OT/General DollShe going official with their casting service!

I personally don't care if Mr. Dollshe will cast them or not, his derogatory statements regarding 3D sculpting are what really bother me. its such a shame that such a good looking service is coming from someone who, given their veiws, is not someone i would be willing to give money to.
If this service becomes popular, that in turn means that more people will think that, after reading the site, that these veiws are valid (and not totally ungrounded as they are)

That is not something i would want my name on.

But ahwell, thats just me, i guess

 

Wait, are there any other bjd casting services where you can do orders this small? Offering a nice range of default colors like Dollshe?

I think I've seen *casting* services, but they don't seem...very accomodating for specific bjd casting needs?

 

Doesn't Bobobie do casting? I somehow recall seeing something on them doing it - not necessarily publicized but you can talk to them about it, or something? I know they've got a decent range of colours and do a nice product. I don't love their sculpts but the resin quality is lovely.

 

If I was ever at the stage I wanted to cast something I'd certainly consider this - it's just not important to me to 'own' every aspect of the process and I'd probably end up making a lot of expensive mistakes if I tried to do it myself (not that I even have the space).
Not sure what I make of Mr Dollshe and his opinions on 3d modelling and the whole Dollshe/Dollmore copying thing though. He's clearly got strong feelings about originality and hand crafting...
I'm sure Lady Saiyuki was going to get dolls cast from Bobobie at some point. I expect it would be worth asking other companies if they offer such a service, just in case?

 

Hmm, my only way to parse Dollshe's new explanation is still that he finds symmetry more difficult to achieve in hand sculpting and more beauty in something that is nearly symmetrical (but not so much as to be lifeless). I don't doubt that it could take the same amount of time to make a 3D model convincingly less symmetrical. Having done hand drafting and AutoCAD drafting, I know that ultimately the time spent is the same, the final product is just in a different data format.
The most bizarre part of that statement, though, is not revealing whether the artist created the doll by hand or by computer upon request. Doesn't that contradict his wish for transparency? You'd think it would be beneficial to the 3D sculptors to reveal their working method so they don't all get painted with the "piratical!" brush. That would go a lot further to help legitimize new technology in the eyes of traditionalists.

 

oh no no, I think Dollshe wants you to reveal your WIP photos. He was complaining that some companies only reveal the resin-surfacer coated stage right before a cast, to disguise the marks made by 3D printing. According to him, these companies market digital sculpts as traditional sculpts, which he thinks is dishonest. It is a separate concern what the quality of these digital designs are, but Dollshe mentions them together (and it looks like he thinks of them as being one and the same. That is to say, Dollshe believes medium and execution is the same thing where 3D sculpture is concerned)

 

I guess I can kind of understand him wanting to see WIP pics though - he's clearly worried about 3D scanning being used to copy dolls, so showing WIP pics would be one way for him to be able to rest easy not feeling like he's helping some scammy copier person rip off someone else's work.

Of course, it's not like it'd be hard, once you did have a 3D copy, to chop off some bits and simplify some of the edges so that it looked like a WIP but wasn't (if you were a scammer, that is)... but then, I have a feeling Mr. Dollshe doesn't really understand 3D modelling that well.

 

Holy prices batman xD Good value, for what it is, but nothing I could ever afford.

I don't like what he says about 3D work, it reminds me of the whole traditional art vs digital art argument, and when I say argument, usually traditional artists who don't understand how digital art works, and think digital artists just click a button that says 'make picture'. Perhaps he thinks 3D sculptures have a similar button for making dolls?

 

It's simple enough to say "I'm not going to use Dollshe's casting service myself [because of his statements on 3D modelling.]" But does anyone plan to, say, not purchase a doll that another artist has had cast by Dollshe because the artist chose Dollshe?

 

I just realized what may be a huge part of why he thinks it's not a good medium: 3D printing sucks! XD

Modelers come correct me on this. But I think the effective flat resolution of additive 3D printers (extruders and sinterers) is about 300~600dpi, and the height resolution is many times worse (this latter problem especially true of extruders). The scale the dolls exist in, these printers' resolutions leave very visible stepping marks when you hold them up close --- you'd have to do a lot of spray/sanding to get the print into a quality that's comparable to a cast-ready prototype that's made with traditional tools. Dimensional faithfulness in 3D printing is not very good --- a flat sheet may curl at the edges, overhangs tend to droop, corners and edges will be less sharp than your design, a delicately designed curve, of the eyelids, say, may not be reproduced so very faithfully, and it may change even more during the spray/sanding process.

