Dollshe Discussion - Part Eleven

O was just going to buy the pale tan body but wound up with the Orijean SA&OE heads too. Needless to say I fell in love with him now I have another in Pale.
This is Thorne trying out a new wig.
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@Iron_Dog I have both the Pure body and a Super Gem Coquina. I took a couple of pictures of their forearms together. I was surprised how we'll oriental matches Soom normal. Sadly, you are correct and the arm would not work for your plans.

Spoiler

I've never owned other Dollshe boys aside from my Van on the pure body, but I've played with a Hound at a meet-up. I prefer the pure body myself but that's probably because I've learned his quirks.

I'm really grateful to everyone who's shared information on these lovelies. You've been an enormous help.

 

Speaking of the SA heads, were those included or not with this discontinuation sale? From what you guys are saying I'm guessing they're not, but nothing is stated on the shop page

Also chiming in on the topic of old Hound bodies, my guy can actually stand unaided after I sueded him and stuck some thick wires in the legs. I do think the boots he wears help with the balance, but the knees hold their positions As for the belly pop... yeah sueding is still the way to go. I also had some rolled up bubble wrap in his torso for a while, it helped a little bit!

 

I got my Saint with SA head on that summer sale last year @Motiko

 

Dollshe said the current sale is for full sets when I asked last week. (back on the crazy train with a light grey bernard... maybe with the re-re-re-...re-issues one day I can have him in every color )

 

@margitan @ATYL I see, thank you both for your answers! I reckon I'd have wanted to get the SA if it wasn't included

 

Oh, thank you @ATYL. I was wondering the same and have already asked about it too, I will repost their full answer here when I receive it

 

So we have now endof March. Did anyone got shipping notice about their grown boys or bubble pet or Dicaprio or Depp? Hmm? I dont think so. What a suprise+that shipping schedule isnt realistic after all. :-D

 

By "full sets", do they mean just the OE head and the SA head? What about for sculpts like Hound that have the extra IM option, does he come with three?

 

The"fullset" for hound should include the OE,SA,and the IM heads.my emerald green hound ordered last July had all three.most of the others will have the OE and SA heads;poor Van only gets an OE head, since that is the only head made for him. Hound, with his three heads, is actually a real good deal.

 

I pulled the email publicizing the February 28th blog post that itemized the new shipping schedule.

The grown Bermann head, grown Saint head, and grown Bernard head are supposed (sighs) to be ready to ship from the end of March which, technically, it isn't ... yet. Although he did give himself and the company a month to get them out.

Since they were first "promised" for the January/February timeframe, which each and every one of us knew was impossible when we ordered ... (shrugs), why get our knickers in a twist? Is it frustrating? Yes. Can we do anything about it? If we've ordered ... no ... other than to not order directly from DollShe again which, in the longer term, could mean that we no longer have the option to order these dolls. It's a constant debate -- and a choice we have to live with once we've made it.

The fashion mystics and all of the above heads are supposed to be ready to ship from the end of May.

I'm still bumming out over the fact that he's been emasculated ... never mind that it will be easier for me to create clothing that fits smoothly in the front.

 

@Julie M I m now waiting 4th month for my Arsene on Mistique body. And month ago I asked them to cancel my order,because shipping schedule doesnt seem realistic at all. And in two emails they wrote me that they dont have problem with canceling my order but they promise that doll will shipp on time. And my Arsene will be one of first dolls with Mistique body made. And will be shipped 100% in the end of March or latest early beginning of April. Soooo... I really dont know.

 

The dolls your talking about beeing fullset, that is not the dolls currently beeing on sale is it?

 

Mine can stand too, I restrung him with new elastic (and pulled it tighter) plus he got a very thorough hotglue sueding session. It's a Bermann, so the body is old-ish and when I got him, he was indeed far from a good poser, but now he's pretty great. I have a comparison to the other lanky Dollshe guys and IMO he's the second best, after Pure.

 

If you mean the 50% old 18M Classic sale, yes, those dolls are "fullset". The "fullset" includes all head options for the sculpt plus the body of your choice.

