Outsourcing a Vinyl Toy — Concept and Prototyping
Inspiration
Lately I’ve been getting into soft vinyl toys, also known as Sofubi. Companies like Kidrobot and independent artists like Rampage Toys produce these stylish, Japanese-influenced art toys, and I’ve grown intrigued by the aesthetics and the production processes. That’s why I’ve decided to have my own vinyl toy produced and dive into the world of Sofubi.
Let me start with a disclaimer: I am not a very talented sculptor or graphic designer, and my own attempts to sketch, sculpt, and mold are too amateurish to share in most cases. Luckily, I read a MAKE: Magazine article that chronicles working with a manufacturer to have a toy produced based on vector illustrations and drawings. What follows is my attempt to do the same.
Finding a Manufacturer
My search for a suitable company started by contacting some Sofubi artists that I follow on Instagram. They specialize in taking sculptures made by artists, making wax copies of them, and ultimately making metal molds suitable for vinyl casting. I won’t name names, but the two Japanese producers I received quotes from were charging a little bit (read: “a lot”) more than I could afford to pour into a hobby.
My next thought was that I could have the prototype produced in China. I used Alibaba’s search engine of companies to find Chinese toy companies and requested quotes from 8 of the most promising. I lucked out and found one who had worked on projects just like mine and was willing to prototype my design for a pretty nominal price.
Choosing a Character
One of my favorite cartoon shows ever is Mission Hill, a sarcastic pre-9/11 show about hipsters in a fictional cosmopolis. The show only lasted for a single season on the WB and was largely overshadowed by their new hit show “Dawson’s Creek” (shudders), but they still have a loyal cadre of fanatics including a Twitter account that appears to have gone mostly dark in 2014.
Jim Kuback, a monotone ne’er-do-well voiced by Brian Posehn, is my favorite character, and I have always wanted a Mission Hill action figure. Since Mission Hill lasted all of 13 episodes before getting the axe, the show had neither the lifespan nor the success to have toys produced. With that in mind, Jim was my top choice.
Legal Concerns
Before you even say it, I know — “It sounds like you’re about to get a an official-looking letter from a copyright lawyer”. I was hoping to get by with the excuse that my design was in 3 dimensions and was distinct from the show version and was therefore not an infringement, but a scholarly paper by Isaac Lew on Toy Copyright told me I was dead wrong. In fact, Lew tells us that the first ever copyright lawsuit revolving around a toy was a bootleg Betty Boop toy based on the cartoon. The toy maker lost the suit, and the case set a precedent for future lawsuits.
I hired a lawyer in Portland that specializes in intellectual property rights with a track record in toy copyrights to try and secure the license from WB. Unfortunately, they were unable to get WB to respond to faxes, emails, or phone calls. So, for now this will be a one-of-a-kind prototype that I’ll keep to myself.
Concept Sketches and Vectors
Using screenshots from the Mission Hill DVD as reference, I roughed in two sofubi-style sketches of Jim in a notebook — one from the front and one from the side. Using Adobe Illustrator and a scanned picture of the sketches, I traced over my concept art using the pen tool and a few others. After experimenting with some shading, I decided against it and fired off my unshaded concept to the toy company.
Rough Sculptures and Customer Critiques
The manufacturer’s site says they will take the concept art, rough in a sculpt of the character, and send pictures of it to the customer for tweaks and changes. They do not put a limit on how many revisions can be made. When I vectorized my sketch and sent it, I did not think they’d interpret my concept so exactly. The first round of sculptures followed my shoddy vectors too closely, and they managed to capture all of the asymmetrical parts and idiosyncrasies in clay form.
There are several things wrong with this sculpture: my sketch made the back of his hair look like a rat tail, and they sculpted it accordingly. The face is rounder on his right side and square on his left side, and his ears are different shapes — all consequences staying faithful to my sketch. There are also some changes to be made to the profile view: his chin beard points downward, his nose is down-turned and not pointy enough, and the beard is untextured. Once again — mostly my bad.
I drew over the sculpture pictures with Illustrator to show the changes I wanted to make for the next iteration and sent them to the representative at the toy company.
