The topic of recast BJDs continues to provoke heated discussion; witness the entire Tumblr devoted to pro- and anti-recast people slagging each other under the cloak of anonymity. The creativity with which pro-recast persons justify their unfair and illegal actions boggles the mind.

Continue reading The recast “debate” wears on.

I used to think they were a cheatin’ BJD co. because, back in the days when double-jointed bodies were rare, one of theirs strongly resembled that of Volks Yukinojo. For some reason, I decided that the similarity mean plagiarism and cast the company into metaphorical outer darkness. Not sure why, though, as it’s pretty clear to me now that there was no proof of copying [as in the Dollshe/Dollmore debacle], but just a structural resemblance. So anyway, I have lifted my personal ban on their stuff.

I also used to think that Dollzone only produced cheap, ugly, second-rate products because…well… In the early days, Dollzone dolls did indeed cost less than their non-Chinese counterparts, and I, as well as others, automatically assumed that Chinese manufacture meant an inferior product. Nope. I also used to think that they were ugly because they did not appeal to me aesthetically. All the sculpts had an unfortunate combination of large pointy chins, large pointy noses, short philtrums and long straight mouths. They all looked very similar and thus boring to me.

Now, though, Dollzone’s sculpting has become softer and more androgynous [ref. Raymond, who looks very Soom-like to me, which is probably why I like him]. They have also ventured into experimental territory with human/flower hybrid dolls, and, more recently, human-faced bats. Beyond that, they have a greater range of facial features and body types, so I believe I’m justified in saying that their sculpting has improved and matured.

Dollzone seems to have gone through the same type of development that Impldoll [erstwhile purveyors of some truly inept sculpting] is experiencing.

This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1605133.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.

Janna found the entire run of the Twilight Zone for me on Hulu last right. From what I can tell, it’s all available on Hulu regular too, so I don’t have to pay for it. Anyway, I watched Living Doll again, which I happily analyzed yesterday, and I found the key lines of dialogue:

Erich lights a match, trying to burn Talky Tina.

Talky Tina: Doesn’t everything?

As I noted in yesterday’s mini essay, the whole episode centers around the conflicts between Annabelle, Annabelle’s biological daughter Christie and Annabelle’s husband/Christie’s stepdad Erich. Annabelle and Christie both love Erich, but he doesn’t love them. He resents Annabelle for being infertile, as he is, and he resents Christie for not being his biological child. He also finds threatening the closeness, love and tenderness between mother and daughter, an example of what he wants, but can’t have. But, despite his snappish demeanor, he maintains a facade of affection, at least in the beginning.

The introduction of Talky Tina destroys Erich’s ruse, however. He loses his temper at Annabelle and Christie, suspecting them of using Talky Tina to mess with his head. He mocks Annabelle’s emotional insights about his anger and his need to see a psychiatrist, and he flat-out yells at Christie that he’s not her daddy. In other words, he rejects Annabelle and Christie’s emotions and focuses solely on his feelings of anger, hurt and loneliness. Talky Tina’s assertion that "everything" has feelings thus counters Erich’s selfish assumption that only his emotions matter. Ironically, she proves more insightful, expressive  and moving [pun intended] than Erich, whose own doubts and misery render him cold, inflexible, rigid and unfeeling — all traits that one usually associates with dolls.

The more I think about it, the more I become convinced that Talky Tina kills Erich in much the same way that a woman in a relationship with an abusive man may eventually kill the man out of self-defense. I firmly believe that Erich would have escalated his violence against Christie, not just yelling at her, shoving her and mocking her, if Christie had not used Talky Tina to intervene. Talky Tina kills Erich so that he won’t kill Christie first.

As awesome as I think Talky Tina is [especially as an actual talking doll!], all my sympathies lie with Christie. She loves her mommy, and her mommy loves her. She just wishes that Daddy would love her the way that Mommy does. But her Daddy keeps hurting her, her mommy and her doll. She starts to realize that Daddy doesn’t love anybody. She thinks maybe Daddy could even hate her. Maybe Daddy is going to kill her! What can Christie do? She’s only a little girl, and she’s so scared. Maybe her friend Talky Tina can help. After all, Christie loves Talky Tina, and Talky Tina loves her; Christie knows because Talky Tina says so….