 

Wish I could get the body of my choice with all head options in real life.
This sale is tempting me to get another 18m but I know I don't really need another.

 

Thanks so much :-D

 

Ohh, is that why you can't specifically choose the SA/EN/whatever heads with the fullsets (body with head), because they come with them already?

Huh, that is really good. I'd just been agonizing over whether or not they'd let me swap the default OE head on a body with an EN one if I asked them. But if they come with them (and all of them, in the case of a sculpt like Hound!), that solves my problem Just means I'll have a spare OE head sitting around instead.

 

I had a request to show these three colors of Dollshe resin by someone so thought I would share them here too.
David is Copper Oriental. Arsene is Pale Tan. And Lewis is Honey Mango Oriental.

 

Hey guys! I'd love love love to get a dollshe 28M in the future, somewhere down the line lmao but Can I get some of y'all's thoughts on all the options they have?? I'm still really new to BJDs and ahhhh I don't feel like I have enough experience to make these decisions??

Like is the normal resin ok or is the translucent resin better to get? Are the all the extra joints worth it?? I'd like to have a L4 but does it actually pose well?? Or is it just a annoyance???

Sorry if these questions have already been answered before o)-<
There's so much to read that I'm honestly a little intimidated ＿( :3」∠)_

 

Welcome to the wonderful crazy world of Dollshe! I think everyone will answer your questions differently depending on personal taste, but here's my two cents. I personally LOVE the Honey resin. I feel that no other resin from any other company is as beautiful as Dollshe's Honey resins. Their Pure resins are very nice too if you don't like the translucent look, Copper Oriental seems to be a popular pick. But it's really a matter of your personal taste.

Extra joints, to me personally, aren't worth it. I'm not all that into poseability, so if you are, then go for it! For me though, all of those extra parts are really overwhelming, which is why I'm going to sell my L4 guy as soon as my L1 comes in. But, for people that like poseability, the L4 gives an incredibly large amount of options. I personally don't like that, but I won't deny how versatile the body is. That's probably why it's a turn-off for me, again personally, because I'm not really interested in putting my dolls into impressive poses. I'm kinda boring in that I just like them to sit pretty, which the L4 does as well, but the extra joints sort of bother me especially because my dolls spend too much time unclothed. >_>

We were all new once!

 

The L4 is good for poses sitting down with alot of arm and leg bending but to have the doll standing up is hard to do and I find it gets sway backed.
I love the honey skin but the pure skin is lovely too. It just depends on what color you are going for. Collect them all (if you can). Honey skin changes more depending on the lighting conditions and pure skin is more consistent under different conditions.

 

Where does it say that? I'm not seeing it anywhere, on the sale page or on Dollshe's announcement. I wanted just SA Hound but I bought a full Hound + SA head since it was more cost efficient than SA head and body separately. If I'm gonna end up with 4 heads I want to revise my order, haha!

 

Dollshe didn't include it in either of their pages, but the orders from last year's discontinuation event that has spilled into this current event arrived with the full sets, and if you go to the previous page, look for ATYL's post about having contacted Dollshe to ask about this specifically.

 

From what I see the fullsets thing with getting all the head types of a sculpt doesn't count for the 28M dolls though right? Since I see they have the option to add the SA head on at a cost for those. Has anyone tried asking Dollshe if a 28M fullset can come with the SA head instead of the OE head?

 

@sno4wy
Aaaaaah thank you! JFC I haven't found any other body sculpt ive loved for just how nice the anatomy is besides dollshe!! I guess granado is comparable but shhhhh

oh!! Wow !! I didnt even think of that for the L4. Does it hold its poses well though? o: I'm an artist so I'm wondering if the high degree of posability is actually a good thing for me? Aaaaahhhhhhhhhh. I do wanna draw a lot of fun poses at weird angles so if it holds its pose well, maybe it'll make a really good model for me!

