Hybrid Doll - Tonner Head on an Urban Vita Body

A Tonner, Death Becomes Her head (Magnolia Face Sculpt) mounted on a Horsman, Urban Vita doll's body. The face up was slightly modified to clean up details around the eyes. Mica used to replicate decomposition was gently scrubbed away. A gloss finish was applied to her lips and eyes. You can see that the lips were painted incorrectly and that the eyes are not quite up to par with Tonner's usual standards. This doll is slated for a repaint!

Notice the slouch and the slight tilt to the right (doll's left) of the body. This pose looks natural. This pose - simple as it appears - cannot be replicated by a Tonner doll body. And it is this posability that inspired me to put the Tonner head on a Vita body...that and the fact that I really did not like the Vita head!

The Magnolia face sculpt is lovely despite the fact that my particular version did not receive an optimal factory face up. One of the issues I have with Tonner is that the quality of the face ups can vary from excellent to fair. This occurs in both their Tonner and Wilde Imagination lines. Nonetheless, I consider Tonner to be the gold standard for fashion dolls. One of the reasons being, that despite the occasional flawed doll, their product is uniformly outstanding.

What I love best about the Magnolia is that she's very natural looking. She's not a flawless beauty, she looks like a real woman. Her nose is a bit long and her face is a bit strong featured. She does looks very much like a real woman with a real personality, something often not seen in a more idealized face sculpt.

The Urban Vita body assumes relaxed natural looking poses. She really looks like she is on that chair. It would not be possible for any other doll in my collection to pose like this. The knees are together. The left leg is gracefully crossed behind the right. Her legs do not awkwardly elevate her thighs from the chair, because her lower legs can tilt sideways. 

This body is also extremely well proportuned. Although thinner and longer legged than a Tonner, she does not have an abnormally slim waist and oversized breasts as do some other dolls.

It was not difficult to put the Tonner head onto the Urban Vita body. The Vita's head was easily removed by gently working it off the neck. The Tonner head was softened before application by soaking it in hot water to make it pliable. It was then gently wiggled onto the neck. It is a perfect fit. Even though the Death Becomes Her head has a long, heavy mass of hair, there is no issue with unwanted tilting. If positioned fully upright, or thrown back, the head will hold its position and not slowly pull down under the weight of the hair. (A problem with Tonner heads mounted on JaimeShow bodies.)

The hands, although not as pretty as Tonner hands, are more realistically proportuned and have the most attractive and realistically rendered fingernails I have seen on a 16 inch doll. The nails would be beautiful painted to look natural or with a French manicure.

The Urban Vita's body was constructed out of flesh toned materials and then painted with flesh toned paint. In the photographs above, you can see one foot with paint and one foot after the paint had been stripped. A professional, with experience in working with vinyl, removed all of the paint from the body. You can see the poorly painted toes and the unattractive pink/grey color on the painted foot. You can also see how attractive the flesh toned vinyl is in its natural state.

Click on the pictures to see the details better.

When the doll was fully stripped, dirt residue was found in some of the seams. This residue was almost fully eliminated in the stripping process. It is appears that the painting was done after the manufacturing process was complete as a way of compensating for a dirty process. I do not know of any other manufacturer who paints their dolls' skins. 

All of the photographs of the doll shown above with the Magnolia head show the doll with its body after all the paint was removed. As you can see, the skin tone on the Vita body is very lovely and is an excellent match for the pale Death Becomes Her head. 

Please share your experiences in creating doll hybrids! Post your pics!