This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1605093.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.

I’ve long been a fan of the Twilight Zone, though I own none of it on DVD. I especially like any episodes that have to do with story characters, dolls, puppets, ventriloquist’s dummies, mannequins, robots, computers and other inanimate objects becoming alive. [Of course I do!] I also like stories where the protagonists discover that they are dreaming or that they are being mind-controlled or that they are inanimate objects. [Of course I do!] The Twilight Zone provides hours of entertainment on these themes, and I haven’t seen all the episodes in these two categories, though I have vague goals at some point of compiling a list of them.

The iconic Twilight Zone doll is, of course, Talky Tina. She appears in The Living Doll, a one-hour episode from 1963, as the murderous antagonist to anxiety-ridden father Erich [played by Telly Savalas]. The insecure and tempestuous Erich has a hangup about his and his wife’s infertility, which prompted them to adopt daughter Christie. He channels his hostility toward his wife and daughter into Talky Tina, who obligingly reflects his hatred right back at him. Erich and Talky Tina try to destroy each other, but Erich dies when he trips over Talky Tina, who gets the last word [literally].

The Living Doll represents the Twilight Zone at its best: a creepy, compelling character study with all the tight plotting and drama of the best short stories. I especially love the ambiguity of Talky Tina. Sure, she says, "My name is Talky Tina, and I’m going to kill you," so we’re supposed to think that Erich dies due to the doll. But it’s also possible that Erich kills himself out of his inability to actually love his family, in that his rage at his wife and daughter obsesses him when conveniently encapsulated in the form of the doll. His increasing absorption with killing the doll estranges him from his family and, ultimately, proves his undoing.

Alternatively, Talky Tina may be Christie’s defender. Christie loves Talky Tina, who also loves her ["My name is Talky Tina, and I love you!"]. They’re devoted to each other. Christie, at whom Erich yells, "I’m not your daddy!", knows on some level that her father despises and rejects her — so much so, in fact, that he initially suspects Christie of messing with his head by making Talky Tina say murderous things. I’m sure that Christie fears her father’s verbal abuse and perhaps even fears that he will kill her in the gruesome ways he tries to kill her doll. It’s possible that Christie activates Talky Tina with her positive love for the doll and her negative fear of her dad so that she can neutralize the threat of Erich and finally, for once in her life, be safe.

Or hell — maybe it’s just an evil doll.

Ever since I heard that Bif Bang Pow did a limited edition Talky Tina doll, I’ve kind of wanted one. I suppose that technically she’s a "prop replica," but I say she’s a doll — and a pretty cool one at that. BBP accurately replicates her in terms of size, sculpt and outfit. She’s also entirely in greyscale, just as she appears to viewers in the original episode, which makes her extra unnerving. She has much of the articulation of the original, and she has wind-ups in her back that make her talk! [What would a Talky Tina doll be without a talking function?] Overall she looks partly cute and partly uncanny — her level of cuteness depending on how much you can stomach the stylized look of 18-inch child playline dolls, her uncanniness highlighted by her lack of color. But it’s her talking function that rockets her into the upper echelons of awesomeness because then you can no longer deny that you are in the presence of one of the original pop-culture killer dolls.

Talky Tinas appear regularly on Ebay for between $150.00 and $200.00. Oh the temptation…

This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1604766.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.

Burlington City Arts hosts revolving exhibits of local artists’ work in the halls of my office building. Down in the basement there are currently some fascinating mixed media pieces by Katherine Taylor-McBroom. I found the architectural collages less interesting than these 3-D collages incorporating 1:12 scale dollhouse pieces, public domain photos and illustrations. Her use of reversed and/or mirrored elements combine with a desaturated palette to give these works a haunting, dreamlike atmosphere.

