Introduction to BJDs
History and Basics
A BJD, or an ABJD, is an Asian Ball Jointed Doll. These dolls are usually made of resin. The resin is hollow on the inside, and the pieces of the doll are connected by elastic. This elastic works like a skeleton, allowing the doll to make and hold a large number of poses. There are many companies, and each one has a different style. Most BJDs are either quite realistic or influenced by the style of Anime. ABJDs typically come from Japan, South Korea, or China.
ABJDs originated in 1999 with Volks’ Super Dollfie. Many people mistakenly call all BJDs “dollfies,” even though this name specifically refers to dolls made by Volks. The dolls have come a long way since then, and modern doll companies offer expanded posability and fantasy options such as wings, animal ears and tails, vampire teeth, and hooves.
One of the greatest charms of BJDs is that they are highly customizable. You can change their clothes, of course, but you can also change their eyes and wigs. Doll owners can even paint on the faces and bodies of their dolls to achieve the perfect look (more on this later). More adventurous people modify dolls by giving them realistic scars, adding webbing between their fingers, changing their ear shape, etc.
BJDs come in three basic sizes. The largest dolls are about 1/3 scale, standing anywhere from 55-90cm tall (typically around 60-70cm). These guys are called SDs and usually have an adult aesthetic. MSDs or “minis” are roughly 1/4 scale (about 40cm) and typically look like children ranging from about age 8-15. Slim MSDs look more like young adults. Finally, any doll below roughly 33cm is known as a “tiny.” Tinies range from about 8cm to 33cm. Tinies that are about 25cm tall are specifically called yo-SDs. This name comes from the name that Volk’s assigned to its 25cm BJDs (although you really should not call all BJDs dollfies, calling 25cm dolls yo-SDs or yos is the norm).
These dolls are not intended as toys for children. They are expensive pieces of art and are fairly easy to damage if the owner is careless. Unfortunately, because each doll is hand made and constructed of resin, they are suprisingly expensive. Their accessories are also pricey, typically because they are hand made too.
What can I do with a Doll?
Most doll owners enjoy customizing their dolls, as mentioned above. Users also sew for them and take photos of them. These photos are often elaborately planned, and the dolls are sometimes set up in a lovely display of doll-sized props and accessories, resulting in realistic and artsy photos. Some people write photostories involving their dolls, where they take sequential pictures showing the dolls interacting together and “living” out a scene.
Because the dolls are very realistic, many owners develop an emotional attachment to them. Dolls often receive a name and a personality. Users may assign the persona of one of their invented characters to a doll (these people may be writers, D&D fans, or simply imaginative), which sometimes deepens this sense of attachment. There are some users who treat their dolls like real people and openly admit to preferring their resin companions to their human ones; however, this group is a minority. Most users do agree that their dolls are special posessions.
What is the BJD Community?
The BJD community is a group of people who love dolls and love to talk about them. This community is mostly found on the internet. This is probably due to the fact that most people can only buy dolls and accessories for them online, and because BJD enthusiasts are very difficult to find without the aid of the web. The online BJD community is very active and large. The biggest forum for BJDs is called den of angels, which has over 25,000 members.
Owners love to share their pictures, speculate over new releases, and chat about dolls. Community members plan meet-ups to see each other in real life and sometimes form strong friendships through the forum. Some people complain that this community has recently become infested with people who brag about how many dolls they have and people who treat the hobby either like a fad or their reason for existing. I find that it’s a lot of fun. Besides, what community doesn’t have some annoying people in it?
Anyway, you can meet a lot of people through your doll!
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Hope that was informative for anyone who is like “what is this girl talking about?!” with the dolls and such.
~Jen
Wow, my head is swimming from that episode of Gundam, a History!
So, I noticed that I spent a significant amount of time in my previous posts doing what this blog isn’t meant for, namely blabbing about every day stuff when I had nothing doll/anime/projects/whatever related to discuss. So, here’s my livejournal, where I can get that out of my system and focus on posting properly here: my LJ. Maybe I should make it public, it’s not like I say anything too personal.
Now, on to the latest and greatest in Jen’s doll discussions! Sadly, the Yui and Mio Volks dollfie dreams that I mentioned earlier are NOT available in America, supposedly due to a licensing agreement. Well, at least that ends my temptation, right? I don’t feel like bothering with hiring a Japanese person to buy it for me, or dealing with the Japanese mail forwarding system.
Of course, something bright, shiny, new, and limited strolled along to take Yui’s place almost at once. I was planning on asking for this doll for Christmas, but now he’s available in tan resin until March 12th, and the tan is PERFECT for the character he will be representing. Check him out!
