Why are you into BJDs?

For me, it’s a way to bring my own fantasies to life. I love creating elaborate characters...finding the perfect doll, doing their face-ups, creating their costumes, building their displays, etc. It’s like getting to create a personal fantasy world I can immerse myself in. My dolls are spread throughout my home, placed here and there in the elaborate displays I’ve created, so I can see them at all times. It’s a truly lovely way to live.

 

I've known about and liked them since middle school. Absolutely no idea how I found out about them but I've had an affinity for them for as long as I can remember.

 

I've always liked dolls in general, my grandmother used to make her own porcelain dolls and I was entranced by every stage of it. From painting the faces to sewing the clothes. While I don't know how deep into customization I'll go, it's one of the things I like most about dolls. And BJDs really seem like the height of doll customization for me. I also really enjoy character creation and depicting those characters in different settings. A solid, physical representation as a lot of appeal to me.

Also I just really like cute/pretty things, and welcome more of that into my life.

 

Ive always liked collecting and creating little cozy spaces, so a bjd is something i can do that with while turning her into my story protagonist. I hope to start sewing with different patterns once stores open up again.

 

Playing with doll is kind of meditation. When I just look on them or touch them I feel that my mind get clear from any bad thought I have in the moment.
When it’s stressful situation, but I’m far from them, usually I look at their pictures and get calm very fast. So I can say it’s kinda therapy from anxiousness for me.
I wanna get more deeply into the craft. But last time no inspiration unfortunately

 

I discovered bjds when I was a teenager (Andreja faceup stories) and I always loved how aesthetically beautiful (and modicable they are.) At the time I discovered these dolls were handmade by artists my interest in them increased.
I also really like to see pictures of these dolls. I find them beautiful and sometimes considerable really relaxing, haha.

 

My obsession started back when I was 17. There was a thread on Gaia about bjd and I was intrigued. People were sharing pictures of there dolls and what company’s they got them from. So every giftable holiday I would go on Luts’s website and make a wishlist. My parents never gave in. My obsession grew and grew. I lived in Okinawa japan for 7 months and I tried to find a shop (they did not have one) so when I moved back to America my obsession became overwhelming. I started with barbies that had moveable joints. I collected a few of those. Them this one brand of doll came out where you could switch around the wig. Got like 4 of those. Then monster highs came out and I got a ton of those. My husband would tell me every birthday he would get me a bjd but something always broke that we would need to put our money towards. Finally for my 30th birthday my best friends mom got me Ashi, a resinsoul yaoi. And from there my collection has exploded

 

Because they are beautiful and you can make them into anything you want.

 

Artistic reasons! BJD's are perfect if you are into photography and handicrafts. There is so much you could do with your doll just to make it "perfect"; faceup, body blush, sueding, sewing clothes, making wigs, making props, accessories, and furniture, thinking about the storyline before the photoshoot, taking pictures, then the photo editing... And the things I cannot do myself (like faceup), I can pay for some other artist to do. I got interested in this hobby mainly because the dolls are so pretty, and I felt that this is a good way to express myself.

 

I saw a picture on deviantart and thought it was so pretty and I was like 'when I have a job and money I'm gonna get one' took awhile but I did.

 

Because they are pretty was my immediate answer to this question.

 

I love dolls. But at the end the crafting side of the hobby is win me over. I am a veeery slow creator, take my time with everything. I like to do face up, making wigs. (Sloppy, but my work). I like sewing too.

 

I like that their so customizable and poseable. I love being able to sew for them and change their hair up and they also photograph really well.

 

If I recall, I bought my first BJD because I wanted to make crocheted pullovers that didn't take years to finish. The crafting aspect is very important to me. It makes my dolls who they are and gives hints of what they can become. This way, I learn new things and improve in others.
I enjoy the naming, the character building and the story telling as well, though the sculpts I have are quite tame and not particularly demanding.
All of my dolls have different shapes and are of different sizes. It makes this hobby even more interesting and I can investigate each size's advantages. This is opening windows onto other hobbies like building miniature dollhouses or doll rooms, shoemaking, toy furniture repairs, etc.
I never thought I would enjoy doing face ups, but I do. I wish I could do them during the dampness of this winter. The different sculpts are a joy, because they are quite dissimilar and demand a personal approach. In fact, shoemaking is probably 'ma bête noire' at the moment.
Most of the time, my BJDs wear things I make for them. This reminds me that I can do things very well when I rarely expect to be good at them, and this, just by being patient and taking my time. And when I feel I can do better and that my dolls deserve better, I look into it and improve.
I enjoy the idea that my BJDs are personal to me and that their 'stories' can be investigated at leisure whether by sewing, doing face ups, creating props, dreaming of the next best 'creation' that suits a particular doll...
The good thing is that they can be left for weeks without needing any care, and, at the same time, they provide a basic form of one-sided relationship which is great when life becomes bleak and trying. Moreover, most of them have an heft that is agreeable and this often stops me being anxious.
It is very difficult to have a bad relationship with a BJD .

