How long does it take for you to find the perfect shell?

I only did this once for a doll that's on the way now. I actually just chose the best fit I could find when I wanted to buy a new doll. Best shape of the face was what I went for. I chose within a week. Then again I think the head was perfect. XD

 

I have some character that was perfect from the start, that I don't ever think about reshelling. I also have characters that I reshell at least 3 times before I satisfied with the doll XD;;; I do have a character that have same - head but style/body/face up are changing over times too. It's hard to give a definite answer on how this is for me, I think being impulsive got to do with a lot of the changes that's happening. XD

 

I have several characters that were created based on my existing dolls that I've gone back and forth about choosing the right shell for them. Rourke's sister is proving a bit difficult for me. Where as her best friend has been decided for over a year now. I've had the characters for a couple years now.

 

For my first doll, I considered maybe 4-5 different sculpts (over the course of like 6 months) before choosing. I'm waiting on him, so I don't know if he'll really be what I have in mind - I don't think I'll need to re-shell him, tho.
As for future dolls, I've actually got a rough idea of which sculpts suit their characters, but I'm pretty sure others are going to need some re-shelling before I think they really match their character, or at least it'll take me a long while to find to find the perfect sculpt.

 

It depends, for one character it took months, and even then I was not 100% sure, it looked like my character but a little too childish, so I actually ended up buying a second head (that had not been released when I first ordered the doll) to use as a more mature version of her, while keeping the one I initially went for as a younger version, but if I waited a little longer I would have just gone for the more mature version.
For another character it only took me a few days to find a sculpt that just happened to be perfect for him, and now I've just been saving up to buy him...

Personally I wouldn't settle for something that doesn't feel exactly right, especially since I don't like the idea of reshelling as I also get attached to the dolls/sculpts, not just the characters... So if a sculpt seems close but not perfect, I learned from my previous "mistake" and now I would rather wait.

 

That depends a lot. Usually I don't have the specific physical features down, but I know who the character is and why it acts like it does. So when I am looking for a head I look for heads that can match the feelings I get from the character. Sometimes it takes just a few days to find it and other times I've searched for years.
It took me years to find the dolls to be my gods and then even longer to buy the heads because they were limited.

 

When I first laid eyes on, say, Doll Chateau Zenobia, she made a character in my mind. No other doll could ever be that character. I knew instantly. Some other characters (Jo, Frost, Rina) have all been respelled once or twice, when I just realized their original shell didn’t work. My new rule is to not buy unless it’s perfect, even if perfect doesn’t exist yet..

 

It really depends. I figured out my last two right away, but I really have a lot easier time shelling boys. I have a girl character I have been trying to shell for about seven years now and have never found a doll that reminds me of her to date.

 

The vast majority of my collection I "got right" the first time. But I have one stubborn straggler that took over 12 years to finally "stick" to a sculpt. And I'm only...97% sure its the right sculpt this time...

 

And it's not just faces that give people trouble. My boy Eli was set for his head right from the start. But then he went through four different bodies in three years before finally finding perfection for his character. The problem was his body hadn't existed for those previous three years. But when I saw the DollZone B60-005, I knew that was exactly what he needed.

 

I have had some where I chose the doll before I even fully finished writing the character so the character ended up being written around the doll.

Other times, it has taken me anywhere from a couple of weeks to months to even years! And sometimes I do buy the best option available, but reshell later if something more fitting comes along. For example, Hailey was first shelled as a Mystic Kids Miri, and at the time, it was perfect for her. She was 14 and still looked young. But as she grew up, got married, planned to be a mother, she needed a more mature sculpt, and I ended up reshelling her as a Loongsoul Michelle.

 

With a lot of them it goes pretty quickly for me. If I am looking for a sibling or other family member that is going to show up, then I tend to look in the same company, so this limits where I am looking. Recently though I needed a father for a Dollzone SD boy, and from what I can tell Dollzone stopped their 70cm+ line. I had to search outside the main character dolls company. I settled on Loong Soul for the dolls father, and the dolls cousins will be coming from Loong Soul now.

I do tend to have the character in mind first most of the time. Sometimes a part of the script is written before I order the doll, but I try to find the doll first before I write. However when looking for personality of a future character I make a list of what I want to see in the character and look for something that shines through in a doll to show me that what I am looking for is there. Most of the time I do find a doll fairly quickly to suit what I am looking for.

Sometimes it can take awhile. I will have a character churning in the back of my head, I guess there is usually a few characters doing that. But then it feels as if the character is never going to make it out of my head, because somehow none of the dolls that I have looked at seem to suit what I am envisioning and no faceup is going to change that, and then out of the blue I might see someone else's doll, or a doll being sold, and then I am like 'Oh! There you are! It took you long enough!' It's usually because I didn't look at the right company for the dolls, but some of them to take awhile to find the right doll for.

