Making The Resin Designer Toy Project - Patrick Wong Illustration

2/2/2015
MakingtheResinDesignerToyProject|PatrickWongIllustration
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Advanced DIY Vinyl Toy
Customizing
November 7, 2013 Inspired by awesome toy process articles like Paul Shihs and Bryan
Brutherfords posts on creating their own designer toy from scratch, I decided that I would begin
documenting my experiences on bringing my project to life. For the sake of simplicity and due to
the fact I dont consistently blog my work as it is, I will post everything into this one page
cronologically.
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Design Brief: To create a limited run of designer toys from scratch out of resin including:
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Control Drawings
Ideation + Iteration
Sculpting
Silicone Casting
Building Roto Molding Equipment.
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Resin Toy Project
The Hook: Frozen Krylon will appeal to gra ti and street art collectors who want an art toy rooted
in old school gra ti. Unlike urban vinyl toys designed by outsiders that only imitate the aesthetics
of gra ti art culture, Frozen Krylon goes deeper to take up what gra ti writers had to do before
the most recent availability of art spray paint mix custom colors. In the previous generation of
Krylon spray paint, artists needed to freeze a can upside-down to reduce the interior air pressure
and then connect it with another high pressure can to insert an amount of a di erent color. Once
thawed the new mixed color could be shaken up producing a custom color that no one else had.
The above brief sets some of the parameters I have for the project and what has been really helpful
is taking Paul Budnitzs Skillshare class Beautiful Plastic: Creating a Great Designer Toy. As
Kidrobots founder, it was really great to learn some of the processes and criteria they used to use
at Kidrobot for creating designer toys. Paul also was nice enough to address one of my questions
on marketing in great detail.
The toy for this project is not related to that class though and I plan to re ne my Frozen Krylon
concept for production. I will be posting any plans or templates here as well to share, such as the
diagrams for the rotocasting rig I plan to build.
November 11, 2013 So moving ahead with the resin toy project, I began with a recent custom sixinch Fatcap that embodied the character. The nal custom was largely sculpted and what remained
of the original Kidrobot gure was nothing more than (Dunny) arms and a large fatcap head. In this
process, Im revisiting a lot of the choices I previously made such as the color palette and overall
spirit of the character.
http://www.patrickwong.com/makingtheresindesignertoyproject/#.VM2gI2iG8YM
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This update is largely catching up with where I am in my design process. Below were the 3
preliminary roughs I used around this idea of mixing paint.
Now moving away from the six-inch Fatcap, I did some brainstorming around what my gure would
look like if it were built from scratch. One thing that I didnt like about the Kidrobot platform was its
giant German fatcap as its head. Who really uses these anyways? My sketches looked at two kinds
of spray caps: German outline 2 and a New York fat cap tips real gra ti writers would actually
use.
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Once some basic explorations were made, I scanned and resized the small sketch to print out on a
new sheet of paper. I sat down and began sketching the turnaround of the character, making notes
of some of the details I had in mind. As you can see, I plan to include another ice platform and for
the arms to articulate. So far this will stand in for my control drawing until I create the vector art in
illustrator.
While working on the design, I began ordering some of the parts I needed to create my DIY
rotocasting machine. The tutorial Im following to build the project can be found here
http://solsylva.com/cnc/rotomolder.shtml.
I ordered all the gears and pulleys I needed that I couldnt buy locally. Based on what I ordered
online and the parts I expect to nd in the local hardware store, this rig should cost about $150 in
total to build. The motor will be using is a rotisserie grill motor that spins at about 5 RPM. I suspect
that I will also have a at platform instead of the clamped version shown above.