 

I love how they can be anything you want. I used to roleplay by myself a lot as a kid and then in online chats when I was in middle school, and BJDs have been the perfect way to bring my OCs to life~ actually I first found out about them by looking for a new profile picture. I thought the doll was a real person and when I realized she wasn't, I was in awe at how real she looked and just knew I needed one in my life.
I like to live vicariously through them. I feel like I've wasted my life/youth and have never been happy with my appearance or who I am, but my dolls are beautiful and they can be whoever I want them to be! They make me really happy.~

 

Because of my idol Mana-sama who is in my profile picture. He's in his 50s now but I've been a fan of him and his previous and current Visual Kei bands since mid 2000. I first became a fan of him, then I visited a girl's MySpace profile and saw she had dressed up her dolls in Gothic Lolita style, something he is well known to be dressed in as well. That was the first time I found out about BJDs and I wanted a Mana doll of my own.

Eventually I were lucky to find not just one, but two Mana-sama MNMs on the MP. My dream came true about owning a doll of my idol

 

I can't draw that well right now, unfortunately. However, having something there to live out the picture I see in my head is AMAZING! To snap that picture is so satisfying and helpful to my wellbeing. So I love having my lovely dolls to help me bring the images in my head to life even better and more realistically than I could ever think of♡

 

The quality, mainly. It can feel kind of silly to make a fancy outfit for one of my vinyl play dolls, because they're very much "child's plaything" quality. But a BJD just screams "adult collectible," and something about that makes me feel more confident about attempting fancier, more elegant clothing (or at least the fanciest I can do at tiny scale).

Plus, they're so customizable! Got an extra head or body lying around? Make a Frankendoll--the parts don't even need to be from the same company. Want it to look like your OC? Paint it, sculpt it, give it piercings. Change that wig (which is SO much faster and easier than rerooting a vinyl doll!). Change out the eyes. Whatever. It really feels like your doll is more special than if you bought the exact same mass-produced doll that millions of other people have.

 

I like that I can make my characters "come to life" so to speak. That being said, the great irony of it all is that I always had told my friends I would never want to have dolls of my characters (back when I was collecting MH)- and now here I am... investing hundreds of dollars on dolls that represent my characters RIP haha

 

I've always liked dolls, writing, and taking pictures. I love that I can write stories and bring them to life with the photos of my dolls.

These dolls are so customizable that I can make my characters as I see them in my head. I enjoy their posability, and versatility. I feel that they bring out a creativity in me that I have always wanted to explore but was unsure of what medium to use for it. I love that I have these dolls to be able to express myself.

 

I have always loved dolls in general but when I found bjd it took doll collecting to a new level. The customization is what I like about them, mass produced dolls have limited diversity. BJD invoke creativity when you can choose a variety of sizes, shapes, sculpts, creatures, resin color, eyes, wigs, clothing style, etc.

 

I have always been fascinated by them, and they bring me a different type of joy other hobbies can't really offer.

That, and I can also really see how the BJDs are an artform itself, and is made as a labour of love by the artist. There is no same BJD either, as every make and mold can be different. I really respect the art that comes into it as well as the hobby itself, which made me all the more drawn to this community!

 

I loved to dress up and play with dolls as a kid. Found out about BJDs from pictures online and found face-up artists. Eventually, I found YouTubers who were collecting at the time, and the way they were making up the character and finding the right doll to represent that character looked like so much fun.

 

I used to love RP'ing in the heydays of Yahoo!Groups and create original characters because of them. When the groups died down, it was the BJD's that gave me the opportunity to bring those characters to life. Some of them had their stories evolve gradually but I am still happy that I can hold and appreciate them, a memento of those happy days.

 

I love dolls of adult ladies. They are dolls of adult ladies (and gents, but I only collect female dolls). Boom.

But no, in all seriousness, I think I like that they combine what I love about antique dolls (my other main collecting focus)- beauty, quality, and artistry -with technological doll advancements that never existed in the eras I like best for my antiques. Jointed dolls DID exist in the pre-1920s era, even dolls with ball joints, but the range of motion wasn't nearly as good. I can also take them out and do things with them- they may be rare, expensive, and somewhat fragile, but I won't feel like I'm destroying over a century of history that survived generations only to end with me if something happens to one of them, you know?

