I don’t often look at the real photos of the realborns, since I mostly determine whether I want a kit by the prototype(s) and the blank vinyl pictures.
That being said, I just looked at the pictures of the real baby Blake. OMG he is absolutely precious and I WISH that they had chosen this expression for his kit instead.
Real baby Blake is adorable. The Blake kits look like they’re perfect for alternative reborns but not much else. I get that they wanted a realborn that can take a bottle and a pacifier. But Twin A can do that without looking creepy.
Yes. I bought a lot of heads from somebody a while back and there were several Blakes. I immediately thought he would make a great alternative as well, but I lack the skill to make him an adorable realistic doll.
The real babies are always so. much more beautiful. I have played with similar software (my daughter is finishing a degree in animation and they are scanning and skinning) she showed me the process, my goodness, not an easy thing to do. Imagine with a wiggly or awake baby? I am not a technical girl so the thought of trying to make it all work gives me itchy hair.
I agree! I wanted to take both of my grand babies to get scanned for Realborns. But now I’m really glad I didn’t have that opportunity. Some of those babies got really raw deals…Blake and Harlow for sure. I would be so mad and sad if I was the momma of either of them. 
Here’s what Realborns remind me of. Remember the old photo studios like KMart, JC Penney, Sears, etc?
They always advertised 8 million photos for around $10. And when you got there they would take about 30 pics. But your package would include 8 million pics of the first pic they took. Usually it was of the baby sneezing, straining to poop, or staring off into space with a duh look. Then they included proofs of a dozen adorable pics of the baby smiling and looking at the camera. But those pics would cost you $4,345,867 for one 8x10. Therefore grandmas everywhere have a hall photo collage full of duh babies. Meanwhile the parents of those babies have 1 cute 8x10 of each baby. Those are the cherished photos with the lovely walnut frame. The other photos are in a cheap brass frame and eventually get thrown in a box in the attic or closet.
Realborn scans are like the KMart standard photos. There is a chance the baby will cooperate and get a good scan. But if not, too bad. That first pose is the only one they will produce. 
I was laughing my butt off at this 
Did this at sears with the first kid…never again. She looked like a balloon baby in drag. The snapped a photo of her with her head dropping down, she was still newborns but a big baby, the pose made her look like she was drowning in her own face. I still have one of those photos somewhere.
The software is forgiving, a lot of it is AI and can fill things in for you, you can make changes but the process is way to demanding for my limited brain cells. My daughter loves it.
I noticed at least one sculpt where the face doesn’t look symmetrical and you can tell it was because the baby was sleeping and the scan captured that part of the face that was on the blanket or pillow.
I have to give it to BB they are the only ones using this technology, it doesn’t alway work out but a lot of times it does for sure.
A company in Spain is using similar software to kinda Frankenstein babies together digitally (The avatar that everyone was angry about). I think they got dropped from that march deal, I didn’t see that avatar being marketed at all.
I am very surprised more people are not doing it, but it’s pricey software, my daughter uses Maya and you don’t even want to know what they charge a month for students to use it.
I feel a little bad about the forum input that we gave Melinda when she asked a few years back. We wanted different expressions. A yawn was one that I recall… poor Blake and poor Melinda. All that work and nobody really wanted him.
I just wish they could release more like NB Joseph awake! He has such a big lovely smile! Have they not been able to capture a single baby like that since? Or was a lot more time put into editing that one? Regardless I’d love more like that
I loved that yawning baby, I only painted one and it was awesome.
I think they are all mostly awesome, I love them, the open eyed ones are not the best of them, but Realborns are just mind blowing.
If I were the queen of Realborns I would:
-Have more variation in regards to ethnicity.
-Reuse the best limbs when appropriate, that would save time, money and resources. I would give the option to mix and match? This way we wouldn’t have double fisted babies, those odd deep cuts for creases.
-Hire a talented sculptor to create an open eyed look that is both realistic and pleasing. My feel is that this is a very challenging thing to accomplish.
-I love that these are based on actual babies but I wish I didn’t see the real baby, the vinyl will never come close, it always feel a little bit like a let down. I would just surprise with the new realborn.
-Slimmer bodies
-Less fine creasing and deep creasing.
-maybe have a trusted committee of artists that could look at proposed new kit and give feedback before it goes into production?
(I know BB is big, lots of talented people and they have been doing this a long time, but sometimes feed back from outside of that closed circle would be helpful? Fresh eyes and ideas, its just information)
I enjoy painting these kits a lot.
Do you have a picture of your Blake? If so, I’d love to see it.
I agree that having more eyes take a look at the kits pre-production would be a great idea.
a similar expression was created for Miranda awake Realborn® Miranda Awake (19" Reborn Doll Kit) - Bountiful Baby (DP Creations LLC),
There was a lot of negative feedback for the Miranda awake kit and many, ‘why can’t they just leave the babies expression alone?’ ‘they should only use the expressions that baby makes when they scan them.’ and we did this only to have just as many complaints about how every baby was exactly the same.
Not really a win- win situation when everyone has a different opinion about what they want in a Realborn kit. The door had always been open for more variety for the Realborns. Some kits are hits and others are misses. Not every baby translates artistically from their preciousness into a vinyl reproduction. Factories also have an effect on the depth of detail on final products as we have learned with the short time we had multiple factories.
It’s never just one persons effort or decision and there are variables that effect the final product.
Every real baby is precious, every Realborn may not be. And beauty is in the eye of the beholder:)
For the record we have not had any parents feel disappointed with the outcome of their baby’s replica, often times we let mothers see the final before it is completed. Though I have had to give warnings to mothers to not look at the forum comments. And if they are going to read them, reminding them that the criticism of the Realborn kit is not an attack on the real baby’s looks.
I don’t believe Realborn Blake got a ‘raw deal’, There was an opportunity during scanning where he opened his mouth in his sleep the way babies do when they have a binky, the scans were good enough to work with. Blake was the first reborn kit that could take a full size real baby binky without alterations. This sleepy kiddo also did the same expression in his photos, in a way I think he wanted to be a more unique kit:)
Love this. Love that you all are cool with “hey this is hit or miss” you are right, the photos of the real babies are always sweetness.
You have a very difficult job Melinda, and you do it very well. This post is not an attack on you at all. If anything, it’s more about us artists thinking we know what we want and then not liking what we’ve asked you for.
Seems we have put you in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. I’m sorry for that.
It didn’t help Blakes unique expression that he ended up being poured at the other factory. Many people didn’t want to deal with the hard and unpredictable vinyl.
I think that the biggest reason I posted this photo originally is because it was such a precious expression, reminiscent of a realborn version of Marcus Kitagawa.
It wasn’t fair of me to state that he got a raw deal as that made it sound like a direct attack on @BBMelinda . That’s never how it was intended.
He’s just such a cute baby and as far as sales go, it makes no business sense to continue to carry his kit.
