davidd's Smart Dolls

[davidd]

Tell her the uninitiated could not tell the difference between the photos

I'll pass that along; maybe that will calm her down... until she thinks about it a bit more.

The key word in your comment is "uninitiated." I know from ex-perience, however, that you, personally, are a perfectionist when it comes to doll photos, and with posing in particular. I'm sure you observed that the issues with which Trivia is concerned are genuine.

First, the eyes. This doll is... or was... definitely cross-eyed. It's been an issue from Day One. It was one of the first things I noticed when I de-boxed her, actually. I thought it was something I'd get used to, and that maybe it was just the way Smart Dolls look, although it seemed to me that her eyes were crossed much more so than the dolls in the pictures on the web site. The crossed eyes have been a constant issue in photographs. The whites of the eyes are highly reflective, creating a glassy, glossy, weirdly glowing effect if there's any direct light on the eyes. But without direct light on the eyes, the eyes look dark. With the eyes as crossed as they were, straight-on portrait photos looked positively goofy, or "wonk eyed."

After last night's photo shoot and wading through, and deleting, probably a hundred photos because of either goofy or reflective eyes, I got tired of it and conducted some online research. It turns out that Smart Dolls eyes are set to have a slightly cross-eyed look on purpose! That look is considered "cute" in an anime sort of way. However, after looking at a lot of Smart Doll photos, I concluded that the cross-eyed effect on this particular doll – all Smart Doll eyes are individually set by hand – was a little bit too exaggerated.

Never having dealt with BJD-style dolls before, I didn't realize how easy it would be to reset the eyes until I read about it online. Even the Smart Doll web site, on an old blog post from 2013, says that the crossed eyes may not appeal to every owner, and describes how to change the way the eyes are set. As it turns out, the eyes are basically stuck in with a big glob of sticky clay. The call it Blu-Tac, but it's not blue, it's grey. That's the only thing that holds the eyes in place. Apparently this is the case with other BJD-style dolls, as well. Adjusting the gaze took less than two minutes: pop off the cap on the top of the head, reach in with a finger, and gently tweak the eye one way or another. I hope Triv will look a lot less goofy in the next batch of pictures; and I should have less of a problem with glare from the whites of the eyes.

As for the stiff, awkward posing, that is 100% on me. These dolls are extremely flexible with multiple points of articulation. This offers a lot of flexibility (ha!) in posing, but it also means there are a lot more points of articulation to get just right in order for the pose to look natural. So there's going to be a learning curve.

Look at the photo I was trying to emulate. The figure looks totally natural and relaxed, as though she were a real person who was surprised in the hallway by somebody with a camera. "Oh, hey! What's up?" Her shoulders look relaxed, there's an ever so subtle forward tip to her upper torso (which creates the narrow ribcage and waist appearance relative to the bust that Triv describes as "skinny" compared to her own "fat." The arms are pulled in at the shoulders, which causes the seams on the sweater to ride lower, which also emphasizes the slim build, while also suggesting a relaxed, casual attitude.

The neck angles slightly toward the lowered left (screen right) shoulder, while the head is tipped ever so subtly to the right (screen left), which creates a slightly quizzical, and oh so cute, impression.

The pelvis appears to be tilted slightly forward (a subtlety which I had not noticed until now), which serves to create a straight line down the belly, again implying slimness, and also illustrating good posture, which enhances the overall sense of fitness, health, and youth.

The hair falls over her shoulders toward the front, slightly tousled but not messy (other than a strand sticking out toward screen right), providing a sense of movement and life.

The lighting on the face and eyes is even, bringing out the "tea" skin tone, and showing detail in the eyes without making them seem overly bright or reflective.

The creases and folds in the sweater are minimal but fall in exactly the right places they would in a form-fitting sweater on a real person, again accentuating a sense of movement and life.

In my photos, lighting is a failure from the get-go. The eyes are too dark, revealing little detail. This is an effect of trying to work around the overly reflective mis-set eyes. In the second, color-enhanced torso pic, the right (screen left) eye in particular can be seen to be showing far too much white on the outside edge, while the colored iris disappears behind the nose.

Even though the eyes and face are slightly dark, the white of the tee-shirt is blown out and overex-posed.

I tried to get that neck-head "cuteness tilt" effect, but failed. In the first torso shot, the camera angle is too low, so the head is too high, which leads to the dreaded "giraffe neck" effect, and makes a doll look like a doll rather than like a little living being. The camera angle is slightly better in the second torso shot, but that perky little head tilt still isn't there.

The arms may not have been set deeply enough into the shoulder sockets, creating a wide-shouldered look, which in turn suggests more bulk (or as Triv says, makes her look fat). The angle of the arms toward the back is perhaps a bit too great, creating a stiff, awkward effect that is exacerbated by the sharp angles at the elbows.

Other than the shoulder seams of the sweater riding a bit too high in my photo as a result of the wide stance of the shoulders, I'm not too unhappy with the overall drape of the fabric relative to the figure. That's one thing that turned out more or less acceptable to my eye.

A bit of forward tilt on the pelvis might have helped create the slimming flat tummy effect, and would have helped the belt sit at a better height and angle. Izzy's belt looks like it is sitting properly, conforming to her contours in response to gravity. Triv's belt looks like a "doll prop" that isn't adjusted quite right, to the point where it almost looks out of scale. I think this is due to pelvis tilt, but it could be a result of the way I have the belt threaded. I struggled to get that belt through the belt loops.

In the photo I was trying to copy, an imaginary gently curving "close parenthesis" shaped line can be drawn from the figure's right (screen left) hip through her left (screen right) shoulder and up through the point of her chin to her right eye. In my photo, rather than being a sweeping curve, that imaginary line would need to have sharper bends, more like a pointed bracket than a parenthesis. The line misses the chin altogether. I'm beginning to suspect that "gentle curves" as opposed to "sharp angles" in the visual lines of the figure are what differentiate a "natural" pose from an "artificial" one.

It's also very possible that I am over-thinking all of this, and that the over-thinking is contributing to the stilted results. I tried to pose the figure, as opposed to kind of just setting her up in a similar stance and making subtle changes while snapping pictures. In my previous Smart Doll photos (I haven't taken very many yet, actually), I just kind of put the figure into a situation and took some pics. Those turned out, well, not great, but for the most part not "forced" looking. There is an almost "organic flow" to the Smart Doll articulation that responds well to "casual" handling.

I apologize for the long, rambling response. I'm using this opportunity to try to analyze the differences between the two photos and to figure out why one of them (not mine) looks so very much better to me than the other (meaning, my photo is the crappy one).

I know that you put a significant amount of thought and effort into the poses of your figures (until the wind or the waves knock them down for the tenth time, and then you say "screw it" and snap a few quick shots before you lose the light – oh, the joys of doll photography), so if you have any suggestions, hints, tips, observations, critiques, or outright criticisms, feel free to respond. Smart Doll photography is not coming naturally to me at all (I got my start with static Pinky Street figures), but I'm hoping to improve. While the "art" behind doll photography cannot necessarily be forced, the "science" can be learned. When the tools and techniques are mastered, the art will, in theory, emerge more easily.