The customization aspect is nice; however I'm not really into doing faceups myself- I suppose it's fun getting a doll back from the artist with their interpretation of my vision for the character, but that's not a main draw of the doll "genre" for me. And wigs and outfits can be swapped out on other types of doll. Mostly it's the poseability and durability, in terms of comparison with other dolls.

(Also, there's a much bigger community for them. I adore my antique doll friends and I'm active in Facebook and Reddit groups for them, but it's just not the same as the massive hobby world around resin BJDs!)

I admit, I do wish more of them were made of non-plastic materials- yes, resin is a kind of plastic -or that more non-resin BJDs were on-topic here!

 

There are a few things about BJDs that tick off a few boxes of things I like. They’re dolls, they have moveable joints, and they have the specialness of being something collectible.

The BJDs of this forum are hardly the only type of BJDs out there though. Porcelain is lovely, but I like to play around with my dolls and this medium would not be suitable for moving them around as much as I like. I don’t really like the feel of vinyl either, it’s a texture thing for me, otherwise I would be interested in Ellowyne Wilde dolls too. Resin ends up being a nice doll medium for what I like most in a doll!

Then finally there’s the aesthetics. I’m picky about what I want to be in my surroundings when it comes to dolls. There’s a whole lot of on-topic BJDs of this forum that I really like but don’t quite feel the urge to actually own. Still, this enhances the hobby for me quite a lot since I like being active in the community and seeing what everyone else has, how they customize their dolls (or not!). I guess this is also an aspect of what I like having in my surroundings, because I like stuff about ABJDs specifically, and don’t, for instance, join communities that are more generically doll related.

The customization is also really fun for me, but I am also learning that sometimes I like leaving a doll somewhat the way it is. Some of my dolls look different from their promo photos, while others have remained inspired by their default states. I like having the option of doing what I want with them.

 

For me, it's all about the possibility of having my characters fleshed in a form I can see.

I suffer aphantasia (the inability to form mental images of objects that are not present) and that makes it harder for me, for example, to be able to draw without having lots of references at hand. I think that's the exact reason why, as a kid, I quickly turned to writing when most other kids my age were drawing and I've always resorted to gathering lots of images (or sometimes commissioning artists to draw them for me) and make detailed files to describe my characters physically.

Even if I've had dolls before (Barbies were huge on my childhood), when I discovered BJDs and the endless possibilities of customization, a whole new world opened up for me. For the first time, I could have the closest thing to the characters in my writings as a physical thing I could see whenever I wanted, and I could even interact with them, make them interact with each other, or change them too if I needed! Nothing can beat that.

 

I fell right into BJDs because they're sort of "futureproofed" for me in a way that regular dolls (like OT play-line ones) or figurines can never be. I'm trying to be mindful of over-consuming things, which is way too easy to do with anything that I can buy, throw directly on a shelf, and forget about. More often than not, I find myself disinterested in those things almost as soon as I receive them, because they're "static", unless you want to wreck them through customization. And if I'm bored with them, end up disliking a particular character due to its development later in a series, or the character creator/company turns out to be rotten, or anything like that, I'm stuck feeling like I've wasted my money.

Not a problem for BJD! Even if I bought one that was based on a licensed character, everything about it could be completely changed into something original.

I love building characters, but my character designs evolve with me over time. It's nice to know that if I buy a BJD, but my character concept for it changes slightly, I can refresh the design anytime I want. I still feel a bit guilty due to the sheer amount of money involved, but I don't get buyer's remorse the same way I do whenever I cave and buy an anime figurine and my interest falls off a cliff in a year or less

 

This is so very true! I had the inspiration of a brand new character begin to take up residence in my brain late this spring. And you know how that goes…I just couldn’t get her out of my head. But I already have a substantial collection after so many years in the hobby, and I’d promised myself not to increase my numbers…no sense in being greedy since I was already at critical mass space-wise and not willing to sell any of my pre-existing darlings (nor even alter their existing faceups.) But I’d fallen in love with this character, so I found the perfect super-cute head for a bargain price in the marketplace and decommissioned another of my characters to hybrid her body (with that pre-existing head becoming a decorative hat stand model for my wonderful collection of SD-sized hats.) Now I have an exciting new character to enjoy and spoil this summer without adding to my numbers. It’s a win-win because of the amazing customizability of these dolls!

