Shelling Characters Shelling a group of Gundam characters?

When I hear mature look, luminous eyes, and peaceful smile, my mind goes straight to Angell Studio, I think there are a few of their 60cm-class girls who would fit the bill, they have tan skins regularly available and many mature guy dolls of various makers look good next to them

 

There are a number of makers who do anime-style sculpts, which is also an option if you can find an artist willing to recreate the original anime faces for them, as the defaults probably won't match up. Two of my favourites are Aimerai and SQ-Lab, which you can find on Sadol. There are also a few who do semi-realistic anime sculpts, such as Bonbon Galaxy (Ivar) and RaMcube (004 has always reminded me of Duo Maxwell, but 003 could work for the young Char Aznable.) The only problem is anime guy sculpts tend to be very Shonen-coded and thus don't have the more mature, muscular bodies that Char has, but if you're not too worried about what the body looks like beneath the clothes, it's definitely an option.

In terms of more realistic, the things you want to pick out from each character are what features are the most important to you - hair and eye colour can be changed instantly with a new wig or eyes, so look at the shape of the eyes, the nose, the overall expression. If Char is smirking to you, try and find a sculpt that's got a more neutral expression and it can be painted to smirk, if you can't find one that's actually smirking (such as Withdoll Ian or Fairyland Alan Sarang A).

In terms of scale, taking the character's age into account can help with determining scale, as if you intend to get multiple characters in your collection, their height relative to each other might be a factor. If you consider 1/3 scale to be 'adult', then 1/4 would be 'teen' and 1/6 would be 'child'. Lalah being a more mature teen might translate better as the same scale as Char, as 1/3 and 1/4 girls tend to be slightly shorter and smaller than boys. 1/6 tends to be the same height regardless of body gender, as these are often childlike sculpts.

 

Just a heads up with images - you will want to copy the direct link to the photo (usually ends with .jpg) so they show up on the forum. In Flickr and some other hosts, you can also just copy the BBcode they offer


As for the dolls - if you're interested in 1/4, there are plenty of mature and realistic dolls available in this size these days! Ring doll, Telesthesia&Dragon and Loongsoul all offer 1/4 boys that look similar to their bigger dolls for instance. The only problem might be that their heads are sort of small and might be hard to find a female counterpart to it's also a bit harder to sew detailed outfits for 1/4 than 1/3 but that doesn't mean it's mega hard, just slightly more fiddly. Another company that popped into my head is Huajing Doll as they offer tan, have mature-ish girls and boys who will look good together and have bigger eyes without being super anime style not way too realistic. There's also Iplehouse (FID) and SartoriaJ that have a more realistic thing going on.

 

Another Gundam fan?
I love the idea, I was thinking a little about shelling a CCA Amuro myself in the future!

If you're maybe thinking about having them both be 1/4th scale and more realistic-ish sculpt-wise, I was thinking companies like Iplehouse, Granado and Luts. I'd love to see what you cone up with!

 

Seconding the Iplehouse FID line. They are a little taller than typical 1/4 size (but not by much) and look much more mature than their regular 1/4 dolls (JID). They also have this guy who could easily be painted in a way to have a smirk.

Unfortunately I don't know enough about Gundam to give any specific sculpt recs for the other character, but Iplehouse does have a number of tan and darker skin tones as well.