Unfortunately, the light down there was very poor, so I was not able to do justice to these pieces in my photos, which often washed out. Photocopied figures peek out of windows and lurk behind working doors. The layered nature of the work practically invites peering and poking, while also evoking a palimpsest and/or layers of memory. Brilliant stuff.
Continue reading Katherine Taylor-McBroom’s collaged, reflection-like dollhouses

While I was finishing up the Great Diary Scanning Project, I discovered a diary entry from April 29, 2004, when I was first learning about and coveting BJDs:

April 19, 2004

I spent much of the weekend on the ‘Net, paging through sites of BJDs. I reconfirmed that CH [CustomHouse] Gene is the most beautiful doll in the world and that I really want it. I also finally articulated what makes me uncomfortable about BJDs….

Physically, BJDs [speaking about the majority here] look prepubescent. Their heads take up a large part of their body proportions similar to the way that a baby’s proportions do. They also have eyes that are large for their faces the way that a child’s eyes are. Finally, the girls have no breast development, the boys comically small dicks. They look like kid dolls.

At the same time, BJDs also seem adolescent and adult. They have luxuriant wigs, the hair on which could never be so thick or full on an actual child. Only a teenager has time to grow the waist-length hair popular with these dolls. BJDs’ swappable eyes recall vanity contact lenses that teens or young adults use to look cool. As the final point, every BJD’s facial paint scheme — called by the age-neutral term "paint ops" when discussing action figs, is called "makeup" or "faceup." Makeup is associated with teens and adults more than children. Hmm, maybe they’re teenaged dolls. [Volks actually has a line of Super Dollfies called SD13 which is supposed to have a "more mature body," but that just convinces me that the default bodies were LESS mature and therefore childlike.]

The same ambiguity about how to relate to BJDs as characters appears among BJD owners. Lots of them refer to the arrival of the doll as its "birthday," giving the impression that it was born recently and is therefore a young child. And then you even get a few people calling their BJDs [as the Volks Web site — "Choose what kind of daughter you would like to have" — encourages] their kids. That’s just too weird for me.

The overwhelming majority of BJD owners put their BJDs’ ages in the mid- to late teens and have them act selfish, willful, mischievous — like very stereotypical teenagers. BJD owners also usually sexualize their dolls with fetish wear, shirtless modelling and/or photostories about lust, infatuation and sex. Since the dolls are objects and they are frequently endowed with sexual meanings, I think they’re sex objects.

Here is my problem — it’s a child-shaped sex object. I don’t care if you say that it houses a teenaged character. It’s still a child-shaped sex object that exaggerates and stylizes the youth-like features of the object [big eyes, "pure skin" — actually a type of Volks resin for the BJDs, lack of secondary sex characteristics], so that the youth-like features become salient and attractive. There’s a pederastic tinge to BJD ownership when I think of it this way.

…

I love the ambiguity of the dolls, even though it makes me uncomfortable. They have human-like shapes, but their huge eyes and overall small size make them seem like stereotypical faeries or some sort of non-human creatures. Due to purposely ill-defined sex characteristics, they look very ambiguous and androgynous. Their pre- to post-adolescent age range somehow unfixes them from the aging process so they seem outside of time or age, therefore assignable to any time or age one wants to assign them to.

This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1561830.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.

Kerri Pajutee’s 1:12 and 1:6 scale miniature animal sculptures [largely of dogs and cats] are amazing. She sculpts base forms with polymer clay and then flocks them with artificial fiber attached with Aileen’s Tacky Glue. I can tell that she has such affection for the subjects she sculpts.

I bet her custom miniatures cost thousands of dollars. :'(

This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1472297.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.