The company rep sent me round 2 of the progress pictures, and Jim started taking shape. There were still several things that I felt needed to be addressed, and the company was great at turning my critiques into a 3-D representation (not to mention extremely fast!).
There were 4 rounds of revisions in total, and each set of notes explained what I wanted changed. By the time the fourth round of revisions was done, they had sculpted something that felt very Jim-esque, and I was satisfied. Below are galleries of rounds 3 and 4:
After round 4 of the revisions it was time to give my seal of approval and sign off on the sculpture phase.
Coloring and Detailing the Plastic Prototype
The next step on the manufacturer’s side is to smooth out the sculpture as much as possible and mold it in silicone. Using the silicone mold, they make a polyurethane casting and paint it using the color scheme I supply. Although I already colored the initial drawing, the colors were hexadecimal color codes; when something has to be painted by the manufacturer, they need Pantone colors. Below is the diagram of Pantone colors I sent the toy maker:
The logo that I sent them was a screen capture from the DVD, and it was not nearly high-resolution enough. They understandably rejected it and asked me to send one in Adobe Illustrator (.ai) format. I traced the screenshot in Illustrator as closely as I could and sent it off
I assumed they would use this .ai file as a reference and hand-paint the logo onto his shirt. What they did instead was much more professional — they laser-engraved it into a thin piece of acrylic and embedded it right into Jim’s chest! This makes painting much easier, as they can now smear black paint over the logo and wipe the excess away, leaving the “mac” logo full of paint. The technique is known as dry brushing.
Even though I had already signed off on the sculpture phase, I noticed that there was still an issue with his mouth; it was much more open on his left side.
The detailing phase was complete after that, and they prepared for painting. At this point there was radio silence for several days, but I was resting assured they were meticulously painting the figure. After 4 days, I got back the paint results, and they were good — almost.
When I created the toy concept sketches in 2-D, I needed to outline certain features with a black border to match the show’s style and provide contrast. The Mission Hill characters are heavily inked to match the comic books that inspired them, e.g. Eightball and HATE Comics. That inking can have unexpected consequences when it gets translated into 3-D, especially when you assume your manufacturer is also a part-time psychic. That’s why the first paint job of Jim made him look like he was wearing eyeliner
Obviously the eyeliner look had to be changed. I used Illustrator to simulate a few different colors around the eye, but they all looked evil, and they all gave the appearance that Jim had “seen some shit”. I settled on 2 possible options — one light and one dark (but not black) — and told the manufacturer to use his best judgment. My wife Karlie also pointed out that he’d look less afraid if his pupils were bigger, so I popped that detail into the request.
They heeded my request, and the results came back much better this time. Jim was one step closer to completion.
The eyes looked much better, but this time I noticed a pretty big glare on his forehead in the crook of his unibrow. I didn’t have access to Illustrator at the time, so I casually mentioned the spot on his forehead, and the manufacturer sent me a picture asking for clarification.
My contact left me in radio silence for about a week after this until i re-inquired about the state of Jim’s forehead. He said, “There is no problem with Jim’s forehead. It was just a glare problem” and sent a quick, one-off shot of Jim with a matte finish. He then offered to ship it to me so I could see it in person. It arrived one week later on a day that marked roughly the five-week mark since I had started the prototyping process.
Conclusion
Working with a seasoned toy company to get from sketch to prototype has some serious advantages. They sculpted in 12 days what would have taken me several months, and mine would have ended up a lower-quality model. They also made a bubble-free silicone mold and a bubble-free casting of the sculpture, which would require me to purchase a $1,000 pressure pot kit to do at home. Finally, their paint application process would be very hard to duplicate in a home workshop setting without an airbrush and some serious practice.
The feeling of holding a one-of-a-kind prototype in my hand after a month of back and forth with the manufacturer is indescribable. Many of the details I had nitpicked to such a granular level are too small to even notice with the naked eye at the 10 centimeter scale I chose. His texture, gesture, and color combine to make a toy that looks professional and desirable. Compared to the hair-pulling experiences of sculpting, molding, and painting it myself, this was money well spent.