And remember that the casting process introduces deteriorations in the level of detail with every cast. A low-resolution print is going to turn out laughably washed-out copies.

But these problems are resolution problems --- they go away as soon as you switch to a high-quality printer. The high quality printers may be prohibitively expensive for many people. BUT you would only need a high-quality detail on the final product - the one that goes to production. Your joint design, your rough concepts, your "let's try a different nose..." --- 300dpi is usually sufficient, no?

 

penguu - 3D printing has come a LONG way! It definitely will still require a little bit of fiddling - priming and sanding, but the detail available now is amazing. It's really not the blobby mess that it was just a few years ago. Check out some of the stuff on shapeways.com - from what I can tell, theirs don't even have the little striation lines from laying down the layers (or at least not visibly). There's home 3D printers that still make obvious blobbyness, but with the professional printers, you can get a very high degree of precision - and anything that needs a little fixing (like sharpening up the eyelids) shouldn't be hard to do once you've got the printed version in-hand and can tweak it and work it over. You'd have to do that anyway when you test string and see how it all works.

 

Thank god we have experts XD;;;

I'm doing a quick calculation for cost on Shapeways:

Calculation:
1. Surface Area of Human Male, turn it into 1:3 scale, you get the surface area of the 1/3 doll
2. Multiply doll surface area by recommended wall thickness, you get total volume of material Shapeway needs to print.
3. Shapeway charges by this volume, adjusted for material type.

The level of magnitude for the cost of printing one 60cm doll is somewhere in the middle hundreds. HOWEVER, you'd pbb want walls a bit thicker than the minimum wall requirement, because a doll is very large, you'd want thicker walls to hedge against warping or accidental damage. Then you'd be looking at cost in the $1000~$2000 range to print one doll.

Then, I looked up some desktop 3D printers (for the home, for the individual studio). Some of these home printers cost about $1000~$2000 (these are open source, requires self assembly, calibration, maybe some adjustments in the code), and some cost in the area of $10,000 (commercially made printers). For information's sake, I think the printers Shapeways use are in the $100,000 level.

Someone tell me what printers dentists, surgeons, and small architecture firms use? If the printers are good enough for these people, it's pbb going to meet doll-printing needs. Right, right? XD

Anyway, the desktop printers: an programming/robotics-savvy artist can buy/build one for about 2k, or rent the usage of one for about a dollar a minute at your city's local hackerspace (my GOD these printers are so popular!). I haven't been able to pin down how many dollar-minutes it takes to print a 60cm doll XD;

 

Well, really, all you need is the exterior surfaces thick enough to survive printing and shipping. If you need to save on costs, you could always get it made VERY hollow and then just refine the inner surfaces with Apoxie - you could add some sort of thin scaffolding structure to add strength and give you a guide to the "real" internal surface shape. Or just get it printed despite the cost - it's a bit prohibitively expensive if you are just doing it for your own personal dollie, but if you're making them to sell, it's not too bad. For example, this pig is about the size of a doll torso (maybe not quite so long) and hollow as a doll torso would be. That particular material is $5.99 per cubic cm - while the cheaper material you'd probably use for a doll is $2.89 per cubic cm. So you'd be looking at several hundred for a full doll, but I don't think you'd hit $1000 unless it was very bulky and thick.

And for me... it's worth it. In order to work on my clay doll, I either have to pay a babysitter to watch my son, or have my husband do it in the evenings when he's home. It doesn't give me very much time to work on it and paying a babysitter gets expensive fast. The money I save doing that will probably be plenty to get a 3D print done.

There is also the possibility of just doing the precision parts in 3D - knee and elbow joints, etc., and then incorporating those parts into a clay doll using Apoxie.

The home printers that are self-assembled don't have the level of precision necessary for this kind of thing, IMO. They are really nifty - the ones that extrude ABS are super cool to watch, but the detail is pretty poor. It might be cool to just rough out the shapes of a doll to the right proportions, but I wouldn't use it to actually make a doll.


