently, the way I collect is to not buy more than one head sculpt from a dollmaker. And when I'm considering a new doll to buy, I do compare it to my crew - if it's too similar to anyone, I lose interest in it.

I don't think my crew has too much of same-face, but there are recurring themes. I've noticed that the boys all have sad eyes with a downturned outer corner (and two of them have identical shaped eyes); the girls all have more upturned catlike eyes. I also like males with sharp cheekbones and hatchet faces, and aside from one boy (the oldest one) all of them -- at home and on order -- have lean faces.

 

Can’t really say cuz I have 6 dolls of the same 2 sculpts from Doll Chateau though XD

 

Well, I have a lot of unintended twins: two Twigling Eloy’s, five (?) ingenues, and 4 gamines. None of them are even related characters, and all the faceups are distinctive enough that they look different enough for me to be satisfied. I have two identical sculpts (MDR Zuri, my only non-twigling repeat) that are intended to be fraternal twins (very different skin colours).

for the rest of my dolls, I think there’s a lot of variety. I will say though, I tend not to go for very child like sculpts, with really rounded features, so my dolls are more alike with all having mature features

 

I try to avoid this with my collection, but when I go browsing, doll molds start looking alike to me. There's also a lot more variety now than when I startd collecting 15+ years ago. Hence it's plausible some of my earlier dolls might have same face syndrome due to head size, eye size, mouth type, etc.

 

Well, I can tell them apart...

 

Noooo, all the dolls I've ordered are really distinguishable! Otherwise I'd only need the one!

 

I try to get distinguishing features on all of them. I am face blind so I want to be able to see a difference between them. That being said sometimes when looking at dolls from the same company they look eerily similar to me. Maybe it's a jaw line that they all share, or a type of nose. But, the wigs and faceups make them more distinguishable for me.

I think that's why I like dolls so much their facial features don't move and change shape like real people do. They are consistent, so I can see them better. So, to the best of my knowledge they all look a bit different... but this is from someone who has trouble finding their own mother in a grocery store amoungst other similar women.

 

Hehe, I try to avoid it! I've definitely noticed that a lot of dolls in certain categories tend to look "samey" to me - dolls from more established Asian companies tend to look a lot alike from my eye, a lot of the newer mondo muscleboys look the same, a lot of the Kaye Wiggs-style Western BJDs look the same, and a lot of the like, "Instagram artist" Western BJDs share a lot of similar features. Sure, each is going to have their unique points, and there's some where I can still get an idea of which company made a doll (Volks I can tell aren't a say, Luts doll, but that doesn't mean I can tell one Volks doll from another!) but in their categories, they tend to become a, well... doll amalgam? Weird description I know!

My favorite dolls and the ones I tend to bring home end up looking very little like each other. A couple fall into those doll amalgam zones - I do love my Nikki, my Megu, and my Tian Ni! And there's features a number share, like for some reason I love slightly open mouths. But there's no same sculpts, and some wildly different styles. Even though they all have big eyes, smaller mouths, and I got them in paler resin tones, my Tian Ni, my Wol, and my Olivia aren't getting mistaken for each other any time soon.

There's only a few where I'd be tempted by similar or the same sculpts. I do love Megu and wouldn't be opposed to having an actual SD-size Megu, I would go for another Wol if I could get an artist-cast head, and MerryDollRound's Mei Mei sculpt, which is aimed at being Fang's little sister and thus has pretty much the same features but on an MSD body, charms me so. But aside from Wol, those would all be different sizes, and for all of them, I only have so much doll space!

 

I definitely prefer dolls with kinda sad expression. I don't like a lot smiling dolls they kinda scare me and don't know why.

 

Not so much the same face, but definitely similar. I am also a big fan of mournful-looking face-ups which dictate my doll's appearance by a bit.

 

Other than the near identical twins that have the same sculpt, no, I don't think so. Looking through photos of them the only similarity I can see is that none them have very sharp features... Granted, when it comes to their styling I've always tried to go for maximum variety, so, that could be helping them seem way more different to each other than they really are.