In general thematic order, rather than strict chronological order:

1. Like dolls in general.

2. Learn about BJDs.

3. Research BJDs obsessively.

4. Select BJD.

5. Save up for BJD.

6. Purchase BJD.

7. Wait with impatience for BJD.

8. Debox in ecstasy.

9. Repeat steps 4 through 8 ad infinitum.

10. Wire limbs.

11. Paint own faceups.

12. Perform minor subtractive mods with X-acto.

13. Make hybrid.

14. Design clothing and wigs; commission others to make.

15. Design and perform additive mods with Aves Apoxie Sculpt.

16. Digitally sculpt own BJD head; use established doll company for some internal modeling and casting services.

What does the future hold?

Digitally sculpt own BJD body; use established doll company for casting services.

Manually sculpt own BJD head; use established doll company etc.

Manually sculpt own BJD body; use established doll company etc.

An alarming percentage of BJD enthusiasts end up making either their own original BJD heads, bodies or whole dolls. With Jareth 2.0, I guess I can definitively say that I, too, now belong to the alarming percentage.

Yes [sigh], I have become a dollmaker.

I know I've pissed and moaned about this before, but it irritates me to no end that the Asian BJD aesthetic requires fanatical devotion to every single detail.

God forbid you use your acrylics, watercolor pencils and brush-applied matte varnish to create a schematic, suggestive faceup. Nope nope nope! You have to go through this nitpicky, time-consuming process of waiting for appropriate temperature and humidity, spraying everything with extra super special sealant imported from Japan, then letting it dry, then applying a few brush daubs of delicately shaved pastel, letting it dry, etc., etc., etc.

While you're at it, you should be doing the eyebrows individual hair by individual hair with an expensive, microscopic brush…same with lines in the lips.

Let's say you want to mod your BJD: thin the neck, let's say. You can't just scrape it down to size with an X-acto, plop the head on and call it a day. What were you thinking?!! You have to smooth your rough shaping down with a series of successively finer sandpapers until no one can tell that you've done any work on the doll. We do not accept jerry-rigged solutions constructed with sweat and hot glue. We demand perfection in all areas.

Oh yeah, and if you want to make a hybrid BJD of a body from one company and a head from another and jointed hands, say, from a third, we'll be watching to make sure that you follow the correct protocols. First you have to ask online about proportions and fit because we can't have your doll being aesthetically offensive. We'll let you know if your proposed hybrid looks good enough.

Just as important as the proportionality of your hybrid is the hallowed concept of resin matching. You need to find out the relative colors of your hybrid parts. If your desired parts don't match perfectly in tone, you have two options. First, you can choose other options that do provide a perfect match. Second, you can do body blushing, which is like a faceup for non-facial parts [see excruciating process above], so that no one can ever tell that the hybrid parts were originally different colors. We do not allow BJD hybrids with "paper white" heads, "fresh white" hands and "beauty white" bodies to exist without their colors being evened out. Too many shades of white make us implode.

Guess what? My faceups involve no super special Japanese spray sealant whatsoever and, instead, lots of watercolor pencils, Prismacolors, acrylics and improvised tools [Q-tips, X-acto blades, toothpicks] to direct the pigment. Sometimes I haven't even bothered to seal the heads before scribbling directly on the resin. And then… I don't even wait for paint to dry. I use — wait for it! — a hair dryer.

My mods avoid sandpaper. I prefer instead to do exactly as much hacking with a craft knife or saw as is necessary to make the mod functional. It doesn't have to look nice; it just has to work.

As for resin matching, I don't really care. I mean, once I put a WS Elfdoll Kathlen head on an NS Soom Uyoo body [=Absinthe], and the world didn't end! Later, I stuck some NS Dikadoll jointed hands on an Angelsdoll massive girl in "Volks compatible normal" [=Janvier Jett], and the planet remained on its axis! Shortly after that, I decided to stick a rose grey Iplehouse Luna head on a B&G Dolls grey body [=Lura eventually], and the sky did not fall!

It's mind-blowing, isn't it? It's almost like there's another aesthetic option besides that of the minutiae-obsessed, anal-retentive facsimile of reality.

Look who I found in a box in my closet today! These are Verity [left] and Kami [right], two Groovy Girl dolls by Manhattan Toy. [Incidentally, they are sitting on a sofa made for 1:6 scale figs by Andrea. It's made out of a tissue box.]