I guess my thing with the resins is: are they hard to match? o: I really like the semi translucent effect that it has! But it's so much more expensive and I'd hate to never be able to match another head to my dollshe o)-<

I'm actually a little ashamed to admit but I dont really like the dollshe head sculpts besides arsene ;-; Mr dollshe seems to really love droopy eyes? And I'm not big on them haha. The heads are also much more stylized than the bodies too! And it throws me off.
Do you like the head sculpts! I'm kind of wondering if I should get one anyways though so I dont have a weird naked body around with no heads haha. Maybe one of the head sculpts will grow on me??

@Therealwalter
What do you mean sway backed? o:


Does everyone in general like the dollshe heads? o:
Actually o)-< I've also been trying to learn how to sculpt lately so I can make my own bjd head for the 28M body but I don't know if it's cost effective to get it cast in resin. It comes in sets of 10 or more and I don't know if I'll even be able to sell to break even for them ahhh. It's kind of an ambitious project I wanna do though

I'm sorry for rambling everyone!!

 

Wow, the honey skin really changes a lot in different light, its almost chameleon like.

Based on the DS resin color tab, I thought they are much closer to one another, but here they are, so different in tone, shade and warmth. The Dollshe world is really crazy, always full of little surprises

Thank you very much for doing this comparison @Therealwalter, your boys are stunning, showing so much character already!

 

I am with you in that there are some Dollshe heads that I absolutely adore, but most that I really don't get, largely because of their lack of realism. All his dolls have unnaturally large eyes, which I agree does clash with the realistic bodies. However, with the right faceup, they can be made to look passably realistic. My personal taste is extreme realism. However, I have a Saint, a Bernard, a Kuncci, a Grant Phillippe and an Arsene and they are all just on the right end of the stylised/realistic spectrum to keep me happy. And Arsene also has droopy eyes, so it is just a matter of which of those doe-eyed faces you like.

 

Which one of Dollshe's resin colors would be the closest to matching DollZone's Grey?

 

By swayback I mean the hip joint tends to bend in a way that seems unnecessarily extended so he looks like he has an exaggerated lordosis. This also makes standing unstable.

 

As it so happens, I love Granado too. And as much as I adore Crocus' work, I do have to say that Mr. Kim is the more masterful of the two sculptors. His attention to detail is second to none, and the fineness of the realism in each new body that he creates is superb. The artistry of Dollshe is really astounding. I can't say enough good things about it.

I'm mostly into Dollshe for the bodies, the heads are hit or miss for me. I think that Mr. Kim is accustomed to the traditional aesthetic of the BJD hobby, and he's trying to break away to incorporate more Western realism aesthetics. I think he does a better job than other companies that go for realistic dolls, especially Iplehouse, and because there's a certain fineness in the facial features he sculpts as well, I'm not adverse to the way his heads look.

I've actually thought about using BJDs as drawing references too. My personal conclusion, and your mileage may vary, is that they don't substitute for references from life. It can be a huge pain to find the reference for the pose/lighting/palette that you want, but I don't think BJDs are a way to solve that. First, their proportions can be idealized and exaggerated, and second, the lack of suppleness in resin that is present in real flesh, even with great sculpts and blushing, means that you can't really go all the way with a BJD as your primary reference. The proportions are closer to reality with Dollshe's bodies, but, I dunno, I feel like unless you're drawing a very specific type of human being (the idealized type), you stand to lose more than you'd gain. You can certainly use the L4 body to serve as an initial pose reference, but it'd do marginally more for you than a decent quality artist armature.

I haven't played with my L4 doll at length, but the few poses I tested did stick pretty well. I do have the Fashion version, and others have said that the bigger Classic guys are less stable.

 

@Iron_Dog - Ah yes, I see what you mean! That should probably be avoided. Either way hopefully you're not waiting forever for Wu-Tyr's new body.

@SteamWitch - Ooh that's exciting, I hope it comes soon!

@Julie M - It's not a permanent emasculation though, there is a separate part.

@Therealwalter - What a gorgeous collection of colours!