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November 13, 2013 Over the last few days, I have been working on making some RTV molds for
the 1st time. Im using a large casting kit purchased from my local art store, but when I go into
production I plan on using Smooth-On Oomoo. In the process photos below there is one in a half
completed molds. The 2nd mold is still curing and the 1st one has a slight overlap where the 2
pieces joined. Im not sure yet if that is going to make a failure in the cast, but well see later on. I
need to buy a digital scale because this casting kit from Alumilite uses a 10 to 1 ratio and right now
Im more or less guessing. These 2 molds are tests for me as I havent done any mold making
before and it would be great to be able to get a few good casts for another resin toy project.
The parts I ordered online arrived in total today and what is left should be able to be found easily
around town. The photo below is what I needed based on the tutorial link I mentioned above. The
price I paid breaks down to something like this: Rotisserie motor $42 from Ebay
2 sets A 1M 4-Y24030 30 Teeth, 24DP / Commercial Miter Gear Total Invoice from sdp-si.com
$39.15
A 6G 3-110037 .200 (XL) Pitch, 110 Teeth, 3/8 Wide Single Sided Urethane Belt with Polyester
Cords
A 6Z 3-14DF03710 .200 (XL) Pitch, 14 Teeth, 0.313 Bore, Aluminum Insert, Polycarbonate Timing
Pulley for 0.375 Wide Belt
A 6Z 3-28DF03710 .200 (XL) Pitch, 28 Teeth, 0.313 Bore, Aluminum Insert, Polycarbonate Timing
Pulley for 0.375 Wide Belt
8 Ball Bearings 8mm 608ZZ $14 from Ebay
Total: $95.15
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The only substitution I had to make was to order a 14 teeth timing pulley instead of the 15 teeth
version used in the tutorial website. The SDP-SI website was sold out of that model and I didnt
want to wait for it to get back ordered. In the tutorial, 15 teeth was used to make an asymmetrical
ratio between the outer rotation (larger frame) and inner rotation (smaller frame). I chose to
substitute for 14 teeth will will simply mean that the inner frame will rotate exactly twice as many
times as the outer.
November 20, 2013 After running out of Alumilite RTV silicone rubber I went out looking for
Oomoo, a silicone rubber that I heard a lot about for people casting their own art projects. With
some luck, I was able to source a local industrial supply company that sells Smooth-On products
which will come in handy when I go into full production mode. I havent made any progress with my
Frozen Krylon gure, but this small resin project has become a good testing ground for my larger
project. From making molds and casts of the arms Im getting and gauge on where to put
ventilation veins in the mold to avoid getting trapped air pockets. This of course will be di erent for
the rotocast versions.
I ended up investing in a proper scale to measure both resin and silicone. The Oomoo 30 is a 1:1
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ratio so it was easy to mix even without the scale. In the above photo, I am making the 1st half of
this mini gure.
Using the last ounces of my Alumilite kit, I managed to cast 3 decent copies of my mini gure. I
photographed it next to a Kidrobot Dunny for some comparison in scale. Each of these did require
some cleanup to remove the ashing at the seams of the mold as well as at the pour hole. Because
Im not pressure casting, as you can see slightly in the photographs, there are some small air
bubbles. I wasnt sure if I would be able to paint over all of them, but after priming and painting
none of them seemed very noticeable.
November 27, 2013 A bit of update with the progress of things. I havent had time to make any
headway on the Frozen Krylon design or build on the roto machine as Ive been nishing custom
vinyl pieces for a few shows and collectors. What had started as a trial of my resin casting kit has
taken up a lot of my time creatively these days the boxy gure I previewed earlier. I began
sculpting it precisely because it would be small and rectangular. I thought it would be a starting
point with little risk of failure and cost. Working on it now, it seems to have taken over this resin toy
project at least for now as I want to produce a full edition of these. Im not sure yet whether they
will be hollow or solid resin, but Ive been looking ahead on how I might setup this gure for
production. As for Frozen Krylon, I will get back to it once I get past this one.