I’m at a loss here. I really want him to look just like that (well, with red eyes and gray hair). Nnnnnnngh. What to do?
Then there’s this beauty who came out recently, Pipos Noel. She is yo-SD sized and perfectly adorable.
I am such a sucker for sad dolls! But luckily she’s not limited or anything, so I can take my time in getting her. Which, given my “doll to-do list” will…uh…take a while.
Now for some pics of my own girls! :D
Also note that I’ve put picks up of all of my girls under The Doll House tab :3
I think I’m gonna work on a “what are BJDs” type of post for the next one.
~Jen
As you may or may not know, the first episode of the Gundam Unicorn OVA comes out next month (although you may be able to find it around ye olde internet now, hint, hint). It’s set in the same universe as the original Gundam, as well as Zeta Gundam and a few other things and it’s set to have 6 50-minute episodes.
Now I realize that you may want to watch it, when it comes out next month of course, but that you may be a little lost if you haven’t seen all the other stuff that comes chronologically beforehand so I thought I’d put down a little primer here so you don’t have to sift through Wikipedia. Which doesn’t really have a good synopsis of Gundam plot-lines anyway.
I guess it makes the most sense to start with the first series. It takes place during the year Universal Century (UC) 0079, which by the way is why you hear this universe called the “Universal Century” time-line. During the course of the war the Earth Federation is fighting the Principality of Zeon, which had recently declared a war for its independence, which would later be called the One Year War. Despite the noble intentions, the war was really started by the head of the Zabi family, who killed the previous leader of the Republic of Zeon, for the purpose of furthering his own ambitions. Early battles resulted in the complete destruction of numerous space colonies (named “sides”, depending on where they were located).
Flash forward a little bit to where the series protagonist Amuro Ray finds himself a Gundam after an attack on Side 7. Amuro manages to save a good portion of the population of the colony even though the colony itself gets destroyed. Amuro and the rest of the civilians board the prototype battleship “White Base”, commanded by officer Bright Noa. The ship and its ragtag crew somehow manage to survive despite the best efforts of Zeon and one of its ace pilots Char Aznable, “The Red Comet”. Over the course of the story, it is revealed that Amuro (and possibly a large portion of the crew aboard the White Base and Char) are “newtypes”. A newtype is the supposed next stage in human evolution and is brought about by an adaptation to life in space. Therefore, Spacenoids can be newtypes but Earthnoids cannot. Newtypes exhibit some amount of psychic power, which changes from newtype to newtype.
We can safely skim over the rest of the story until the end where Amuro, Bright, and the White Base are instrumental in the war effort, ending in the final battle of the war at A Baoa Qu. It is during this battle that Char’s plans are revealed, the revenge against the Zabi family for killing his father, the previous head of Zeon.
So the war ends and the Zabi’s are all killed and there’s peace for a while until UC0083 where remnants from Zeon try to crash a satellite into the Earth. The plan is successful but the only result is the Earth Federation decides to create an elite force called the Titans in UC 0084.
Zeta Gundam chronicles the fight of previous Earth Federation troops, who are aided by Char, as they fight against the oppressive and un-regulated Titans. Eventually, most of the main characters from the first series, including Amuro and Bright, team up to take down the Titans.
Long story short, they are successful and a new elite group is formed called Londo Bell. This time however it is a just group and is led by Bright Noa, and whose ranks include Amuro Ray. Char disappears during the final battle.
In 0093 Char returns and wants to crash a giant asteroid into the Earth, rendering it uninhabitable so that people will be forced into space to evolve. Char in his Sazabi fights against the Londo Bell units, and specifically Amuro. Amuro defeats Char by using his Nu-Gundam built by Anaheim Electronics, which is a “psychoframe”, meaning it has a system in place (”psycommu” system) that allows the pilot to control the Mobile Suit telepathically, or rather, in the same way they would move their own body. Since this requires some telepathy, only newtypes can use this system.
Even though Amuro wins, he is seemingly too late to stop the crashing asteroid. That is until he uses his newtype power, amplified by the psychoframe to telepathically push back the asteroid. Both Amuro and Char possibly died at this point.
Which leads us to Unicorn Gundam in UC 0096, and which you should hopefully now understand provided I made this clear enough. I leave you with the trailer and the unrelated statement that animetake.com is really cool.
-Tony
So, the two K-on! dollfie dream fullsets have been officially valued at just under $700. As much as I ADORE the Yui one, I just can’t spend that much on her. I hope to own a fullset dollfie dream some day, but I guess I’ll just have to like her more to get it. They’re gonna sell the uniform (sans the blazer) so I’ll probably get that when it comes out. I would actually like to make my own Mugi girl at some point, maybe. Even though she’s my third fav K-on girl, she’s my favorite in design. I love her peacefulness.