@BoneLace - Helloand welcome to the mad world of DollShe (we exist in an alternate reality referred to as the DollShe Zone...a little like the Twilight Zone I guess...). Don't worry I love Granado too.
I have two 28M guys, one in Honey resin, the other in Pure. I honestly love both, though the Honey resin is supposed to be more hardy when exposed to natural light. I have both my boys on the L1 body, so I can't really help more than say that while that body is far more limited in the way it can pose, it's at least quite stable.
I quite like a lot of DollShe's faces; David, Grant, and Saint being my absolute favourites. David was the first one I bought, even if he was a floating head for a little less than a year.

@Doko - Not sure really. DollZone's grey resin is quite new and there may not be too many people with it just yet given that their current wait times are 6+ months.

 

This is really really random, but does anyone else like the ear shapes of Dollshe sculpts? I think Dollshe makes the best ears, especially on the newer sculpts like the grown Saint's I don't think a lot of people pay attention to the ears because they're just a small part of the whole doll, but I love that Dollshe pays attention to even small parts like that. Lol that was so random.... By the way, does anyone have pictures of Saint wearing Oscardoll eyes? I have a pair of 14mm oscardoll eyes and I'm trying to create an elf character with sparkly eyes, but I wasn't sure if it would fit Saint...

 

Not at all, I ADORE my Rey Lewis' ears! They're the most interestingly shaped of all of my dolls for sure, and I love it.

Wanted to pop back in and share a picture of my Rey Lewis with a (partially?) painted face, but no wig. I'm not quite happy with it and will probably continue to add color and darken up around his eyes, but it's still nice to see some detailing on his face. I am absolutely not looking forward to finding appropriate clothing in Arsene's body size, though - SID pants are too small, SID shirt sleeves are too short.

I also just wanted to mention, as this is the first Dollshe doll I've ever painted, that this sculpt is an absolute blast to paint. The sculpted details in his face are so exquisite.

055 by Derange, on Flickr

 

quick dumb question for everyone omg
do,,,,,,,,,,,,the dollshes,,,,,,,,come with the little,,,,,,,,,,wiener bag,,,,,like in the photos,,,,,,,,
is that a resin part,,,,,,,,,,
?????????i just noticed it???????

@MadamMauMau
Agreed! The large eyes really throw me really badly.
I think I really liked venitu! But I'm not sure if that counts as dollshe or uhhh is it 5th motif?? (i'm really sad I missed it 'cause I wasn't in the hobby yet)
Do you ever feel the brow ridge is wrong/the proportions are weird for those heads though? o: i've been considering getting a grant but his face is a little long and his brow ridge is a little weird o)-<
I've been playing with making a head sculpt that I'm hoping will match the body type that dollshe does! I hope this isn't off topic? Dollshe is really good at making masculine bodies.

Spoiler

@Therealwalter
Oooooooooh! Is that something that you can get around with just more attentive posing when moving the parts around? o: Or is it more because it can't hold it very well and just starts sliding back towards that?

@Iron_Dog
Yeah that's kind of my worry! I'd like to hybrid my dollshe with another head or get my own heads casted for dollshes/granados in the future but I ont know how the whole resin matching process works ;u;

@sno4wy
I think they both have their weaknesses on facial sculpts but i agree! Dollshe just has a better sense for musculature on bodies.

Using BJDs as references may or may not work depending on what you're trying to learn o: For me, I actually reference musculature and anatomy from books or photos of real people (myself as a last resort) but I think it'd work out nicely if you just wanna have them for lighting O: Lighting is one of the toughest things for me! I can do like midtones just fine but anything high contrast like chiaroscuro would be really tough! So I'd like to have a mostly accurate figure that I can pose and look off for lighting but also >.>;;;;;;;; bjds are just rly pretty and dollshe just has really nice stuff. His sculpts still have his stylization! But I'm less likely to project a really huge anatomy flaw to my own drawings from looking at his sculpts

@Quiet and Insane
//waves
Hey! Nice to see you here too lmao
What do you mean by more hardy for natural light though o: like does it show off better? Or yellows slower?