I've edited this post like five times but I'm editing again to say I'm real tempted to unstring my 60 cm Bobobie/RS doll and submerge her to see how much water she displaces to find her volume. Unless someone already knows roughly the volume you'd expect with a large doll - I'm sure someone (twigling maybe?) has posted that info somewhere...

Edit again: Okay, so rough estimates based on my 60 cm RS doll:

Upper Legs: 1.1 DL
Headcap, knees, feet, hands, upper thighs: 1.6 DL
Arms: 0.5 DL
Mid torso: 1 DL
Pelvis: 0.8 DL
Upper Torso: 1 DL

I didn't have a container big enough to fit her lower legs but I estimate they're about as much resin as the upper legs, so about 1.1 DL. I also didn't want to submerge her face and risk ruining her faceup so I'll estimate her head at roughly another 1 DL.

That's a total of approximately 8.1 DL which is 810 ML which is 810 cubic cm. Which, in Shapeways White Detail is.... $2,340. Oh god please tell me my math is wrong.

 

Um, unfortunately I don't think his reasoning even stretches any where near that far.
No offence to him, but i really doubt he would under stand anything you guys have been saying regarding resolution, either.

...I would expect him to follow with "yeah that too!" though :dead

And regarding St. James' comment, any artist that has read this thread and still decides to use their services while the comments are still on the dollstown/dollshe websites, are not artists i would want to deal with, unfortunately for me

 

HystericalParoxysm:
Wall thickness - a bjd's wall is much, much thicker than the minimum thickness I used for my estimate. XD;;; I also used the cost of one of the cheaper materials (something like 2~3 dollars). I was hoping you could tell me what the differences between the many different kinds of plastics were (how bendable they are would be a huge factor in determining how thick the walls would have to be, wouldn't it?)

ABS - these have a tendency to collapse, curl, warp, etc when it's cooling into its hard state. Printing hollow, complicated torsoes and long curving arms/legs parts sounds like they'd be very tricky indeed. What's more, the bottom of the print tends to be flattened, from what I can see, and this coupled with lack of precision makes printing ball joints and non-flat feet so much the harder. I've seen mention of people splitting complicated designs into parts that has at least one side laying flat on the printing surface. ...*sniff* Printing WIP's to check proportion...is getting harder the more I look into this XD;

 

The material I'm looking at on Shapeways is the White Detail at $2.89 per cubic cm: http://www.shapeways.com/materials/white_detail

It looks like the best out of their options - high detail, decently strong and rigid. The "white strong and flexible" looks like it will be WAY too flexible to make a good doll. They show it used for springs and hinges.

There's also the Alumide which is almost 1/3 the price of the White Detail: http://www.shapeways.com/materials/alumide

But I don't know how workable it would be after printing (can you carve and sand it?) or if there might be issues with it inhibiting silicone curing. I sent a msg to Shapeways asking them about how modifiable it'd be.

I also found this, using the Sandstone material: http://www.shapeways.com/forum/index.php?t=msg&th=2600&start=0& ... looks like a bit of work to clean up afterward, but decent precision even on a very small scale. Tiny details like fingernails and mouth corners and so forth would need the most work to fix...

Indeed, the minimum wall thickness of 1mm on the White Detail is MUCH less than on a doll, but for things like legs for example - does it really matter if the stringing channel on the leg is perfect inside? It could be coated inside with apoxie pretty easily - or the entire model could be built something like this.

My one concern is... what happens to void spaces if you pressurize/vacuum the piece as part of the molding process?


I think what I might do is switch gears a little bit and work on hands, and then get just the hands printed in a few different materials, which shouldn't be too pricey. Then I can see just how good each can be modified and sanded, and which will likely be the lowest price for greatest usability.


I'm starting to think we should split this off into another thread.

 

Jumping in a little late but I wanted to comment on a few things:

Yes, of course! You are hiring someone to reproduce her, she is still yours in every way!
I have been doing repros of my dolls for 10 years now. Started with silicone, then vinyl, then resin, trust me they are still mine in every sense
(OK so up to now they weren't BJDs but the thing still applies since it was my hand sculpted work lol

That is very true. They employ their own sculptors usually. A company might take interest in you if they like your work but then you will work for them, either with one off payment for the transferance of rights or with royalties.
I work with 3 companies like that, two with one off payments and one with royalties per pieces sold.
Again not with my BJDs (yet) but with my other dolls I dare say (not to toot my own horn) I am very well known in my field and the companies came to me, I didn't go to them and commisioned my work.

