Has anybody (everybody?) had experience with DIM celeb or loved one heads?

I had no idea there is a doll company that make custom doll heads. I always wanted a custom doll head! Do they make only 1 doll head or do i have to buy it in batches? There is a favorite kdrama character I really want as a doll, but I can't find a head sculpt that looks similar to him and I want dolls that look like bts. Do they take face up commissions too? You're referring to Doll in life or doll in mind?

 

I have absolutely nothing to contribute because I never took advantage of this system whilst DiM were still around, but I am watching just to be able to hopefully see photos of more DiM sculpts!

I am not as familiar with their custom sculpts and minimees, so I would love to hear more about them and people’s experiences too.
@SKYWHYS your experience sounds amazing and I hope we can see pictures!

@Forever We Are Young DiM closed down in the past few years sadly. But these days there are a plethora of BJD makers who sculpt dolls all across the world! There are several in the Workshop section alone you could commission for the headsculpt you want!

 

That's too bad. I guess I have to have someone else make me a custom doll one day. So custom bjd sculptors exist on the marketplace. I didn't know there were people I could request custom head sculpts. Do I have to order a large batch or can i order one doll head? I really want to have custom bts dolls and custom doll head of a kdrama character I'm obsessed with. Can I show a photo to these custom doll head people and they can make it for me? Do you have any suggestions of specific custom doll head sculptor I should request a commission for? Thank you for the info by the way. What if I don't like the way they sculpted the face if I were to commsion a custom head would they remake the sculpt?

 

@Forever We Are Young Those things are somewhat off-topic for this thread, since this thread is about Doll In Mind! I recommend visiting the workshop part of the forum (note I said workshop, not marketplace), where you can find artists working on BJD projects in real-time. You can also check the “bjdsculpting” tag on instagram. With both methods, you can find artists who may take on custom commissions, and you’ll need to communicate with them directly to find out their terms of sculpting a unique head for you!

 

Ah I see. I ended up reading stuff wrong again. I read your post several times and thought everytime you wrote marketplace. Thanks for the info.

 

I ran a group order for a James Marsters minimee head with DiM a few years ago. We did a few revisions along the way to get the likeness better. The result was very good in the end. I also have a Helena Bonham Carter head from DiM, the likeness is not as good, I was not running the order for that head. I also have a MSD head, but I cannot attest to the likeness as I have no recollection of who it is supposed to be.
DiM Minimee Helena Bonham Carter openeyed NS DiM Minimee Helena Bonham Carter half closed eyes NS DiM Minimee James Marsters openeyed NS by Skumring, on Flickr
DSC_0840 by Skumring, on Flickr DiM MSD Minimee head on Lati Blue body second from the left.

 

@Forever We Are Young the trick is getting plenty of character images from various angles so the artist has good references to work from. With 3D printing tech improving all the time the possibilities are constantly changing & boggling my brain!
I have a DiM one of a kind head. It was sculpted for someone based on their character & didn't come out as they had hoped. But to me he was perfect as I didn't have those specific expectations.
DeChanique's original character was a stocky, shorter elven guy. What he became is an elegant tall elven guy. ;}
I'll add a photo of Talfryn when I get a chance.

 

I wouldn't have a problem getting tons of variety of photos of bts and the kdrama character I want my custom doll to look like, since they are celebrities. I just wish I started collecting earlier than I would have known about dim before they stopped making dolls.

 

I forget about my doll Josiah being another DiM portrait head. He is from one of the Johnny Depp commissions. I bought him second hand & I'm not a big Johnny Depp fan so I have no clue if folks were happy with the finished sculpt but I don't think mine looks much like him with this AngelToast faceup.


And here is Talfryn. My retired knight in the Delf elven court originally based on a character drawn by De Chanique. I bought him third hand from the marketplace. He's also got a faceup by AngelToast.

 

Looking at James Marsters from your photo, and my two specific guys, I begin to see basic face shape similarities & wonder how much the artists worked off of a base head for the commissions which would explain some folks not being happy with the results of their specific commissions. Getting the interior engineering right & the facial features located correctly and then creating individual portrait sculpts over that was really more of an art than most of us probably appreciated.