Above was the control drawing I had been using to create the designer toy, complete with the
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series logo Beats and Resin Toys website logo. After a series of discussions with friends and
previewing the design on my Instagram, I want to rst produce this one and then 9 more machines
to create a genealogy of sorts. When I was sculpting the gure out of basswood and apoxie sculpt, I
had gured I could trap areas of color by making a seam (the indents separating one area from
another) making painting faster and more forgiving in case I wasnt quite straight. Below you can
see the three prototypes I made fully painted with small record accessories. I primed them with
Montana Plastic Primer, painted with medium body acrylic and createx airbrush paint, and nally
varnished with Montana Gold Matte Varnish. This is basically the steps I use for making a custom
one of a kind designer toy, but for the full edition I will need to streamline the process because I
dont think this will be the best way. Im thinking of making a new original where the legs are
separate, so I can tint the resin teal for the arms and legs eliminating the need to paint those areas.
Not sure yet because that would be a lot of work also producing a new model and molds. But really
my concern is the strength of the paint adhesion to the resin.
So heres the powder coating technique I plan to use for the production versions of the MPC60s. I
grabbed this from Smooth-Ons website FAQ of getting paint to properly adhere to resin.
PowderCoatingTechniquePowdercoatingthemoldwithUreFil7,babypowderor
talcfollowingtheapplicationofareleaseagent.Hereishowitworks
Priortocastingtheresin,EaseRelease200isappliedtothemoldfollowedbyapowder
coatingofUreFil7.
Anairhoseisusedtoblowanyexcesspowderfromthemold.Theurethaneresinisthen
castintothemold.
Thecastingcomesoutofthemoldwithadry,mattefinish.Anautobodyprimeris
applied,followedbyanacrylicpaintandfinallyanacrylicsealer.Themajoradvantage
topowdercoatingisthatthereisnoreleaseagenttoremovewhenthecastingcomesout
ofthemold.Modelscanbeimmediatelyprimedandpainted.
I will likely be using this method for my nal gures (for at least the bodies of the MPC60s) mainly
because I think the paint will stay on the strongest this way. Although in my prototype they stay on
just ne, my concern is over time and contact with other designer toys for the paint to rub o .
January 1, 2014 Quick update: Ive been pretty busy through December and havent had a lot of
time to work on this project. Over the holidays I had some free time to cast some copies of the
MPC60 designer toy. Heres the mold I have been using so far. Its not perfect, but has been working
so far and I believe Ill need to make at least one more to complete my project.
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Im powder coating the copies as you can see below with baby powder. The casts arent perfect, but
essentially bubble-free in comparison to the Alumilite resin I had used in the prototypes I made.
Ive switched to Smooth-on 300 for these copies.
April 6, 2014 I had this project on the back burner for a long time and decided to release it so I
can move on to other things without having to worry about this. So I dropped a few previews on
Instagram and made an edition size of 30. I contacted via mentions (@) everyone on my preview list
that these were going to be available soon. After I sent out a news release to introduce the project
to the blogs that cover toys.
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After 5 days the limited-edition of 30 were sold out. I had many e-mails about if I would make extra
for people after they sold and of course I told them no because this toy gure in this colorway was
a limited run art piece and not mass-produced product. With the success of the 1st sampler
(sampling drum machine) in the beats series, I will soon be working on the next in the lineage that I
have mapped out.
Above youll see the way I decided to package the gure. He comes in a padded craft jewelry box
with a numbered card and record accessory. The box is sealed with shrink wrap before its mailed
out. I had some issues with the arms breaking during shipping so the nal pieces were wrapped in
bubble wrap with the arms packed separately so they couldnt snap o if banged from side. This
was a great project to work on and great learning experience for me as an artist. I had a lot of help
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getting the project out there to social media via shares and reposts by producers interested in my
project. I could not be more thankful for those who did help generate interest in the pieces and I
hope the people that own this work enjoyed it in their studios and homes.
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IMAGES ON THIS SITE ARE 2014 PATRICK WONG. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
FOLLOW: @PATRICKWONGART ON TWITTER AND INSTAGRAM.
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