Many artists (myself included) were discovered in doll shows by dealers or reps. In my case, since I live in Europe, it was by word of mouth. It was a couple of years of selling to collectors before reps approached me. Later companies followed and with my artist friends, this is the normal course. They see your a a show or a forum and then they propose a deal.
But today things are more "tight". Tutorials are found easily, more and more people want to sculpt and some are pretty darn good at it... I teach as well so I can see first hand how many people want to sculpt these days and learn.
When I started selling 13 years ago, there weren't ANY tutorials out there, nobody was sharing anything and there were only a handful of people and we were going a little blind by trial and error.

I would say if you want your work to be seen, start posting on forums and listing on eBay and if you can, attend a BIG doll show like IDEX

As a person who works with waiting lists I SO AGREE!! It is the reason I decided for that last edition I did, I will NOT take pre-orders but fund it out of pocket. The stress was killing me!!

For me the solution is a casting service. I don't have the time or energy to do THAT bit myself when I have spent, potentially months sculpting (by hand 100%) the original. For the editin before this one, I did 3 heads that I discarded and 4 sets of limbs...
For my first BJD I sculpted the limb 7 times in order to get the best functional limbs and I have been sculpting for 25 years so I know my material, I have made hundreds of dolls over the years.

So when it takes you months to perfect your One of a Kind for reprodcution (And this means, fucntional, aesthetic and flawless as much as possible), it might be best if you let casting to the professionals. I would be too scared to lose my OOAK in the process and lose all that hard work... and I would prefer to get my hands on finished, professional castings than throw out 3 out of 5 castings done by myself

Just my 2 cents

 

Has anyone tried the new service yet? I'm sure we would all love to see the results. Personally I think the whole idea might be the greatest thing since sliced bread but, I do want to learn to cast my own first so I don't have to send an original through the mail.

 

I can agree with not wanting to send an original through the mail. Even a junk cast that has been patched with Bondo, or Apoxie, and sanded smooth is good enough for a service to make molds from and cast reproductions for you. The idea of sending an original doll overseas, by Snail Mail is scary, to me. There are just too many stories of things getting lost in the mail to make me confident about the mail services. Also, there isn't any Insurance available to repay the time it took to make an original. :dead

 

I would like to avoid sending my original through the mail too. So I'm going to try a simple re-cast and see how it goes... If not I'll employ a courier service to send my head...

Also, I don't like Dollshe's stance on 3D modeling either, but a lot of artists can be opinionated and some are pretty naive about digital mediums. I really love some of his dolls, and he seems pretty honest so I guess that's good enough for me!

And wow! I thought of modeling a doll in 3D last year and thought I was a genius for thinking it but other people are doing it too? It's such hard work making a realistic figure from scratch in 3D, that was my original plan but I ended up sculpting by hand because it was easier for me, I could feel it and work on the joint construction much easier. But I dunno, 3D certainly has some added uses! If I ever 3D sculpt I will remember that asymmetry is key!

 

Having gone through the whole extensive process of learning how to cast my own dolls and to sell them, I have to say that I am really tempted to use DollShe's services. I would of course prefer to send them a perfected cast rather than the original sculpt.

Not having to personally produce multiple dolls when they are ordered from me would be worth paying the price they are asking. It would leave me more time to be able to sculpt the many doll ideas I have floating around and would minimize my exposure to the fumes and dust of the resin from casting and drilling.

So, in my opinion the pros and cons of hiring casting out for me personally would be thus-

Pros:
No fumes
No drilling dust
Less space needed
Minimal mess (though still some from prototyping)
Less time taken up with production (which I could redirect toward sculpting additional dolls)
Less waste from miscast parts
Potential higher quality resin (I don't have samples of their resin to compare with)
Less bubble trouble (since they have pressure pots and more experience with casting dolls)
Less cost of materials (such as resin and silicone)

Cons:
Potential increased cost (though less cost of materials for me and the time saved for other things would be worth it)
Having to wait for the cast dolls to arrive (I am impatient sometimes lol)
Less hands-on control over the final product

I will have to look into this more

 

Might be a silly question, but does anyone know if drilling is included in Dollshe's costs or if that is part of their finishing service?