 

@Quiet and Insane I forgot how new that colour was. I was curious if a hybrid would work or not, but it's been hard to find owner pictures of Light Grey and Modern Grey.

 

BoneLace -- I don't think we can generalize about whether the brow line is "wrong," etcetera. Different people have different features -- some have very long faces, some have square jaws (Minnie Driver's jaw, for instance, is quite pronounced -- which I think makes her look far more interesting than many other females). Different ethnicities, too, feed into the structure and overall shape of not only the head, but of the body as well.

Mr. Kim is a fabulous sculptor. I have well over 100 dolls from quite a few artists. The only artists from whom I have been buying regularly, of late, are Mr. Kim and aGatti. Granted, it took me over a year of looking at DollShe dolls (in the 2004 timeframe) before I fell, but when I fell, I fell hard. Aside from the excruciatingly long waits, I have never regretted it.

 

@Julie M
Hey! I think thats going a little bit into semantics actually haha. Because yeah there are actually a lot of different features in real life but even so, for this given set of features, it looks off to me together in combination. And no matter how much variation there is in real life, it doesn't make this particular grouping of features look less weird for me! So I'm using wrong to loosely connote this sense of weirdness. :> I guess off is another word I could have used to describe it but I just didn't happen to use it! No particular reason.

Though given this, if we're talking about dollshe being accurate to real life (there's no other reason to bring up real life and ethnic features right?), I think actually if this face ever appeared in real life then I would be rather terrified haha. The same holds true for greek/roman statues and classical art. We understand them as human but if we ever saw these figures on a real person, it would be terrifying.

Edit: now that I'm looking closely, I think its the eyes that throw me off because they're more stylized than the rest of the face so it makes the whole area stick out to me as weird. This is personal opinion though! I mean if you love it then you love it!

 

Iron_Dog, what you're saying is that you fully ascribe to Sir Francis Bacon's famous quotation ... there is no great beauty that hath not some strangeness of proportion ... yes? :-D

I agree with you. I check out different features. I may dislike something about a sculpt ... but the cumulative effect of all of the different bits lends itself to an overall aesthetic that I find pleasing.

What I really love is the sense of serenity that so many of the DollShe sculpts impart. I can't be the only one who reacts to them this way, surely?

 

No, Julie M, you aren't alone in appreciating their serenity. I currently have my grand old man Rei (Hound) seated where he's the last thing I see at night and the first thing I see in the morning. His sweet smile and relaxed posture have always brought me so much pleasure.

 

@Julie M
Probably not! I think i was actually feeling like the odd one out here for Not liking the sculpts! And finding that the faces looked really weird but it was a bit of a relief for me to hear that not everyone likes them and it varies across the board for everyone! :> When i was just browsing instagram and stuff, it seemed everyone would get the dollshe heads and I only liked the dollshe bodies

@Iron_Dog
I often find that as we get closer and closer to realistic proportions for bjds, they throw me off more and more because often times, sculptors try to maintain some of the exaggerations that less mature bjds have but then the rest of it seems a lot more realistic (like having more prominent cheekbones and etc) and I don't know if it's just me thats super bothered by them o)-< I absolutely adore arsene for the 18M but I cant seem to love any of the 28Ms for facial sculpts. Ive spent so long learning realism so everything jumps out at me.

I'm also faceblind though! Not in the same sense that I can only focus on one face at a time but I cant recognize different people's faces. Greek statues are still things that I appreciate though! TBH the body sculpt for dollshe reminds me of them and I really enjoy that haha. Ive been going to the museum every weekend to draw them

Is the wait time for dollshe still a year though? Should I plan to get a dollshe first and then save up for other things? so the order will be in queue while I look at other dollls? Or is it better to save for other dolls and get them first and then hope that dollshe will have a shorter queue in the future? Ahhh i dont know which is better in this type of scenerio

 

re: glowing honey resin with light showing through it. Ummmmmm.....look at my avatar thingie there on the left. sunlight. honey peach.
same hand out of the backlit sunlight looks lovely but solid and a soft peachy pale pale tan similar to copper oriental. (see Stellan in my photos blog in sig)
I have 5 honeyskin in different colors - all are in there in various lighting situations.

