New Things Within The Hobby

One thing I love about the fact that this doll type has been around for a while now is that apart from the increase in variety in available dolls, there is also a greater variety in collectors!

When I started out literally everyone was new to polyurethane dolls, simply because it was a very new thing all around.
Advice and information was sparse and cautious, often rather two dimensional, since not a lot of experimentation had been done yet.
But now we have collectors with a very broad experience pool. People in different places in their lives, who have experienced trends, fluctuations in their own interest curve and a huge variety of interactions with people both within and outside of the hobby.
Now we have collectors coming in who grew up admiring these dolls from afar, collectors who have experienced life changing events that has had an impact on their hobby, people who have come into the hobby from all sorts of directions and reasons.
And every single on of them bring knowledge and experience from other things with them, further enriching what is already one of the most diverse doll communities I've ever experienced.

I realize this is more of a gradual thing, rather than a recent change, but it is something that only time can create.

 

a greater variety of facial features, particularly ear and nose shapes, has been very welcome as i am not fond of the more standard bjd face. also, as you say, independent artist creativity is wonderful to see more of and allows more potential for hybrids.

 

I love all the new dolls with unusual expressions. I also like seeing translucent resin more often in fantasy dolls!

 

I've hardly ever used this option but companies offering to cast in certain "common" colours (mia white+pink etc) has opened hybrid options a lot. Resin matching is always a pain so to have something matching to at least compare to can be so helpful!

 

I've noticed more hobbyists willing to mod their dolls. Eye shapes, eye openings, mouth mods, add-on tails, wings, ears, even *naughty bits*

 

I've really liked seeing more indie artists creating chubby bodies! It's also nice as someone that likes the 1/4 scale, but prefers mature sculpts for so many artists to release more mature sculpts at the 1/4 scale in recent times.

 

I agree with the rise of independent artists, over half of my dolls are made by independent artists and its been great to see a change in how bodies and faces are sculpted. When I first joined this community, a lot of dolls looked the same (literally copy and paste), and you weren’t finding dolls with chubbier bodies, larger noses and ears, gap teeth; features that are so human/common. I see artists making dolls with bodies that look like mine and I never thought that I’d ever see this kind of diversity within the community. Huzzah to artists who aren’t afraid to make dolls outside of the beauty standard!!!

 

More muscle girls! Miracledoll has 2, impldoll has 2 (though one of them isn’t that muscular), SartoriaJ did one that’s slightly muscular. Resinsoul is making muscle girl bodies on demand, so there’s even a “budget” option! Companies are starting to realize that people really will buy buff girls, and that’s so exciting. My favourite of the whole group is the Devotiondoll Vigorous 75f because she’s super tall, and her arms and quads remind me so much of my girlfriend’s muscles that I smile every time I look at her. Her height, relative to her 65cm girlfriend is also pretty accurate to our height difference, with her being 6’ and me being 5’3 on a good day.

Also fantasy colours seem to be taking off. You can get grey almost anywhere these days, but Supia has blue, and a very purplish grey-brown, Do Dolls Dream is always doing fantasy colours, Peakswoods is thriving and dropped Poison red, which is gorgeous, fairyland did grey and blue and a very naturally toned red. Dream Valley is doing purple sometimes now. It’s amazing the colours that are available. (And, as ever, a shoutout to Resinsoul, who’ve been doing fantasy colours all along).

Another smaller thing is that I’m seeing a little bit of gender diversity in dolls. Ethereal Life BJD is trans-owned, and only makes transfemme dolls (which, if they expand into 1/3, I will order just so many of them, you don’t even know!). Abidoll has a body that can have boobs or a flat chest, and has a sculpted vulva, and penises that magnet over it—you can make that doll any gender, trans or cis, and that’s incredibly cool. Telesthesia was there first—their 68cm Tao Chen sculpt has been around longer than I can even recall, but she’s not the only option if you want a trans girl in your crew anymore!

Honourable mention here goes to Reese from Twigling, whose A-bust makes a really spectacular androgynous silhouette, the Switch Labyrinth body, the luts delf muse body, the Prime frame boy and girl that are just a chest piece different, and the redolent accord ange and femme that are again, just different in the chest—these intentionally androgynous bodies that blur the lines between genders are also very excellent to see, especially from big established companies like luts and Switch.

Also fantasy parts are coming back! Soom seems to have gotten out of them, which is a shame, because their supergems were THE fantasy bodies for awhile, but Loongsoul still does them, and Dollzone, Dream Valley and Coral Reef have gotten into them in a big way! Dollzone blew my mind with Light’s wings (they’re so big they ship separately in a box that barely fit my trunk!) and White Snake, and DV has had so many incredible 1/4 releases this year that I almost wish I got into that scale. Coral reef does their super cool bug girls, and deep down I’m always hoping for a 1/3 spider lady even though she’s be ginormous. Fairyland has even been releasing fairyline dolls every now and again with cool fantasy parts.

 

Variations in body shapes across all genders and sizes of dolls is wonderful. They used to kind of all look the same with some minor differences. Now you can find so much variety! Also, mature tinies are a wonderful addition to options to choose from. I am running out of space and mature tinies are so much easier to store, display, and travel with.

 

This! I love seeing more one of a kind dolls, weird hybrids, and people just overall getting super wacky with it. It seems like there’s also been an influx of weird/horror/unusual fantasy type dolls and I am LIVING for it.
Dragons also seem to be coming back into popularity, although that may have just been because of the year of the dragon. That and more unique non humanoid dolls are getting me very excited.

 

STYLISTIC VARIATION! I'm into anime dolls in particular, and it's SO nice to have anime dolls with all kinds of proportions. Chubby anime dolls! 1/6 anime dolls with 1/3 size heads! Anime dolls with big cartoony hands and feet!

I generally love very stylized dolls, and I definitely think that compared to when I joined the hobby there has been a much wider variety of styles to choose from.

On a more specific level... those little notches in the wrists that hold the s hooks while you change hands. Life changing!

 

This is so good to know! I'm trying not to buy any more dolls right now, but I was trying to figure out if it would be viable to make a trans girl doll the other day for far-future plans, so yay!

 

I’m so glad I got to share these companies with you! I will also say, as someone who does it surprisingly regularly, it’s staggeringly easy to mod boobs onto bodies that aren’t sculpted with them, if none of the existing bodies end up striking your fancy! I’ve fully lost track of how many times I’ve done it (4? I think?)

 

I see there are more varieties of bodies these days. Even Smart Doll released a plump body. And there are also more fantasy or sci-fi dolls. I really like the idea of Ringdoll's chrome body parts. However the chrome resin may be more fragile.

 

Oh, also very good to know! I've got some other mods I will want to do first, but I'll keep this in mind too.

 

The rise of independent artists from all over the world is cool to see. And the number of aesthetics out there these days- from super realistic to semi-stylized, to fully anime-like stylized. And more companies and artist offering fantasy resin tones at least for certain pre-orders.