 

Quite early in to the game Denny/ DiM stated that celeb portrait heads could only have a 80% likeness at the maximum because anything more would cause copyright/ trademark issues for him. I commissioned him to sculpt two Ryuhei Matsuda (actor) heads which turned out more like a 90% likeness nevertheless! They were extremely realistic. Later I got a Atsushi Sakurai head commissioned by someone else, and it was of similar quality. It really captured the person. I've seen some portrait heads of Western celebs that owners were not quite happy with, like Tilda Swinton. But she does not have a conventional, classically beautiful face in the first place and I always felt owners were maybe irritated by that level of realism - it was quite new at the time!^^

 

I can't figure out how to post photos. I read the faq on it, but can't get it to work still. If this service was still available from dim I wouldn't really get a western artist, since I don't really have a favorite or watch many American movies or tv shows. I would want bts or my favorite kdrama character. Actually I might also want a Harry Potter commission face sculpt too one day of Harry, Malfoy, and Prof. Snape. I don't know how much they would charge though, since I would need seven heads due to bts having seven members. I have a lot of favorite kdrama characters, so my list would be endless. I want commission face sculpts of characters from Vincenzo, Mr. Sunshine (this is a kdrama. I think there is some American movie called mr. Sunshine?), Kill Me Heal Me, Hotel Del Luna, Bulgasal, Mouse, etc. I have too many characters I want in doll form.

 

@Mandagore I suspect the same! We can talk about objective likeness for forever and a day, but when it comes down to it, we will individually (subjectively) focus on different things about a person to fixate on! When I was young, I drew a portrait of Johnny Depp. It wasn't a very good portrait tbf, but one thing it was criticised for was not having a straight nose. Johnny Depp doesn't have a straight nose (or at least didn't in this particular PotC appearance. I haven't really kept up since). The person criticising it had "corrected" Depp's face in their head and found fault with the art they felt was objective but in this case was actually subjective. I think it's easy to see likeness as an irrefutable fact, but actually it's just as subject to people's own perceptions as any other facet of art!

 

I participated in a few DIM Minimee group orders back in the day, when those were around here on DoA. I can't say much about those, because I didn't deal with DIM directly myself, I was just part of a group of small people who got custom head sculps based on Japanese video game or anime characters. I did order one head sculpt from them directly, the person I was in contact with was their lead team member, but I unfortunately placed the order when they were still working with their Chinese sculpting team, which was even more sadly hit-or-miss, when it came to the likenesses or accuracy of the sculpts and proportions you requested.

I requested a smaller 60cm head, but my head turned out to be gigantic -- I again own a lot of other Minimee sculpts, so by comparison, my privately ordered DIM Minimee head is gigantic. The process itself was pleasant enough, there were no issues other than the sculpting team not doing the work I requested, despite the multiple angles submitted. There was probably a lot lost in translation, since DIM are Korean and I barely speak/write a single language, and of course their Chinese team was Chinese...lol! I heard/read their Korean sculpting team was a lot more accurate, and they even produced some Minimee type of 1:6 unlicensed stuff, I am not sure if they still do that now.
Here's the sculpt I got, with the process of mods along the way, the last image is how he looks now:


This is what he was supposed to look like -- I submitted a lot of other visual keys, along with a digital illustration that I no longer have on my hard-drive, which I thought made it pretty clear, what he was supposed to look like. Again, the Chinese sculpting team was not the most consistent, when it came to accurate likenesses based on any well-known characters (particularly the more realistic ones, based on fictional characters, IMHO).


This are all the other DIM Mnimee I own. In case anyone is curious. (:

 

There used to be so many of minimees around! It's kind of strange that they're not very common to see anymore. I highly prefer to see minimees made of people close to the commissioner or fictional characters. I'm not so sure I want a very expensive mini version of a celebrity in my house

@SKYWHYS I would love to see what your daughters minimee came out looking like! I rarely hear about minimees that aren't based on characters or celebrities. It would probably be better to link an album instead of posting them all here since the rules state that you can only post one image per post in discussion threads.

