Hello everyone, I recently just discovered BJD, yes I must have been living under a rock lol, but I am so fascinated with what you can do. I do have a couple of questions and please forgive me if I sound dumb, but I literally just started doing research on creating a BJD from scratch, plus I am also new to this site and will be doing a lot of reading posts tonight Anyways, here are my questions: 1. What is the best clay to use to start off? Can you use paper clay? 2. How hard is it to create a doll from scratch? I found some YouTube videos and it didn't look extremely hard but I was wondering why not create your doll from scratch as opposed to purchasing the bodies etc? 3. If I wanted to pursue making BJD as a business/seller and I wanted to get really serious doing this, is it better to learn to create from scratch or does it matter if the body/parts are purchased then built upon? I guess what I am asking is if I was to purchase the parts and adding to it,can you eventually sell it or claim as your own? 4. Can anyone recommend a good book for beginners or a website with some good tutorials? I have found some, but it doesn't really break down each step and how it's made.... Example it will show you how to create a head but then the body is already made and I just want to see how everything comes together. I have more questions but I want to look around the forum first to see if there have been answered. I really am excited and I thank you in advance for kindly answering my questions. Jen
1) Yes, people definitely use paper clay. Premiere and La Doll are the two that I hear about most often. Polymer clay (i.e., Super Sculpey) is another option, as is sculpting wax if you're going to cast. 2) Very. But it's worth it... if you want to create a doll from scratch. If you just want a doll, you're probably better off buying a doll. 3) Nope. It isn't yours, you can't claim it as yours, no matter how much you've changed it. If you want to go into the doll-making business, you've got to make your own dolls -- although you could make and sell heads that fit other company's bodies, as long as the heads are your own original work. 4) There's a sticky at the top of this forum that's probably worth reading through. But honestly, I'm not sure if there is a single step-by-step tutorial. You'll probably just have to jump in and figure some things out as you go. Don't worry, it'll be fun -- when it isn't frustrating.
Many Japanese artists use La Doll or Premiere. The Yoshida Style book, and the Aimi-Doll online tutorial, are both pretty good tutorials on making a complete doll from paperclay. The links are in the sticky Morgan refers to. Making a doll from scratch is time-consuming, and probably just as expensive as buying a ready-made body. But if you're interested in making an original creation, it's very satisfying to do it yourself. You can't claim a modified body as your own work. However, it's helpful to own a BJD when you're trying to make one-- really a big help when figuring out the jointing as so on.
Welcome to The Joint, bfwdesigns24. You may be interested in these links to BJD-making tutorials? http://www.denofangels.com/joints/s...oll-Tutorial-Links-(checked-links-2012-01-23) As far as your questions go....... A ball-jointed doll is a multi-media figurative sculpture. People have been making beautiful figurative sculpture for many centuries. You would probably be better served if you studied figurative sculpture rather than doll-making? Doll-making includes cloth-bodied soft-sculpture, through static figurative statuettes, to poseable dolls. Poseable dolls are any dolls that are articulated? Articulated dolls are not necessarily ball-and-socket dolls that are tensioned with elastic. Most dolls that are "play dolls" are made of vinyl and have hinged joints. Traditional sculpture materials include "water clay" as well as "oil-clay". The advantage of these sculpting materials is that they are reusable. Usually, a reusable sculpture material is soft, and must be transitioned to an intermediate material, such as plaster or carving wax. One Of A Kind (OOAK) dolls are made of a material that either hardens in the air (air-dry clay), can be baked to harden (polymer clays), or harden by chemical reaction (epoxy clays). Most of those material are not reusable. Many of the clays used for OOAK dolls may be used as patterns to make molds, for making dolls in materials such as porcelain or resin. Welcome to the world of Multi-media figurative sculpture !!! Have Fun !!!
