by SetsunaKou » Tue Apr 08, 2014 8:23 am
I own an Island Doll 1/3 male body and jointed hands. I....love the hands, they're very expressive and natural looking! In fact, I transferred them over to my favorite bjd's body because they're so nice! They are a tad loose, but maybe just my pair are that way? Either way,I do love them to bits!
As for the male 1/3 body (not 1/4, but I thought since it's ID, you might want an opinion.), first the pros:
1)It's very sturdy! WOW! So stable it creaks when you pose! :laughs: Of course, loosening the elastic would probably make him more floppy but I prefer stable, sturdy dolls rather than floppy ones.
2)The color matches very nicely to almost all company brands' 'NS' tone.
3)He seems very well made and constructed well.
Now the cons:
1)He's very stiff and the body has no personality. I know it seems strange to say a body alone would have personality---but it's true! I bought it because I needed a 65cm body for my favorite doll. (I don't know if you saw our seiyuu bjd thread, but we made 19 seiyuu portrait bjds and they all needed to be 'in scale' with each other, so the sizes mattered immensely!) Well, I needed a 65cm and thought the ID would be perfect to replace my 70cm Dollzone body for my Taniyama Kisho doll.
Well....the size is good, but, the body is so unexpressive. The waist was too thick, as well as the hips (we had to carve/sand them down a lot) and even after that, he's just a stiff! If you see a DZ body or now a Fantasydoll 69cm body or even the ResinSoul bodies, they are so gorgeous in not only their sculpts, but in their stance and posing. They've got attitude and can look so real!
The ID body, at least mine, is sort of like how Ken doll's pose. Very stiffly and unnatural. It's not horrible but it's a 1000% difference from the DZ body Kiyan-sama used to have. So after just a month on it, I kept looking and discovered that DZ makes a 65cm, too! So I promptly bought one of those and it's soooooooo much better! He's back to that sass and attitude that suited him to a 't'. (Now, I think I might want to find a 68cm DZ body for him, though because his profile was updated to about an 1" taller than before! But that's beside the point.)
However, maybe the MSD are constructed better? I don't know but the SD male leaves a lot to be desired. Good quality, sturdy but so blah and stiff posing.
I don't mean to discourage you----they are lovely and if you like one, go for it! However, if you find you aren't liking the body, too, you can always switch out the body for a more expressive type and keep the ID head. They are gorgeous! I considered some of them for our seiyuu bjd base heads because they seemed so realistic, but the one I wanted was rather on the small side, so I had to pass it up. (Since they're all a set, they needed to be all about the same size. I was really upset by a few heads that were perfect but when I got them, they were way tooooooo small or one was too big! So I had to resell them and try again. But the sculpts were almost dead on! It was a shame!)
Anyway, for me I give Island Doll 7 stars out of 10----for their quality, durability and beautiful heads. The bodies are what I'm not that enthused about at all.