Anyway, Manhattan Toy launched the Groovy Girls line in 1998. They are a series of 13" plush, unarticulated girls and boys that are supposed to be between 9 and 13. Every single doll has its own unique name, skin tone, hair color, hair style, embroidered facial expression and outfit. Goorvy Girls' outfits characteristically feature bright colors, large patterns and a cheerfully flagrant disregard for coordination.

Groovy Girls are clearly made with love and attention to detail. Look at the different shapes of Verity and Kami's mouths, noses and eyes. Look at the pale pink undertones in Verity's skin as compared to the light brown undertones in Kami's. Look at the slight blushing at the ends of Verity's smile. Look at the "dyed red" sections of Verity's hair and the dark brown [but not black] yarn ringlets selected for Kami's. Finally, please note that Verity has three silver studs in one ear. While Groovy Girls are definitely mass-produced toys, each one is clearly designed as an individual character with her own personality and her own style. I can tell that the Manhattan Toy designers have fun thinking up designs for new Groovy Girls. ^_^
Continue reading Manhattan Toy Groovy Girls: Verity and Kami

Sellers on the DOA marketplace who say, “Please add 4% for Paypal fees.” No, you add it. Price your items to compensate for the fees. You’re not supposed to blatantly ask buyers to cover your damn fees. Suck it up as a cost of doing business.

I also really dislike sellers on the marketplace who specify that buyers should send payments as “personal.” No, I will not send you a personal payment. If I do so, I forfeit my buyer protection and my ability to make a claim and possibly get a refund if we have a problem transaction. I know you’re trying to avoid fees [again], but I mistrust anyone whose business practices make it easier for them to abscond with my money.

[No, I’m not outraged right now.]

Doll clothing with out-of-scale buttons. I see this a lot on clothes for 1:3 scale BJDs [i.e., ~60cm or 2 feet tall]. Makers of doll clothes will go to incredible lengths to replicate and scale down all the details of, say, a shirt or a jacket, and then WHAMMO! They’ll completely spoil the whole effect by using 1:1 scale buttons [suitable for human clothes] as fasteners.

And they’re not doing it for a purposeful aesthetic effect either. This is serious, unfunky clothing that they’re making, insofar as doll clothes can be serious. It’s especially hilarious when you’re looking at suits for BJDs: “Oh I like the structure of this jacket. The detail on the lining makes it look almost GOOD GRAVY WHO PUT BUTTONS THE SIZE OF SAUCERS ON THE CUFFS???”

In-scale buttons exist! I know this because I see them with some regularity on 1:6 scale clothes. I know they exist for 1:3 scale clothes as well, but I’m not sure why they aren’t used very much by makers of doll clothes in 1:3 scale.

I mean, surely, if you can be arsed to put in-scale zipper flies and functioning pockets on your denim dolly jeans, you can put freakin’ in-scale buttons on your dolly shirts, right?

You know what…while I’m pissing and moaning about BJD stuff, let me get this off my chest. Asian BJD companies can now officially stop with the Alice in Wonderland [sic] special edition dolls and/or outfits. Way too many doll studios have done or are doing something with this concept. Boooooooring.

If Asian BJD companies want some non-Alice concepts, I can supply some. Let’s try the Chinese zodiac, the months of the year [not the same as the non-Chinese zodiac, more of a personification theme], celestial bodies [again not the non-Chinese zodiac, more of a personification theme], fairy tales, seasons [mud season!], weather, trees/flowers, the Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan, ceremonial dress from different cultures, the Major Arcana of a Tarot deck, medieval Western European character types [king, queen, knight, damsel, jester, maid, serf, etc.], characters from famous ballets, et hoc genus omne. Some of these concepts have already been appropriated by some companies, but I think they still have a lot of life in them.

