Every step of the process of making a set of figures has options and choices that affect the cost. Possibly the best way to answer this question would be with a flowchart, but for now let’s pick one option and stick with it.
Let’s consider these are 4″ resin figures, my personal favorite scale for indie art toys, and that we’ll go the digital sculpt to rapid-prototype route, packaging will be bags with lovely header cards.
The cost of sculpting ranges from $600 to $800 to $1200 depending on size, detail, realism, engineering, celebrity likeness (so tough!), props, number of heads, etc.
The cost of rapid-prototyping ranges from $400 to $600 to $800 depending on size, size, size, material, resolution and size.
For the suggested 4″ figure, of middling complexity, the approximate cost to get out the gate is $1100.
This means that if you produce a run of 100 pieces, each piece has base cost of $11. If you produce 200, the base cost is $5.5, and if you produce, perhaps, 400 over the next 3 years… the base cost is $2.25 per piece.
On top of the base cost, there’s the cost of producing the molds and the cost of casting, painting, packaging, and shipping. This is a shade more complicated to estimate, but here’s a ballpark figure. If you make your own molds and pull your own casts, and do the cleanup, painting, bagging, and boxing yourself, the overall per unit production cost will be strictly for materials and your time as an artist. A silicone mold will last for 30 top notch pulls, and each mold will use $75 worth of silicone and each pull will use $5 worth of materials.
For a “do-it-yourself” run of 100, it’s approximately $725 worth of materials. Add the $11 per piece base cost and your blank is $18.25. Now this cost can vary, depending on where you buy materials, and how experienced you are making molds and pouring resin.
For painting… line up 10 at a time, and paint them in batches, it will take a full, busy, messy, insane day, but you’ll have a set of 10. The more you prep, clean up and paint at a time, the less time it takes per piece. But it will always be time-consuming and tedious and awesome fun.
Yes you’ll have to design and print, cut and fold your own header cards.
So now your in it for supplies and time, with a cost of approximately $20 per piece and an INCREDIBLY ROUGHLY ESTIMATED two hours of prep, clean up, painting, and packaging per piece… and you want to make a starvation rate of $15 an hour? Okay, sell your figures to your collector fanbase for $50.
Yes, there’s the magic number, all estimated and back-of-the-enveloped, $50. This covers materials and time. As you can see, making art toys isn’t a way to get rich. But it is a good way to build a fanbase, have some fun, get some exposure, and explore creativity.
If you’d like to make your own line of toys, we’d love to help you get the ball rolling.
It’s easy, just contact us by clicking this link.