 

Oh, that's such a good bit that I totally forgot to mention! Hybrids, those are a huge reason I've fallen hard for BJDs. That's something that isn't easy to do with anything else I enjoy, and is entirely impossible (barring extreme modification) with statue-type figurines. But with the power of ball-jointed darlings, you can even completely change the "species" of a character, if you want to go that far.

I love [X Character], but what if he was a merman instead? No problem, I can keep his face exactly as-is, and find a different body for the new concept, and it'll work as long as the proportions are similar enough! I can't think of many collector hobbies that have this level of flexibility.

 

I, too, love the customisation aspect, and also how they can be photographed - almost like humans, especially compared to other dolls and figurines which tend to be quite static. I can just whip one out of the box to take pictures instead of finding a common time with a friend who won't let me dress them in a weird outfit I also love that the size isn't limited like most playline or display dolls tend to be - even 1/4 are quite large and hefty when compared to say, a Barbie, and there is so much variation from big to tiny.

BJDs are also quite nostalgic and reminding me of a certain era on the internet which I dearly miss - I'm quite sad that the art and photo communities, as they used to be, have more or less disappeared and replaced by social media as it is now. I loved seeing and reading about people's hobbies on their blogs and creative or fandom forums, which is also how I first encountered BJDs, even if I just admired from afar then. I don't think I'd have been so enamoured by them to still get into the hobby over a decade later if I had first witnessed them on, idk, Instagram as it is now, where you never get the time to yearn for things for so long or learn about your internet peers' other hobbies.

Annnnd lastly, I love sewing and crafting but don't have much space to make human-size stuff constantly so dolls are a great compact compromise

 

The posability was the first draw for me. I first found out about BJDs back in the late 00s, early 10s maybe? Definitely the era of fur wigs and alt fashion! I was already interested in dolls as a creative medium; as fun as drawing is, and as impactful as visual art can be, a part of me has never been able to get over the impermanent feeling of doing paper crafts, which isn't a problem when you have a solid doll, fabric clothes, and all that. However, the dolls I had access to had, at absolute best, single hinges at the elbows and knees, because I wasn't buying teddy bear joints or internal armatures for my cloth doll experiments. So dolls with jointed wrists and ankles? Torso joints? Double joints??? The way people posed them??? They were an absolute dream!

Nowadays, I also love their sizes and creative versatility. I like that my 1/4s and small 1/3s are good for carrying around, for holding, and for sitting with. I like that they need a bit more attention than a Barbie or other playline doll, so I need to make sure they're sitting right and won't fall when I put them away instead of tossing them back in a box. I like that if I want to change someone's hair, I don't have to rip a bunch of nasty glue out of their heads! And I like that a lot of limited fullset dolls have basic versions so there's options when a cute doll shows up.

 

For me, I've returned to the hobby because it's one of the only creative outlets I currently have as an adult. When I first discovered BJDs though as a tween/kid, I got into them because of their aesthetics and though they've evolved and changed quite a bit, I've enjoyed the general direction of aesthetics enough to 1) come back to the hobby and 2) get more into them! I've honestly gotten into the social as well with attending conventions and branching out to other hobbyists on SNS and through transactions for services and goods.

All in all, I can't wait to continue to customize and refine my boys' looks as my style continues to evolve with the times and with learning more about doing customization myself work as well (fingers crossed with faceups, blushing and styling wigs!)

 

Truthfully, I don't know what my life would look like if I wasn't into BJDs! They've been such a staple in my life for over 15 years that it's impossible to imagine how different my hobby life would look like if I hadn't gotten into them at all. I'm a creative type, and the primary draw of BJDs over other dolls (playline, Pullip, etc) is the ability to customize and pose to my heart's content. BJDs as a medium are only as limited as my creativity and the risks I'm willing to take to realize my vision.

More than vision, though, is how the physical presence of my dolls informs their character development, allowing me to flesh out my characters and stories more robustly than I otherwise would. For me, developing a character for my BJDs is a collaborative effort between me and the doll itself/their original sculptor, which often leads to new and interesting traits that I don't naturally gravitate toward when creating characters that are strictly for writing or art. This broadens my horizons as I dig into those character traits and interests in order to portray them more accurately. All in all, it vexes my creativity more than any other medium I can imagine!

 

An artist I followed back in the day posted pictures of her Volks dolls. They were unlike anything I had ever seen in my life. She started a Ya-hoo! group that eventually became this forum. That artist explained how every aspects of these dolls could be customized. Her vision, her dolls are what really drew me in initially.
I used to make my own art dolls and art and this hobby let me explore everything from building, sculpting, to sewing and painting. The doll hobby seemed to kind of bring that all together. It still seems exciting all these years later even though I mostly lurk.