 

I would admit I am a sucker for those big eye anime face type dolls. I also prefer my dolls to have fuller lips. As far as faces most of my collection have that anime face look, but I do own a few dolls who are definitely different than my collection majority because I don’t like too much monotony.

 

Not seem face, but same coloring for sure. I tend to have a lot of pale dolls with long, center-parted dark hair. I think it comes from growing up seeing that as a very unusual, “dark fairytale“ kind of look. (The irony is that I have that coloring myself, but my mother so strongly convinced me that I just had “dark blonde“ hair growing up that I couldn’t see it until I was like 20 and still struggle to perceive my hair color correctly. So dolls that look like that still seem very different from me in the back of my mind.)

 

Two of mine have the exact same head sculpt, but other than that, not really. I don't exactly have a large sample size right now though, so it could very well change in the future lol

 

No, but that's probably because I don't have too many BJDs, yet.
I wouldn't mind getting the same sculpt or a doll that looks similar to one that I already own as long as I know what to do with it.

 

kinda haha I like all my dollies to be in the visual kei style so I like all my boys to have heavy lashes, deep eyeliner, strong defined lip colors, the works! usually they end up looking different if I shell them as real visual kei musicians because I do their classic makeup that's usually pretty distinctive!

 

In a sense ... yes, with all my dolls being the same two characters and most of the faceups being done by myself.
So the overall features for the boys will be similar, but it is still almost all different sculpts.
And I do like to have variation in expressions, while still keeping in in character.

 

I felt like I wouldn't be a victim of same face syndrome but oh welp. Now that I notice, they do suffer from it. I'm just very specific about what kind of aesthetics/styles I like so I can't really help it.
The good part is that even if I paint their faceups similarly, the wigs and different sculpts help to hide the same face syndrome.

 

I like to think I’ve avoided this syndrome. I love the Old School Sculpts and realistic sculpts, frowns, slight smile/ smirk, neutral expressions, single joints, double joints, some skin tone variations, male and female, Yo SD to Soom Mecha Angel, different companies. Pretty diverse, but…

When I got into this hobby back in ‘09, the sculpts I liked had face plates / heads with different expressions (Narae, Elfdoll Soah, the Dollshe Hounds), I picked up a few variations and painted them similarly to represent a single character.

Fast forward to 2024 and I’m working on an OC Reshell Project. The alternate heads are now different characters living in a world with a somewhat limited gene pool - secret half siblings, yeah, that’s it.

Doing math in public…let’s call it 50/50 on the Same Face Syndrome.

 

I wouldn't say that all my dolls have similar faces, but I think I subconsciously search for some particular features while choosing a doll - big noses and ears specifically. Can't do anything about it I'm afraid ^^"

 

Welp new fear unlocked. Considering I want a hoard of all the same mold, I'll really have to style this differently to avoid same face syndrome!

 

100% percent guilty of same face syndrome, I love certain companies (soom, switch, Volks,Unoa) and have twins of some heads (cough -triplets of Unoa). Also any dolls with open mouths, teeth or tongue parts- dreaming or romantic eyes I am all over like a cheap rug.

the only thing that saves my collection from being boring really is I have a lot of different faceup types. One day I will have to improve that but for now it’s my attempt at having a interesting collection lol

 

I collect Dollfie Dream vinyl dolls and too many have very similar faceups.

Here's two that stand out in my collection.

Frieren (elf on the right) is definitely unique.

Fern (human on the left) is actually Takina Inoue from Lycoris Recoil. Volks do a lot of pouty character dolls but this is my first with this kind of look. I think they did a brilliant job of translating Takina's anime look into a 3D doll.

Another doll I have is Shin Sato. She was overlooked on release but is arguably the best smiley face doll Volks have ever released.

 

I own a Luts KDF Cherry and recently purchased a Luts KDF Kai back in February, so yes, I’ve been falling into certain similar faces through my time collecting. I’ve been trying to make my dolls different enough by purchasing different them in skin tones, but I definitely have a type of doll I look for. I adore soft, sweet faces and elf ears, and I can’t seem to get enough of them! I think it’s fine to have similar dolls, if that’s what makes you happy!

