Jimbofod wrote:This is an excellent idea! In fact, I'd like to see it extended to bodies, ideally with all possible skin tones and eye/hair colors. This would be a lot to amass, but an given manufacturer, should, over time, be able to put such a collection together. The ultimate would be a real-time customizer where you could switch between options (e.g. oh, I like this skin tone, but maybe with a different eye color - how would that look?). Such a tool, or even just photo collection, would make the process of choosing options much easier on the buyer. With more certainty about the options, this should translate to more sales, I should think.
This would be an excellent tool, but probably difficult (read: expensive) to do with all the different manufacturers. When you mentioned this idea, my mind jumped immediately to some sort of 3D model program that has body and face sculpts scanned in to preview different configurations. I don't doubt the technology exists to scan the various manufacturer sculpts and convert them to a digital model, but it would likely be prohibitively expensive for what is, currently, a rather niche market. In the future, I'm crossing my fingers that doll owning would be more accepted and something like this could be implemented.[/quote]
Hmm, now 3D models would be even more amazing! I was thinking even something more simple, like the ones you see when looking at options for a car (color, wheel type, etc.) that change as you select options. 3D rotation would be nice, or at least different angles (front, back, side).
Anyway, my point was that each manufacturer/vendor could make a collection of standard photos for their
own products, at minimum, since they already have access to everything. Something for multiple manufacturers would be quite ambitious and more difficult. Also, they are competitors, so this would likely never happen (maybe for a vendor, but then they might run into trouble with suppliers). I'm fine with studio shoots to feature certain models, but standardized photos for the ordering process would go a long way. For example, I have found a lot of different photos of dolls, including *fairly* standard pre-shipment photos of actual customer orders. This process could be made even more standardized and organized (section for heads, for example) to make it easier for customers to narrow down options. In this scenario, actually, artificial light might be more consistent to truly standardize manufacturer photos, even if natural lighting looks better. Many sites often have such photos, but they are taken with all different backgrounds and lighting. It's the standardization to allow direct comparison during the ordering process that is lacking, IMO.