But enough about that. Oh, hey, look, we have a banner now *blinks* Huh, I guess Tony did that.
I’ve been going through my old drawings and practicing my traditional coloring because, frankly, I suck at it. I’m not improving very fast. It’s frustrating.
Last night I woke up feeling really sick, so I stumbled out of bed. Those of you who wrote my writing exercise know that my imagination is vivid when I’m between being asleep and awake, and I had this great inspiration and just starting drawing at like 3:00 AM. Basically I thought up a Borderlands inspired world and all of these costume designs floated around in my head, sort of like adventure gear meets steam punk. I’m leaning towards using my friends as characters, but I’d have to ask them/see if I can even draw them decently (I still have problems drawing Tony and I swear I’ve drawn him a bajillion times). I’d also probably have to contact them sometimes and be like “what would you say in this position” annnnd I dunno if they’d want to be bothered.
Oh, sorry, I totally didn’t explain that. I was thinking of doing an illustrated online novel/webcomic with it. Basically the idea is that I can either draw or write whenever I want, or do both in the same installment, so that I don’t get worn out with it as fast. I get tired of drawing really fast, but I can write for quite a while before it gets to me.
My last idea for this comic/writing project involved a zombie plot, but frankly, I don’t think I could draw zombies (although I did a hilarious group drawing of the L4D1 zoms). Plus as I sketched out the plot I realized that it was too heavy for my tastes, what with the death and the turning into the living dead and such. This plot is much lighter.
Unnnghhh I want to work on it right now, bye bye XD
~Jen
So now you’re going to get the inarticulate meld of them all. Enjoy.
One post was going to be about how I really want us to have a header image. This place just feels so sterile without one, don’t you think? I might have a temp one up at some point today, but if anyone has a good idea then feel free to mention it.
And then one time I was going to talk about intros to anime/video games. This was mostly spurred on by my intense liking of the borderlands intro:
There’s nothing awe-inspiring about it, I admit, but it’s cool and gives you an absolute perfect feeling about the game you’re about to play. I suppose they were helped by finding a song that so perfectly captures the game.
And I also really like the Durarara! opening.
It really got me thinking though. How many good games have you played and animes have you seen that have terrible beginnings? You’d think that these segments would have the MOST work put into them since the first impression is so important. And I don’t just mean opening as in an opening cinematic. I think Bioshock had a wonderful opening, but here I consider the “opening” to be pretty much the entire “Welcome to Rapture” level.
So what do you guys think? Have and great or terrible intros that you remember well?
Wonderfest was a few days ago so there are a lot of pictures of new figures and whatnot floating around. I think the best (english) coverage was done by wcloudxkumo.I think my favorite figure that came out of it is Momohime from Muramasa, which I still haven’t played. There were rumors of this going to Xbox 360 and PS3 so I was waiting for that, but I may have to cave in and get it for the Wii.
-Tony
I spent about an hour and a half today, searching for jobs in zoology/ethology (animal behavior)/ecology located in Maryland. It was not fruitful. There were several managerial and coordination jobs, where you have to know how the science works in order to manage it, but that sounds truly awful. Those jobs, however, paid well, especially the ones for the government. However, any jobs dealing with hands-on animal stuff were severely low paying (~$20,000/year), at least for people with on a bachelor’s degree. Not only that, but these jobs were the ones for the grunts, the people who clean cages and make food. Why? Because the actual care jobs are either done for free by eager volunteers, or handled by people with PhDs.
I think I made a mistake; I’d rather be a starving artist than a starving pooper scooper. Seriously, can’t you get 20K for being, like… A librarian? Oh, no, I’m sorry, the internets tells me that they make an average of 55K (you know how that goes though). I guess I really had better get working on my novel… Annnnd then I checked that out, and it seems that that’s nearly impossible to do well with too.
Actually, maybe I WILL be a librarian. It seems you have to go to “librarian school,” probably for a year or two, then you’re in. And I can get my $40-70K. Not exactly a dream job, but not at all a bad one. I could write on the side.
I just don’t know, it’s really depressing me.
On a happier note, here’s a nice picture of the Yui Dollfie Dream!
She’s adorable, but somehow doesn’t quite capture all of her charm from the show… What do you think?
~Jen
PS: Can blogging be a job? I love to blog… XD
I had Ayrisene leave another message for Mendokusai’s Alister:
Cheer up Alister!