@Enzyme Your latest photos are so close to the reference! You definitely got your Sephiroth the rest of the way with your faceup and mods. I had no idea they had 2 teams, or that they had different quality results, but I never looked into it too much back then.

 

DIM did use a base head, and I think that was part of why the likeness was not always good (because head shape is part of someone's look). I ran a few group orders while they were still using the Chinese sculptors, and we were lucky enough to get what we called "the Good Sculptor". I was really happy with the likeness on those!

 

This is my Pan. He is the Dim "Pan's Labyrinth Pan". We definitely got "the Good Sculptor". Christie Johnson and MadamMauMau helped me put him together. He has Dollzone hands and Soom Shoshun hooves. He is on the old Soom body.

"Pan with a bit of Glam" — Christy Johnson

It took years to complete him. I use him as my Beast for "Beauty and the Beast". (Soom Saiph is Beauty.)

 

I remember reading your work back in the day. You wrote a two parter for Haute Doll, am I correct? You were curious how your Samantha heads would look with faceups from different artists.

Though I remember the DiM Minime group orders, I never participated in them. The closest I got was the happy coincidence of Narae circa 2007 resembling a video character I enjoy.

 

SKYWHYS, I also read the article and liked it. If you can dig out pictures of the heads, I would like to see them again.

 

I didn't deal with DiM directly, but bought my heads secondhand. I did not use them for the characters/people they were meant to be, but I owned Final Fantasy VII Advent Children Yazoo and Zack Fair, as well as Tokio Hotel Bill Kaulitz. Unfortunately, I don't have any photos, as they were all lost between a dead laptop and the Photobucket mess a few years back. I felt Zack and Yazoo were pretty close to source materials and didn't have much trouble finding bodies, but Bill Kaulitz was a totally different story. The head was huge, but the neck hole wasn't, so it mostly fit on necks that looked way too skinny for realism. We don't notice it because of the aesthetic, but the human neck is much thicker in proportion to the head than it is on most dolls. I always felt that was something that was often "off" of the DiM Minime heads. So many of the jawlines were wider than typical BJD jaws, and they just really needed a thicker neck to not look like bobbleheads.

 

SKYWHYS, I think that your project shows in a nutshell why we loved DiM Minimees so much and why we love the BJDs in general.

I used to love the Minimee orders and stalking the Marketplace for past orders that I loved and missed.

 

I had no idea DIM closed down. Then again, I guess I can understand why, the rise of realistic sculpts kind of killed the need for the Minimee service. Why waste time with a mass order of heads that just aren't accurate enough for the price or hassle when a well-done faceup on the right sculpt will get you a lot closer?

 

I highly doubt DiM closed down for this reason! They were making their original sculpts frequently until very recently, and sculpts like Benetia, Larina, Laia, etc, are still coveted now. I would even wager that most folk buying DiM in the mid to late 2010’s weren’t even aware of the earlier minimee sculpts, they were interested in DiM’s Happy line (the original MSD sculpts).

@SKYWHYS That sculpt is amazing! DiM did an awesome job!

 

SKYWHYS, echoing natterat: They really came out awesome! Your daughter makes a fabulous doll.

 

@SKYWHYS thanks for posting these! I do remember your article from back in the day, it's nice to see the pictures again.

I remember Denny at DIM saying that they were closing the service because it was too expensive on their end, and I suspect they were tired of the hassle of trying to meet people's sometimes unrealistic expectations.

 

I also remember Denny saying that they were closing the minimee service because it was too expensive to run. I had two heads I wanted to have made, but Denny said they couldn't accept more orders as they were owerworked as it was. By that time there were several other companies trying to offer similar services and some independent artists starting to release heads based on celebrities.

 

I commissioned when the service first opened two heads based on my own drawings. I was happy with the result from the pictures but on receiving the heads found they were unusable , as they were far too big compared to standard heads and bodies made to fit them. They were very similar in proportions to my sister eid Kamau maybe slightly bigger (these are big old heads made for 70+ muscular body). EID (oppose to skinny hound) size 70cm dolls did not exist at the time when my order was placed. When Iplehouse EID Akando (first of it's kind really) I purchased an Eid body for them, it was a huge undertaking as they needed to be modded to fit the eid neck hole (as others have said big heads but small neck holes) even with everything coming to together it didn't look right has the head was too young/femme looking for that big body!