 

I have learned to be very patient with myself when I’m looking to shell a specific character…to take my time with it, and just keep that character in the back of my mind for however long it takes. My characters for my BJD fantasy world are extremely important to me, and it comes down to almost an “instant recognition” when I finally stumble upon them…an “Oh hello, there you are” response. Basically, I’ll know them when I see them. Some choices were able to be made very quickly, within a few days. But some took much, much longer to find. My latest preorder was for a character that took me about 5 years (and two false starts) to find. Another character simply needed a size upgrade, but took me 8 years to find. And one of my main characters took me an entire decade to find the perfect sculpt for him!

 

How long has it taken you to find the perfect shell for a character? It hugely depends on the type of character you're looking to shell (fantasy vs human, I mean). Overall, finding a certain sculpt to shell a certain character you have in your mind will be challenging and can take from days to years depending on what you're looking for and what's available. Fantasy attributes are fairly common nowadays in doll form (centaurs, vampires, animal-related, etc.) but that wasn't the case in the past.

Or is it a never ending process of "compromising/settling" and reshelling? I think it's nearly impossible to find the 'perfect' sculpt for that idea in your head and you'll always have to compromise even if you're willing to do hybrids and such. And sometimes you think a sculpt will do nicely and when it comes home it can happen that it doesn't fit the way you thought it would (for examplem it's features are too mature/childlike in comparison to other dolls that are supposed to be in the same story as that doll) and you have to sell and find a new option and that's not bad.

 

Oh, it takes forever. When I have a clear idea of how I want the character to look it my mind, it makes it both easier and harder. Mostly harder, unfortunately. Buuut, it pays off when you find the perfect doll to shell! Still gotta find the right sculpt for one of my characters though…

 

There’s no in between. Either it’s really fast or pretty much never. Of course sometimes I find it quickly and the doll is hard to get, but that’s another matter.

I don’t even have full fleshed out characters in mind either, instead I’ll have concepts or a vibe I want in a doll. Feels like it shouldn’t be difficult, but sometimes it is.

 

A lot of my dolls happened because I saw a sculpt and immediately thought - "oh, that'd be great for so-and-so!" or "I love it, do I have a character I can use it for?" rather than actively hunting for something. Which didn't stop me from reshelling a couple of them years later when even better sculpts became available. But for the others, it's usually taken months if not years of hunting. Currently, I'm on the lookout for a sculpt that has to work well with my Migidoll Ryu (Petrel) to be his sort-of-girlfriend (Seriema), and I've been looking on and off for several years with no luck. I can't say I'm too upset about the excuse to keep looking at dolls, though!

 

How long has it taken you to find the perfect shell for a character?
I take the time to do some research and decision making before committing. I'll see a sculpt that I think might work for a particular character, and then I'll look for more pictures on IG and Flickr and start doing rough mockups in Photoshop with the skintone/wig/eye colors I had in mind to see if it might actually work.

If I decide it does, it gets added to my 'To Buy' list. Occasionally, I will revisit the list and my mockups to make sure that I'm satisfied with those chosen sculpts. Sometimes I'm not, and I'll spend some more time with researching photos of sculpts and doing more rough mockups.

Other times, there have been limited releases that I thought might work well and I had to speed up my decision making. I ordered a limited SartoriaJ doll in 2023 to be one of my characters and then I realized that she works better as the character's mother (whose lore I was exploring at the time). So she ended up being a different character all together and I've been waffling ever since on what sculpt would work for the character I was trying to shell in the first place lol. I think I've made a decision, but I'll revisit my notes/mockups again when I feel like it's the right time to shell the character.

Or is it a never ending process of "compromising/settling" and reshelling?
I try my best to not compromise/settle, because I'm awful at moving along the things that don't work. I'm drowining in piles of stuff that Need to Go, lol. But I have ended up reshelling a few dolls. I have a doll that I got about a year before I went on hiatus from the hobby and never got a faceup for. When I returned 5 years later, I found that one of my favorite companies had released a sculpt that would work better for the character. So the current shell has been boxed up and moved near the 'Move Along' pile, and the new shell has been added to my 'To Buy' list.

When I first came back to the hobby after hiatus, I impulse-bought a doll as a way to reacquaint myself with the hobby. It was a bad idea, as the doll wasn't even one from my 'To Buy' list, it was just a sculpt that I thought was really cute. I thought it could work as a new OC that I had and tried to force the character on it. It didn't work. I love the doll/sculpt, but she just doesn't fit in with the other dolls I have in her size range and I couldn't NOT find any eyes that I liked that would work for the character. So I set the doll aside and worked more with the character to develop her further, and I recently decided on a different sculpt for her that fits in with the rest of my dolls. The impulse doll will be boxed up and put next to the 'Move Along' pile, unfortunately.