 

I'm really not sure. Since all of Dollshe and Dollstown's products are made without any metal bars and the hands and feet are strung directly onto the elastic, I am not sure that they would supply hooks and magnets and things like that which might be needed to assemble the doll, you might have to supply that for them if you want the dolls shipped assembled, as they would otherwise have to source or manufacture the correct sizes etc which would take time, and cost you more money.

Or did you mean drilling the limbs and such? I think they use cores so that the limbs do not need to be drilled, this would be a more efficient use of materials. If there is any flashing in holes and such (to prevent castings from being locked in the mold), I think they would remove that as part of the finishing service.

Best place to ask would be the Q&A board at Dollshe Craft though.

 

I'd like to know if anyone has placed an order for this service yet and how things are going.
I was flipping through the Q&A board but it appears to be people ordering dolls and not the casting service, I guess the Q&A board is the same for both services? or did I miss something?...

 

There is a second Q&A and a separate order board for the casting services. I am planning to work with them but I'm not ready yet.. it will likely be a couple of months yet.


Reproduction Q&A (it's under "reproduction centre" near the bottom of the left hand menu): http://dec89161.gdreamweb.com/board/list.php?board_name=DREAMBOARD16

 

That's the one I was looking at, the ones that were unlocked were people asking questions about their doll orders for that new body promotion...Maybe they just posted in the wrong spot.

I'm working up the courage to ask for a consultation about hollowing out the inside of my doll and channels, but I think I'll try and get it to the finishing stages first.

 

Has anyone used this service yet, and if so, what did you think?

 

I'm definitely giving it some consideration - I love casting my resin kids in colour but for the price and the quality being offered I love the idea of 10-20 perfectly crafted skin-toned dolls - near perfect, bubble free and I dont have to sand them.... its like a wet dream Bwahaha

 

I'm hoping to go through them as well as I don't have the knowledge or the means to cast myself, though does anybody know if they require you to send molds or would you be able to just send the doll itself and they'll make a mold of it? (I don't have the knowledge or means to do that either ^^; )
Also does it matter what media the doll is made out of? (mine going to be ceramic clay at the bisque stage when she's done)

 

You'd have to send them the doll pieces, they make their own molds. But if you don't want to send your one and only original (in case it gets lost or damaged in transit) you'd need to make a set of molds for yourself so you can make a copy to send them.

 

I was just checking in here to ask that same question! Anyone?

 

Tami, it looks like several people have placed orders: http://dec89161.gdreamweb.com/board/list.php?board_name=DREAMBOARD17&choose2=&choose1=&pagenow=2&CB=

But nobody has got finished product yet. I think Dollshe is suffering from backlog because of the release of the Pure body, and possibly do not have the resources to fill Pure orders AND make customers bulk orders at the same time?

 

Ah, Thank you, twigling! I won't have time to make my own prototype casts until summer so hopefully before I'm ready with those, we'll have some feedback about the process, service and product they provide.

 

I estimate I will have my secondary master ready to ship out in about May as well, I imagine the first run will exhibit some growing pains and a learning curve to match. I know Dollstown's AnJongHak has been happy with them and working with them for a while now, but he has the benefits of living within driving distance of the reproduction centre, and also there is no language barrier. I saw AnJongHak had posted that they were not taking any new orders (only selling stock) till May because Dollshe is backlogged from making the Pure bodies. I hope I don't get caught in a delay of that sort at any point, but will have to have contingency plans....

 

I plan on shipping my doll out to DollShe this Monday so I will tell everyone how everything goes. I should have send it out weeks ago but my primer layer got damaged right after we had these miraculous 50+ degree days - now it is back to 25 and snowed a couple of days ago to kick off spring ><. He said he could start in April, but he did want the doll earlier so there could be delays because of me. DollShe did state that we was having skin problems that prevented him from sculpting, and I have read that is what is causing the delays in the Pure Body, but I don't really know anything about the issue so that could be wrong. Anyway, I'll people know how it goes.

 

Fingers crossed for you, firefly!!!

 

thanks for the info twigling.

I think if their having so much back log (and for the sake of at least know how and having a sort of back up doll) I think I'll attempt to cast it myself first, for myself. then later I'll try their services... I also am not happy that when I tried to send them an email it said that it wouldn't go through... rather annoying all and all.