Still stings a little now knowing how much I spent on them but we live and learn!

As an aside these early heads sculpted in Chinese studio were a different resin recipe on the normal DIM heads made in Korea and the white resin I found yellowed much faster!

 

I got a Michael Jackson minimee from Denny/DIM before Michael passed away in 2009 ..I love DIM sculpts

mj by crybabymommie, on Flickr

 

I was one of those who jumped on many the mnm GOs, it was definitely a time of plenty for them, some filled too quickly so missed out. As mentioned before some heads were poorly sculpted, lacked due care when cast/finished. I have a couple heads where I need to sand and refine wonky and/rough eyes. I remember one GO (which I wasn't in thankfully) the head was miscast and one side drooped. I felt so sorry for that GO. And one GO I was in we paid 3 times to get the sculpt tweaked as the sculptor just wasn't attempting to follow the source photos.

Looking back I think I was enamoured with sculpts which had more realistical proportioned features as I was getting tired of tiny noses or super thin nose bridges which were prevalent everywhere. Unfortunately I didn't have the faceup skills for these heads and there weren't any suitable bodies (or a choice of at least) for the heads.

Think the only sculpt I got due to the source material was Adam Ant tbh. The rest was pure aesthetics as you couldn't find them anywhere else (at the time).

Some of photos of mine to hand.

Kamijo, a massive head which (just fits) the Grand Senior Delf body v1.


My Hyde who is on a 68cm Loongsoul body.


And Miyavi and Kyo on the old V1 Dollstown 15 yo body... these bodies at the time were bought specifically for my minimee heads which worked for a few of them (just).


And finally, I bought a practice head which turned out to be a heavily modded Kristen Stewart mnm head which was unrecognisable at the time of purchase, this is with majority of the mods removed. It no longer looks like this as I have added mods of my own haha

 

Wow. I never had a problem working with Denny with my GOs. I would regularly order from him like very month or three for a GO. Or hop into a GO. Then I had to take a long break from the hobby due to family drama. UGH.
I think the only GO I had a problem with was the Resident Evil 4 Leon. The eyes man, the eyes. Everyone had a different expectations of his eyes and at the end it was tiny and you had to mod his eyes open. Other than that I think the best GOs I was in and/or had hosted was the Alucard from Hellsing and FFVII Reno with his tongue out. The artist I swear placed more time and energy for those Minimees, but I think because both of the characters were different with their smiles.
Once I came back into the hobby after the drama, DiM was closing it's doors for good and they didn't have their Minimee service anymore. I was sad to see them go but I swear that's the nature of the BJD hobby nowadays, companies come and go.

 

There's a website selling old Haute Doll issues, and i'd like to get the ones with the DiM Minimee articles. Does anyone remember what issues those were in?

 

My friend ran the group order for the first version of Allison Harvard. AH had been on America’s Top Model, but before that her pictures from (livejournal?) got her the nickname Creepy-chan.

The first version of the head was fantastic, it looked so much like her! Apparently Allison herself found out about the order after it was filled up and wanted a head. Denny made a special exception and created an eleventh for her! From what I heard, she just kept it as a floating head lol.

I ran the group order for version 2.0 of Allison, and I remember it filled up really fast. A lot of others in the order seemed to like how it turned out, but in person the head was huge and I didn’t like it anywhere near as much as the first.

At some point, my friend who ran the first GO decided to sell her AH and she asked me first if I wanted it. That was an easy accept. I still have it but she’s just a floating head currently as the body she had no longer matches. The white body turned yellow-ish while the head is definitely a beauty green now. Eventually I will get around to replacing the body but I have enough doll projects right now that working on her is kind of on the back burner. Allison Harvard 1.0 is definitely one of my favourite doll sculpts out there and for sure my favourite Minimee.

(of course the v2.0 head that I don’t like as much doesn’t look like it’s changed colour in the least)