 

I haven't exactly lined them all up to confirm, but I don't thiiink they look too samey? Yet. I certainly have a "type", though, so those preferences could end up becoming a "problem" eventually, particularly for my plain ol' humans.

The fantasy sculpts usually have features that stand out (like the fins on the merfolk, or long, fuzzy ears on 'taurs) even if the faces are otherwise similar, but I've been more discerning about my humans from the get-go precisely because I didn't want too many that looked super alike. All three of my "normal humans" are Loongsoul boys, so they are of course all Very Handsome, but I went out of my way to choose ones that clearly had distinct facial features from one another.

I'd like to branch out into some that have a much more exaggerated, baked-in expression, but so far I've been a bit too cowardly to take the plunge! I gravitate towards the ones with "neutral" expressions, or just-barely-smiles/frowns, since they are more malleable and I'm not totally committed to a singular concept. So I have to remain vigilant, otherwise it'll be easy for me to acquire too many things that look more alike than I'd consider ideal.

 

I think I might have a type... A lot of my dolls have teeth or fangs, with slightly open mouths! I have three dolls at the moment with teeth/fangs, and two I have ordered.

I really like the open mouth look, I think it gives them a lot of character.

 

My collection has grown a bit since I last replied to this thread - I aimed to have a lot of variety when I started collecting and now it's mostly very much same face syndrome in this house god forbid I was also debating on getting a Volks School B head for a bit which looks.... exactly like those goobers on the photo



I think at some point it just happens that preferences crystallise a bit and it becomes more of a priority to get what you like instead of chasing something completely new every time. I also own two unoa sists and have 2 of the same bodies which I'm perfectly happy with - they fit together well and I loved the body's posing enough to have a double. There is still some variation with parts, faceups and skin tones so I never truly think of them as too similar - but I can see how someone from the outside would think they are all the same dolls. I guess also as a collection grows, getting the quality or esthetics you know and love is perhaps somewhat more fun than the trial and error (and frustration) of things you may or may not love in real life and then have to go through the hassle of selling and trying again.

 

No, all of my dolls look pretty different.

Years ago (around 2016?) thought about acquiring a Mystic Kids Evelyn, but never did because I realized that the whole reason why I liked her was because she has such a similar enough look to my Luts Bory. And I guess I would rather invest in a doll I already have rather than get a new one.

Same with Angell Studio Kana, I think I am drawn to her because she has a similar look as my Soudoll Katie.A. At least Kana is not an MSD, but still.

I’m not really looking to get another doll right now, but if I did, I’d prefer something that’s a bit different from what I already have. That’s generally what I’ve been like with my collection, if I do ended up getting something new, it’s rather different in some way.

 

Nothing wrong with more of a good thing! Although I do value diversity as well
I'm noticing these days I have managed to collect several pairs of face matches in my collection, but each pair is different from the other pairs. One pair is actual sculpt twins, one pair is same sculptor and line, and the rest happened by chance There are still, some dolls who don't have a face match. How cute would it be, to match them up too but I don't have anymore display room, maybe if I own a home

 

Yes, I own more than one sculpt of dolls I love. I have 4 Tiny Delf Gretels, 2 Honey Delf
Madeleine and two mini Flans. I like what I like. But, they do have different skin colors, face-ups and ears. More importantly, to me, they are very different dolls. I don't consider them the same at all.

 

I think I have a 'type' that's very flushed and glum, but the sculpts themselves don't look that similar for the most part. At least, I don't think they do...

 

A friend made me notice I always fall for a combo of arching lips + long sloping nose. Most dolls I love have the same phenotype.

 

I definitely have some similar features across the board - almost all of my dolls have very full lips, for one thing, and I have a strong preference for a 50/50 balance of realism/stylization. To me they all look distinct but cohesive

 

im afraid they are XD i just like the big eyes - teeth showing combo a lot