Furthermore, we need more therianthropic characters. I’m not just talking dolls with resin ear attachments; I’m talking dolls with non-human limbs and torsos and such. We have not yet reached market saturation on centaurs, especially female ones, and merpeople. I also strongly advocate for naga [human/snake hybrids], human/bear hybrids and human/zebra hybrids. We definitely need more human/arachnid dolls [Soom Vesuvia and Impldoll Colin being the only ones I know of]. And we’re also seriously lacking in human/insect hybrids. That’s just for starters…

These approximately 1:6, double-jointed, porcelain dolls with strung bodies and leather-padded joints will be for sale some time in early March, No further details about cost, but I admire their curvy bodies and serene faces.

One school of thought wants to make the 1:6 set or diorama realistic down to the smallest details. I've seen people print and bind their own legible books for mini libraries, make their own quilts for mini beds and construct matching storage boxes for mini shelves. These are the people who have at least 4 different backgrounds, 1 for each season, to stick outside their set windows. These are the people whose 1:6 clocks most likely have movable hands to indicate passing time in successive scenes. They build stone walls out of individual Styrofoam bricks, which are then weathered with multiple coats of paint. These are the people who dislike Barbie stuff because it's slightly undersized for 1:6. These are the people who use multiple plastic cats, all painted the same, but in different positions, to stand in for a 1:6 pet in different positions. This school of thought has nothing but my admiration, but it is certainly not me.

My school of thought is defined by a suggestive aesthetic, more akin to that of sets for a play. Things don't have to look meticulously similar to reality; they just have to look close enough to suggest reality. Books are made out of small pieces of foamcore wrapped with paper. There may be one quilt that appears on all different beds and one storage unit that appears in different room sets. People who merely suggest reality probably ignore windows as excessively detailed. They don't care about the hours shown on 1:6 clocks. Their stone walls are made from printed cotton fabric stapled to foamcore. They don't weather anything. Barbie stuff is fine; even the pink can be acceptable. Plastic pets have only 1 position. My aesthetic is defined by ease of creation, parsimony and reuse.

I like expensive dolls, namely, resin Asian ball-jointed dolls. For example, my incoming Lola Paprika was $309.00 including doll, eyes, faceup [painting], outfit and shipping. Because she was on a special sale, she would have normally cost more. Without the steep discount, the same items would have cost me just about $615.00. You can see why I, accustomed to such prices for 60cm BJDs, call Lola Paprika my “cheap” 1:3er.

Anyway, even as I revel in the thought of getting such a beautiful doll for such a relative bargain, I am also highly aware of the loads of money which I casually drop upon BJDs. This is obviously a luxury interest, which sometimes leaves me ambivalent about spending so much. Surely that money could go toward things either more necessary than or just as enjoyable as, but cheaper than, BJDs. [For example, think of how much 1:6 stuff I could get with $309.00! At the rate Hot Toys’ prices are going, it would just be 1.25 fully kitted figs, but I digress. I could also get scads of crack…I mean Rement.]

Then I think about my BJD spending in context. In general, I don’t spend a lot of money. I don’t pinch pennies, but I also don’t spend excessive amounts of money when furnishing my necessities. Dolls and their accoutrements represent pretty much my only excess. Since my finances are stable and organized, I can afford to have BJDs. I am in such a position of financial and class privilege that allows me to say that I don’t think my interest in expensive dolls is a problem.

Today’s profundity has been brought to you by Angelsdoll, purveyor of BJDs with relatively realistic and affordable shapes. Today’s profundity has NOT been brought to you by Hot Toys, whose prices I find galling for 1:6 scale. [Funny how $125.00 is my limit for 1:6 scale spending, but a mere sneeze in the bucket against my 1:3 scale spending.]

Thinking about the pretty Soom Breccia head that I sort of want, I ask myself what I would do with her. Of course she’d get a body. I’m sure she would dress up in the cheap, tacky remnants of my 1:3 wardrobe. It’s entirely possible that I would give her some sort of sloppy custom faceup that would further decrease her value, not to mention pink hair. And then…

Then what? Then she would go on the “big dollies” shelf along with Sardonix and Junebug, and she would sit there, making friends with them and quietly yellowing. She would come out for doll meets, where the audience would ooh and aah over her and take photos, and I’m sure she’d have televised chats with Sardonix and Junebug occasionally, but I don’t think I’d take lots of pictures of her or play with her a lot. Certainly not as frequently as I play with my 1:6ers.

