In my opinion the realborns have changed. There are now features that I have to work around with creative shading, highlighting, and whatever other little tricks I’ve learned over the years. Never had to do all of this with a realborn before… if other artists feel the same to the extent that it negatively impacts sales, the powers that be at BB will know it. The numbers don’t lie.
It’s possible that I am in the minority here. Perhaps exaggerated features, extra eye creases, deeper creases, larger lips ect. help make kits more marketable. If that’s the case, they have to do what they have to do. It’s about whatever people want to buy.
I’m not too worried. There will still be a kit here and there that will just be really appealing regardless. I have two sweet little Pearls on my table now and still want to paint Alma.
Totally agree with you. I have been so disappointed with most of the new kits I have purchased Kelsey and she totally has disappointed me when painted, looks nothing like the real baby. I have stripped Michael and I am painting him now. To me he looks a lot like Darren as well as several of the other new dolls. I appreciate BB so much, but still with not having much or any choices it’s been a difficult six months as I am sure for them as well.
I don’t think they’re intentionally altered the baby’s features all that much. If you watch the video on how they make realborn kits, it shows they need to put together tons of scans and digitally ‘fill in gaps’ in those scans. They have to alter scans, for example to smooth out places where there’s hair, or you’d end up with a very bumpy kit.
I wonder if maybe they got someone else to edit the scans. The big lips never used to be an issue, but now several new kits have them.
Hmmmmm. There’s definitely a lot of valid points made here. As for Realborn Pearl, there are photos that show her deep eye creases, the bright pink and white setup from the side view photo specifically
as for some of the others, there are definitely babies that did not have as many good scans so some of the detail is based on ‘reference’ photos that we do not post publically (theses photos show the babies close up detail and are not always flattering to the real baby, nor are they ‘pretty’ photos)
Another thing is there is no way for us to ‘make’ or ‘force’ a baby to make the same expression during scanning and then again during photos, definitely the case for Realborn Bryson(that little guy just sucked his lip in for all the photos, but he puckered up for scanning and it was adorable I just had to keep it the way it was:). We go with the expression that is in the scan, even if we don’t have any photos of the baby making the exact same face. If scans didn’t turn out, if a baby is too fussy, or for many number of reasons if there are areas where there is not good scan detail then those areas will be based off of the photos. The position the baby is in during scanning and during photos can sometimes change the way certain features look as well, and they are definitely not in the same positions when it comes to scanning them and taking photos of them.
not sure if that helps, or if I explained it very well.
Lol BB can’t win! A few years ago there was a thread or 2 where people were complaining that all the realborns looked alike and there was no personality or uniqueness in them. People were asking for more unique and diverse realborns. Now that the realborns are definitely different from one another, people are complaining that there’s too MUCH uniqueness lol.
Lol, yeah i don’t expect everyone to like every single baby and there are definitely ones that I was so proud of but looking back on them there are so many things I would fix if I could:)
One thing to keep in mind is that as Melinda mentioned, the scans and the photographs are done at separate times. When I take the photographs, I don’t even know which faces the baby made for the scanning session, so there is no way for me to even know what to aim for. For the most part, the expressions are obviously chosen by the baby, but they can be guided a little depending on the position baby is in and a few other photographer tricks.
I have the task of choosing a photo for the certificate, the photo that looks the most like the real baby. Sometimes it is hard to pick a photo that looks exactly like the scans. There have been a time or two where I have even asked Melinda to show me the original scans, because I couldn’t find a photo that looked like them. Sure enough, the baby did make that expression. I just didn’t capture the exact same expression during the photo session.
We have thought about showing less real baby photos before when cases like this come up, but people just really like to see the real babies. Also, how else would I get to show everyone all of the newborn photos I take? LOL Christopher’s session is one of the older ones, but Bryson’s photos are a better example of what my work looks like now. One of my favorite more recent sessions I did was Canon’s (and of course Sage’s, but we aren’t ready to show all of hers yet). Canon and Sage had an unfair advantage, because I got to take photos whenever I felt like it. They ended up with WAY more photos than the average baby does. This is only a fraction of Canon’s photos too, I edited 175 photos from 14 different photography setups. Needless to say, I spent pretty much my whole maternity leave taking and editing photos: canon asleep - Bountiful Baby (DP Creations LLC)