 

I think I get what you are saying about the brow ridge. It is too angular to work as just the brow bone under the skin. However, I treat it more as brow bone-plus-eyebrows, and as, such it works pretty well and serves as a guide for where to draw the eyebrows. It might need sanding if one wanted to have a eyebrowless doll, though.

The face is pretty long. Both Grant Phillippe and Kuncci are rather horse-faced. However, it is feasible as a real face.

Venitu is 5th Motif, so made by a different sculptor (Cho).

And congrats, @Siamcat ! He is lovely.

 

I've seen faces in Renaissance paintings that look exactly like Grant and David.

 

@MadamMauMau
Hm! I don't think the brow needs to be sanded down. I retract my earlier statement haha. I found a guy with a similar angle and proportions/face and it's just because mr dollshe likes exaggerating the eye size and brow angle so it threw me off a bit o:

Oh no o)-< Does that mean the Venitu head doesn't fit on the 28M? I was really hoping it does! (i also hope this isn't off topic oops!!)

But I think you and @SteamWitch are right david is a face that could appear in real life if the eyes were a little smaller. Though I think this type of facial structure is more of a modern preference than classical! Classical art seems to lean more towards a slightly softer/rounder face and have a lot of chubby squish to them that i really enjoy!

 

My Arsene is finally finished. The one year wait was definitely worth it!

Casual by Ashemanu, auf Flickr

 

I got a reply about the current 18M sale, SA and IM heads

 

@Verse - Ooh he looks lovely! His eyes are such a pretty colour.

@BoneLace - The 28M guys do indeed come with a little resin cup for their junk. It's supposed to make them easier to dress, though I'll believe it when I see it. I have a very varied taste in dolls and so you'll see me floating around many a thread.
Ok so (someone correct me if I'm wrong), but the Honey skin resin was developed in a such a way that it would be more resistant to yellowing when exposed to direct sunlight. It's also supposed to mimic the natural "glow" that comes from a living human in sunlight.
The Venitu head actually does fit the 28M body. There's not much movement, but he looks pretty cool in my opinion.

Spoiler: Venitu head on 28M body

Fifth Motif Venitu on DollShe 28M body by Liz, on Flickr

@Doko - Yeah sorry about that. Fingers crossed you can find someone who can be more helpful than I.

@Siamcat - He's lovely! Tell him not to worry, I too have a doll who arrived April 1st.

@MadamMauMau - Yep, hence why my fiance calls my David and Grant my two stallions. Though I suspect it's more to do with what's between their legs as opposed to their facial structure.

@Ashemanu - Aww, he's cute!

 

@Ashemanu, he is beautiful. Congrats!

And, yes, Kuncci and Grant could be Medicis, although I agree that the Italian renaissance generally seemed to favour soft-faced young men more. But I still hold that Kuncci looks a lot like Adrien Brody, but I too would have liked both with smaller eyes, for realism.

There. I agreed with everyone. That's not like me and won't last.

 

Ha! Yes I see Adrien Brody in that face too. Now you're giving me terrible ideas with which to torture my poor Viking...

 

I think the argument of whether the dolls look like real people is moot. No one would buy a doll that looked like me or most other real people that I know. The number of really attractive humans is a minority and always will be. So the realistic dolls will still be idealized archetypes. What I love about the newer generation of Dollshe sculpts is that they embody ideal beauty so well.

 

This is very true, but there is a subtle difference between idealised and stylised. Someone like Fairyland is stylised. You would never see a human like that in the street or, if you did, you would run screaming. Someone like Iplehouse tends to be more are idealised. Some people do look like that and they are considered fine examples of human being. If you saw someone like that in the street, you would go "Oooh!" Companies like Dollshe are somewhere in between. Some people like stylised, some like idealised, some like knobbly realistic and there is a company for each. I suppose it is just frustration if your preference is for a particular type of approach and a company gets close to it, but not close enough for your tastes. Can't have it all.