 

So, my doll is stuck in customs because I declared the value very high (since 3D printing costs so much and I just couldn't risk it getting lost and not getting that money back). I asked DollShe before hand if this could be a problem, since this is the first time I am shipping anything (important) overseas, and they said it would be fine but it turns out customs think it is being imported for commercial reasons and they are being asked for about $65 to release it (which I know could be a lot worse but still sucks). DollShe said they will pay the fee and it seems that they are doing everything they can and that they have the situation under control, so I am very happy with they way they are handling things. They really have been great so far. I hope the casting doesn't take too long - this is going to be a hard wait!

 

Yay, she is finally out of customs. Now I just have to hope I can survive the wait for DollShe to finish casting. Their information page makes it seem like it won't take long at all (3 weeks) - I hope they don't run into any problems!

 

Firefly: Fingers crossed on your behalf! Considering all the work that goes into mold-making, let alone casting, three weeks sounds almost instantaneous.

twigling: Glad to hear that the end is in sight for you... definitely looking forward to seeing your sculpt in resin!

For anyone who hasn't seen it: Enyo looks to be Dollshe-cast (and is also adorable.)

 

Hmmm. I'm thinking of MAAAYBE using this service of DollShe's... However, I'm wondering if anybody knows whether or not DollShe's resins matches either Souldoll WS or NS?

I can't find this information anywhere and it is vital for me to know whether or not the resins match before I think of going any further. u_u So, please, some help?

 

I think Souldoll WS would be an OK match, like it is a decent match to CP/FL and Soom white. Not sure about the NS vs Oriental skin, as I have not seen a sample in hand. Have you tried searching for combinations in the pic request subforum on DoA?

They can do custom colours too, but you'd have to check with them first, and it is likely to cost a bit more.

 

Yes, I have just found out that Souldoll WS is an okay match to... what's it called, DollShe paleskin? *senile* Will have to look that up again, haha.
And yes, I've tried basically everywhere, but I can't find any good photos of SD NS + DS OS. I have found this photo; http://www.flickr.com/photos/nylh/3855724609/in/faves-geminick/ on flickr, which depicts a DollShe and a Souldoll Jin Lee-something from 08... I talked to the owner and all she told me was that Souldoll NS is the best match of Volks NS... which didn't really help too much, but whatever.

 

Paleskin is the Dollshe white, yes.

Remember that Dollstown uses the same colours as Dollshe which might help you expand your search. SD's resin now is different from 2008, it's more pink like Luts/FL/Elfdoll/Soom etc.


Some say Dollshe NS/oriental is a good match for Volks, others say it isn't. Depends on the age of the Volks resin too, seems it's not as yellow now as it used to be and tends more towards the pink. If you already have some SD NS resin, maybe order a piece of orientalskin to see the colour difference. You could even contact Dollshe and ask if you could have a sample.

 

Wow, I can even contact DollShe and ask for that? That is NEAT. I think I might end up doing that! I wonder if Souldoll would do that... I think I'll ask them too, haha. Thanks for the advice, much appreciated!

 

The other thing you can do if Souldoll can't send you a sample is to buy a pair of the high heel feet in WS. They're about 25 dollars USD.

 

Ooh, that's good to know! Thanks!

 

Any updates with people who are having/planning to have dolls cast by Dollshe? I'm considering this myself...but I'm not ready yet. My current WIP, I don't think the interiors are suitable for casting. I might have the head cast, though. Did anyone find more info out on how the interior should be for Dollshe's casting process?

 

I think this is a very good question !!!

If you ship a Master to a casting service, who is responsible for the core shape?

The sculpt is the outside.

Who decides how the cores are going to be cast?

Should you send them a core print as well?

I believe I have seen some posts about details on core prints that
suggested that one doll company had pirated another doll company's sculpt?
Maybe this was all about molding an existing sculpt from another company?

This is purely a resin thing, I'm sure.

 

This seems so cool i have a tiny studio apartment and i'm horrible with casting so this is perfect for me. Does anyone know if they finish the master sculpt before casting the pieces. Like let you know if its lopsided and stuff before the proceed with the casting services?

 

Does anyone know how long it takes Dollshe to produce artists dolls? I'm asking since a friend of mine ordered a Dollshe dol together with a pair of eyes for mel in December last year and she's still waiting. It would be good to know if they are backed up by their own 50% off events or by first casting artist dolls and then their own.