Wheee! Volks apparently made K-on dollfies, something I have been really wanting. Check them out, although the available pics aren’t that great:
Yui and Mio on figure.fm From this view, I like Yui <33
The bad news? They’re probably gonna cost an arm and a leg (read: more than two new resin dolls). While basic dollfie dreams are comparatively affordable, fullsets involving licensed characters cost $600-900 each, depending on what kind of items are included with them. Mio and Yui come with the guitar and uniform, so I’m guessing roughly $800. I don’t know if I can stomach paying that much for one doll; the two dolls I want to buy this year cost $720 together ($360 each).
Which leads me to my next point: I want to get into customizing Dollfie Dream heads. This involves sanding, dremeling, and painting them to change their expressions and make them unique. There are typically 2 to 10 such heads for sale on yahoo japan, and nice ones go from $100-500 ish. The heads originally cost $42. The thing is, I don’t know any customizers in America, so I’m hoping that if I try it and do okay, I will get an enthusiastic response from American dollfie dream collectors who can’t afford $800 fullsets but still want cute dollfie dreams.
We’ll see.
~Jen
Today I did something that no one with so many dolls should do: I did a complete photoshoot, taking a few pictures of each girl. I ended up with 176 photos. I did this because the sunlight was superb; I guess it was because the snow was reflecting the light? But the lighting was miraculous and I got the best pictures I have ever taken, hands down.
The only problem is that I’ve been editing, resizing, and uploading them all day, and I still have only covered about half of them @___@ So, here’s some of my favorites. (Also, be sure to check out my “dollhouse” tab, which will be updated with some of these pics).
Ayris and Lym chill out
Ayris
Lym
Arlet
Nora
~Jen
So, in case you don’t live on the East Coast, let me tell you something… My locality is expecting “areas in excess of 30 inches” of snow, with the flakes stopping sometime around Saturday night. I have NEVER seen that much snow before O____O
This means a few things:
1.) I was off of school today.
2.) I had better be off Monday, and maybe even Tuesday! Even if the roads are clear, how am I supposed to WALK to class in 30 inches of snow?!?! Haha, just the thought of it is hilarious. My typical walk is 25-30 minutes each way, with short walks from class to class between that.
3.) I didn’t get to see Tony and I am thoroughly depressed ;___;
I further frustrated myself by sewing for Himeka-chan for about four hours before realizing it was shitty and throwing the whole thing out. It actually looked fine in pieces… But just didn’t work when it got put together (ie, AFTER I had done ALL the work).
I also gave Isolde’s default wig, which pooled to the floor when she stood, a severe trim. Now it’s the approximate (relative) length of my own hair, with the same cut. Now I will actually use it from time to time; it was just too cumbersome before.
It’s all very sad. To be honest, being snowed in with Tony, possibly gaining some extra days off in the process, would have been a day dream sort of scenario. Being snowed in without him is just depressing ;___;
~Jen
But hey, that’s every post, yeah? XD
It’s official. Somewhere along the line, I have become obsessed with Dollfie Dream. I just love my Himeka-chan, and she doesn’t even have a face or personality yet (it’s a bit difficult to develop her personality when she has no facial expression painted on, although it’s clear that she’s smiling). She somehow seems more alive than my other girls, which makes no sense because she is the most cartoonish. Maybe it has to do with her body… She’s vinyl and soft, and her inner skeleton holds poses better than the elastic skeletons of resin dolls. However, her body type limits the poses she can make.
I really want to sew for her, and paint her face. I’ll chronicle any attempts I make (can chronicle be used as a verb? Ah well, I just did, so there XD).
I got a big order of doll clothes today and was disappointed… It’s all over-sized (unless the item in question is designed to be worn over-sized, I prefer form fitting clothing). I think I’ll keep most of it, but I have one item that definitely can’t be used. Hmmm. I was dressing my girls today, and it was just so exhausting, I pulled up Squishy the giant octopus, grabbed a blanket, and fell asleep with the dolls and their clothes tossed everywhere. I think I worked too hard this week XD
Got some links for you!
1.) I’ve been looking around for blogs of dollfie dream owners (I’m obsessed! What is this?! Seriously?! Blog stalking?!?!) and I found this person with Rin and Yoko. He also has an EXTREMELY impressive collection of Anime figures. I used to be kind of confused with Tony’s love of Anime figures; I thought they were cool but not all that interesting. You can’t dress them or change their eyes and hair after all ;) But I am a changed woman. You HAVE to see this guy’s set up, it’s so professional and extensive!
His blog How do You Figure?
His collection of awesomeness
2.) I adore this webcomic. The art and layout is so fresh, and it’s just… Just awesome, please read it! Hanna Is Not A Boy’s Name
Uh, that’s all for now! :D
~Jen