I’d like a big doll with pink hair. None of my past BJDs had the appropriate type of pink hair. Zephque had a pale pink wig with double buns, but it wasn’t pink enough. My Soom Uyoo version of Jennifer had a wig of pink yarn for a while that looked good, but too much like Anneka’s hair. My Soom Sabik Will had a bright pink fur wig of the appropriate color, but it didn’t have double ponytails, and he was too big for me anyway…

I think I would get a Volks Dollfie Dream body for the putative Breccia head. It’s nice and light and sexy and relatively poseable. It’s also kinda cheap. The only problem is that Dollfie Dreams stain really easily. I’d have to make sure that all her clothes were lined, and nothing denim and/or black for her! That’s easy…I already have the an42 pink and orange paisley dress that I’d want her to wear…and the stripey black and white socks.

She would be such a pretty doll!

I think I need a camera with a really good zoom lens, or I need a good zoom lens to put on my current camera.

This disjointed entry has been brought to you by the Society of Useless Sexy Expensive Dolls, or USED.

An informal timeline of recent doll developments shows a plethora of increasingly articulated fashion or playline dolls available in your average department store or toy store.

Continue reading Articulation is all the rage, but why does it have to come with BIG HEADS?

Short film, Alma, by Rodrigo Blaas, makes you wonder what your dolls are doing when you’re not looking. Are they trying to escape?? If Alma the character were translated exactly into plastic, she’d make a really cute doll.

Watch a real video of a mechanical doll with a real face watching a video of fake faces and yearning after the fake reality on the real screen with true desire. It reminds me of the scene in MirrorMask when Helena gets literally all dolled up by the clockwork music box mannequins.

These jointed models of pregnant women and their fetuses, made of painted wood, are from Japan during the Edo Period. The mothers appear to have wigs of real hair and inset glass eyes. Note impressive jointing on wooden baby at bottom of page so it can assume the fetal position. Awwwww…

Here’s my self-introduction on MWD, written a few days after I joined in October, 2001. It gives a glimpse into my 1:6 universe back then:

Time passes, but the essentials remain. My characters are still soap-operatic, queer, gender-fucking, kinky, disabled, bad-ass and dressed in cheap, tacky clothes. Each has a detailed personality. The only major development in my 1:6 interests has been my increasing proficiency modding dolls and sculpting my own accessories.

Hmmm, from this clip, I seem like an interesting, but very defensive, person.

I do not like displays or photos in which dolls are poorly posed. A doll’s hands/feet shouldn’t be twisted around, nor should its elbows/knees bend backward or sideways. A doll should be in a position that is either a) physically possible for a human being or b) physically impossible for a human being, but fine for the character. Ideally, a doll’s clothes and hair should behave appropriately for the photo [disarrayed if you need disarray, neat, tidy and controlled otherwise]. I find poor posing such a distraction that I don’t care how unusual, rare or interesting the doll is; if it’s imitating a pretzel with bed head, I will ignore the overall picture in favor of sloppy details.

There are no visual aids for this post because I couldn’t find any suitably anonymous examples and I’m not subjecting my own dolls to the humiliation of illustrating what NOT to do in posing.

I have collected many dolls from various sources, but I do not think of myself as a collector. To me, a collector is a person mostly concerned with the acquisition of things, amassing a comprehensive array of stuff in a certain category. Collectors may display some of their stuff, but, in my mind, they are less interested in the objects themselves than they are the very fact of owning the objects. Having a complete set of something or a rare exemplar of something provides more satisfaction to collectors than the actual objects themselves. In fact, the objects themselves are immaterial; for example, people may collect experiences, less for the experiences themselves than for the thrill of pursuit and the sense of accomplishment derived from creating a complete set of something.