 

Well 2018 me, I can safely say that’s not what we do anymore!

it took me from 2020-2024 to she’ll Aura, and she holds the record for most ever re-shells in the squad.

Aura, as a character, has been reshelled so many times. (Feeple60 lacrima, amadiz/dd hybrid, elfdoll Lydia, supia Tabitha, supia Juah, supia heeji, little rebel Jelle, ddd charlotta and now, finally has found what I hope is her permanent shell as MDR Zuri. I didn’t even know what colour I wanted her resin to be (ns or tan). Zuri, I’m pretty sure is permanent, because she’s the exact twin of her sister’s sculpt, and her resin matches her mom’s pretty perfectly.

I reshell all the time, so much so that I give people whiplash. I have a few dolls that are definitely locked in: Amor, Kieran, Aura, Lilith, Coris, Satan’s head for sure. But most of my dolls are constantly at risk of getting re-shelled, or re-bodied, or their characters changed.

 

When I first got into the hobby, I tried to shell characters and found out the hard (expensive!) way that dolls can straight up refuse the plans you have for them.

No, this doll won't wear the wig you bought for them – nothing but the first wig you put on them looks right.
No, this doll refuses to be cute. Get all those frills and ruffles out of here!
This head looks perfect for a character? Maybe in photos, but not in person.
This head is also perfect for a character, but looks wrong with all the other dolls? Its days are numbered.

I've learned I can approach a doll sculpt with a concept, but have to work with the doll, and while I handle it, the character comes through in ways I might not have considered. For example, I have 3 heads on Volks SD17 bodies, and each body handles differently in a way that affects the characters, even if the bodies are theoretically identical.

I have a few ideas for doll characters, but am waiting to come across the right head/body/hybrid combo to start exploring the idea instead of making my previous shelling mistakes

 

This is so, so true! Now, as I remarked on page 1 of this thread, I’m one of those people who will let the process of shelling a character take as long as it takes (up to an entire decade in one specific case.) And this has worked out beautifully for my large-ish collection lo these many years. But…I once brought home a rare head to be my perfect androgynous character, which I’d been planning on for years. I found him the perfect matching body, and was so excited to get started building him the excitingly creative “new romantics” wardrobe of my dreams. I carefully spread out the stunning fabric, laid out the pattern pieces, and I remember walking around that table with scissors in my hand for half an hour…but I couldn’t get myself to make a single cut! That’s how much this doll was rejecting this character. So he happily became a forest and animal loving (very male) mori boy instead…with an appropriate, quickly and easily made naturalistic mori boy wardrobe. No matter how careful you are with shelling, sometimes these dolls will just laugh in your face and insist on going their own way.

 

It’s hit or miss for me lately, but I had amazing luck with my Leon (he’s non-resin). I saw his potential, got him home and found a decent wig and beautiful eyes, and he’s sitting in front of me all these years later still bowling me over with how fine he looks.

Other times, I get a doll in, get it painted, and… the spark dies. I got lucky with Leon, but he’s wasted here. I need to show him more love for how good he’s been.

 

Oh dear. Like, for a while, I went hardcore into only purchasing dolls or saving up to purchase dolls to fit characters I had in mind for my stories. But at some point, the waiting game of finding the ideal representation of my character started to take too long or I was never satisfied even if I did encounter the dolls I thought would fit my characters. And like what others have said, it gets expensive. Getting the doll, making sure the face-up is just right, getting the right eyes, the right wig, the right clothes, the right shoes, the right accessories. And that's just for one doll!

I finally ended up shifting my mindset in the hobby of just purchasing dolls I liked as I noticed waiting to find dolls that fit my characters also interfered with my creative writing process. Like, when I was finding dolls to fit characters or thought I found a potential shell doll for my characters, the creativity flowed. But then when I got disappointed because the IRL dolls did not meet my expectations or realizing the ideal shell was an inaccessible Grail doll, it stagnated by creativity and even made me not want to write anymore. And same with outfits and accessories. If I had come up with a storyline around a dolly outfit that inspired me (let's say a particularly hard to find Victorian or Steampunk or Gothic LE outfit), but that outfit was no longer available, I just lost my creative inspiration as the image I had was around that particular outfit.

My friend (who was also into the hobby) and I would make backstories for our dolls and everything which helped with making some fun stories (both written and photostories). But when she started selling her dolls and her dolls' clothing and accessories, it kind of killed off key characters in my stories as I no longer had access to those shells to help maintain my inspiration. It's funny how that ended up happening, but it really affected me in my creativity and they weren't even my dolls to begin with.

So I guess it is a never ending process. Especially when there is always going to be a new doll or a new outfit that might inspire you or be the better shell for your character. It will always happen. Hahaha.