 

Dollshe is notorious for 6-month waits if you order one of their standard dolls. I don't know if the casting service is affecting their turn time.

 

Because I am sure most people do not read my thread - the thing with DollShe didn't work out for me. They said my part wasn't suitable for molding. I know my parts would be difficult to mold and require a bit of creativity, but I know it is possible. I don't blame them for that though, I am sure they have their methods and isn't their fault it didn't work. But, what did upset me a bit was that I described how some of the parts were inside the joint and sent pictures before hand, since I knew my parts were a little complex, and they made it sound like it was fine, so I just I wish they would have payed more attention and brought up concerns before I shipped it since this all cost me about $150 (maybe more, I forget exact shipping costs). They also never messaged me to tell them, so after a while of waiting I messaged them and that is when they told me.

They offered to fix it for me, but they sounded really reluctant to do it so I just told them to send it back. Looking back I should have just got them to do it since it was probably my most affordable option other than do it myself.

They were very nice and I really wish things worked out. I trust their quality and their prices were very reasonable (considering the low minimum). Their was also a $60ish customs fee since I insured it for $3500 (which I asked them about beforehand to make sure that wouldn't cause problems, and they said it was fine, but turns out it wasn't). They offered to pay it, but since we didn't go through with the order I had to pay it (completely reasonable, I was happy they were going to pay it in the first place).

 

casting service

Was the return shipment (from them to you) insured for $3500, as well?
If so, did you also pay for that? Or, was the return shipment un-insured?

Overall, unless a doll is quite simple, your experience is probably what most doll makers should expect from a casting service. Even with the low labor rates in China, complex parts take a long time to set up for molding. I sincerely doubt that their fix would have been satisfactory to you in the end, and you would have wished that they had returned the prototype to you. As it is, hopefully you will get your prototype back in good condition, and can go from there.

 

This was months ago. The return shipping was not insured. I would have rather payed for it just in case. I forget we even discussed it but if we did I would not have said to not insure it. The insuring did not cost much at all, it was the customs fee (she was held up in Korea for a little over a week I think). I don't think I would have had that problem in the US but who knows.

They didn't to a great job packing her back up so she got a few huge chips, but nothing I can't fix (I wrapped her up insanely well and they just kind of took some of my bubble and loosely wrapped each piece).

My hip joint would have a very complex mold. I explained this and what it would take to mold it before I sent it. I don't know who I was talking to at what points during the process so maybe there was some confusion. The chest had indents inside for magnets but they would have been very easy to fill in. They also originally mentioned that some parts where thinner than others so it would look different.

I am sure I wouldn't be happy with the modification if they did it, but at this point I have spent so much money on it that I just can't sit on it anymore. I just really want to see something made or move on.

 

does anyone know what their resin matches? are there any photos or charts or things? ><; I can't seem to find anything concrete.

I'm thinking of using their service but I only have a head and I would need to get a body that could match(and fit)

 

higgy, dollshe resins can be found on dollstown's galleries. I'm out right now but I can look it up for you when I get home.

 

I skiffed through this thread hoping to not have to repeat something already asked.... but noticed nothing. So... does anyone know if you can make mixed colour orders from Dollshe? I am seriously considering handing off the casting to them once I'm ready to sell my bodies; at least for the humans, anyway. I like their colour range and how many other companies' resins match up. But I thought I would ask here before bugging Dollshe about it, since I'm not yet ready to send them a proto.

Speaking of which... I hope they are alright with the artist sending a personally casted prototype, rather than the original. I REALLY do not trust the post all the way from Canada to Korea...

 

Yes you can make mixed colour orders, ie some white, some normal, and there will be a maximum of 4 tan per 20 due to casting difficulties, at least for larger dolls, and a higher maximum for smaller dolls, like 6.

You can send a cast master instead of an original as long as you can prove it's your original work. Since you have to coat your parts in primer before you send them, DS wouldn't be able to tell if they were original or resin cast, but they have said before that sending resin castings of your own work was okay.

 

Makes sense to me. Good thing I have documented every step of my process, then. ^_^ It just seems necessary in the current climate of BJD-making, regardless of Dollshe's requirements. Thank you for this info, Twigling.