I do collect things, but not dolls. For me, dolls aren’t just physical objects, but confluences of several of my interests, talents and hobbies. They are kind of like lenses that allow me to focus my skills in writing, photography, set construction, painting, figure customization, sewing [?!], etc. I have a lot of them because I have a lot of characters. I’m not collecting a full set; I’m making a cast so I can play with them.

In contrast to a collector of dolls, I would call myself a user of dolls, in the same way that collectors of computers may be contrasted to users of computers. While collectors may fetishize completeness and the concept of certain objects, users fetishize interactivity. They debox; they customize; they pose; they photograph their dolls. They use them as dressmakers’ dummies, stress relief, story characters, construction experiments, etc. They may have lots of dolls, but they don’t think that they have collections; instead, they think of their dolls as works in progress. They can always develop a character’s personality or find a better outfit or repaint or re-pose…. To an untrained observer, a doll user looks pretty much like a doll collector, when, in actuality, the doll collector’s dolls don’t move, while the doll user’s dolls are constantly fidgeting.

La La A Go Go has a whole Flickr set of beautiful repros of 1960s Barbie ads! More later after I flick through them…

…Detailed in this thread right here.  Woo hoo! More to read!

You know where most of my time, energy and money goes regarding my dolls? This goes for 1:6 action figs, BJDs and my digital models. It goes to CLOTHES. I spend the most money not on the basic figures themselves or sets or accessories, but outfits. And I spend time not on scripting, lighting, posing, shooting or editing, but dressing and undressing.

Extra, extra! Remember the delicate, skeletal harp-playing double amputee I linked to yesterday? Her name is L’Harpiste Mauresque, or the Moorish Harpist, and she was created around 1880 by the French automatonist Gustave Vichy. 

Well, there’s a full version of her at the Morris Museum in Morristown, NJ, and she’s wearing golden spangles and seated on an octagonal stand. If you go to the Morris Museum’s main site, then Current Exhibitions, then Musical Machines and Living Dolls, then the picture of L’Harpiste [last one in the first row], you can see a high-quality video of her playing and, yes, moving her eyelids. 

Here’s a still from the February 2005 Journal of Antiques, where you can see her expressive little purple face.

With those big eyes, she looks like a BJD! [Thanks to

melopoiea

 for the links.] I like the haggard-looking one better… I want one.

 This is an automaton from the 1880s, unrestored, a bust of a harpist playing a song. The skeletal and stained condition makes it all the more affecting and compelling. She’s beautiful!

About three years ago, I joined DOA, right before it moved from a Yahoo group to a phpBB group. Here are some of my early posts [subject lines only] on the phpBB version, just for my personal amusement, I guess:

I know a lot more about BJDs now than I did back then. Other than that, not much has changed. I’m still interested in a) Jareth, b) inexpensive alternatives and c) body mods. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose, I guess. This has been an irrelevant annoucement from the Boring Club.

 My dolls are my actors. They play out scenes from my imagination for the film of my camera.

Given my interest in a) South Park and b) dolls, I’ve long wanted to see Team America. Ever since it was originally announced in 2004, I was fascinated by the idea of a movie starring a cast made entirely of 1:3 puppets. If the content was generated by the same foul-mouthed pop-culture satirists, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, behind South Park, that could only be a bonus, right?

Wrong, of course. BJD lovers should see below for my extensive critique of the puppetry.

I started off with 1:6 dolls and built up quite the little universe. Wanting something larger, I actually entertained two mannequins for a while, then sold them because they were too big. Continue reading Stories of BJDs

I see this discussed on DoA a lot. It refers to an owner’s response toward her BJD. Continue reading What is it with “bonding?”

I’ve also been getting excited because I keep thinking she’s going to be released soon. First I thought it was in October. No…wait…November. Now latest news says the END of December. Her constantly postponed release makes me very antsy. Continue reading This is an elf Lishe rant.