Wow, crazy, looks like it HAS already been made in the real world! This one is very, very, cool looking. Me likes!!
That guy is AWESOME!! great work!
i’m one of the lucky few to receive one of the blizzard starcraft toys. Surprised to see it in this thread. Kudos! It’s looking great and currently decorates my worktable! 
-boom
BooMMooB, that team was great to work with. They knew exactly what they wanted, they supplied a base model, and all I had to do was clean it up and give it a little engineering love.
michael milano, thank you.
Dragon, yeah, sometimes I put in a bit of work to generate the pre-visualization. Clients who need presentation material to pitch or pre-sell their toy designs find it useful.
Cool DIY platform!
I dig the dude with the see through head. Nice. Rendered in zbrush??
J
sweeet creatures
Churm, with the visible brain, was rendered using Vray and 3ds Max.
This little guy is a quickie, named Burger. Something a little different. You might have noticed the sketch of him earlier.
Nice work! love the Monkey, is so cute…awesome.
Greetings.
Oh man. Quadshader mixing of matcaps is amazing.
Check your Private Messages, re: Toy Vinyl MatCaps…
Sorry to be pain as I realise your busy but can you check your Private Messages again please…
Regards
J
I’m soliciting questions from artists and designers who are thinking about producing a run of toys but don’t know where to start. If you have anything good questions about the process then please ask away.
I’ve been fielding a few questions over on Linkedin… here’s an example:
“Will My 3d Model’s Texture Transfer to the Printed Toy?”
We can print a full color model, but we don’t recommend it. At the end of the day, you’ll only have a single piece, colored, for display and it won’t be reproducible.
If you are interested in a full production run, painted, of your piece, then the mapped and rendered model is used as reference for building the paint application’s recipe. This is to say, we take pains to match your decoration using standard physical paint processes. These include base material casting color, airbrushed color, diluted washes, brushed details, dry-brush effects, pad printing and water transfer decals.
That’s really generous and is going to help a lot of people I’m sure, so thanks in advance
I do have a few questions of my own, as runs of toys is something I’d love to be a part of.
To my understanding, it can be pretty costly to get something printed at a good quality, not to mention having it painted after. Does this get much cheaper when producing a large quantity? Is it feasible to be able to actually make a profit getting them sold, when you’d have to pay quite a bit to have them made at all?
Is it a tough process getting a toy line of your own to be taken on by websites, stores, etc?
Is it possible to have a wax outcome, instead of vinyl so that it can be more easily prepped for bronzing or things like that?
Thanks a lot man, it’s much appreciated!
Thanks Polaroid. I’m going to try and get to the heart of each question and here we go.
Does it Cost Less to Produce More Toys?
Yes and no. Time for math fun. The total cost of a “run” of toys is the combined result of complexity, size, material, packaging, and number of units. Let’s look at a run of resin figures as an example. There are “one time” costs such as sculpting, rapid-prototyping, paint masters, and shipping. The one time costs might add up to, let’s say, $3,000. If you are producing 30, your cost of production will be, at the very least, $100 per piece. Add to that the $30 for casting, clean up, painting and packaging, and the per piece total is now $130. If you decide, instead, to produce a run of 100 units, then you’ll see the per piece cost drop to a total of $60, because the baseline is $30 and the casting etc, is still $30.
The total cost to produce 30 units is $3900. The total cost to produce 100 units is $6000. As you can see, in this example, it costs less per unit to make more units, but the total out of pocket cost for the run is higher.
If you’re an indie designer you’re selling figures directly to collectors, you’ll find yourself juggling some serious variables. Do you produce 100 units, and make a larger profit for each one, but risk not selling them all? Or do you make fewer units, with less profit, but improve your ability to clear out your stock?
Wicked little creatures love them, you should have a little on line shop selling these little creations, they would sell no problem.
Thanks, Glen.
Here’s another question from Polaroid…
Is Toy Production Profitable?
Well loved artists and designers with massive fan bases could see four figures come in from a successful run of toys. Inspired and talented designers who are just starting out might see “sushi money” come in from a successful run of toys.
There’s a complex pile of factors at play here. It’s moderately expensive and very time consuming to make a run of toys, and even more time consuming selling the result to collectors. Make too few, and the price for each toy becomes too high and fans lose interested. Make too many, and the price will come down, but the designer might get stuck with unsold product and wasted money.
lovely thread,
sweet sculpts and really interesting Q/A
thanks