Anonymous at Mon, 16 Jan 2023 12:29:48 UTC No. 933601

>>933596
>How hard is the whole process of sculpting

You could learn it in a year if you were committed.

>3D printing

Once you know how to sculpt this isn't much extra

>painting

Not worth learning if you're just gonna paint one for promo shots and ship unpainted kits. Pay a pro painter to do it, you'll get better results and more sales because of them.

>mass producing

Hard. Expensive. Only gonna be viable for the most popular models.

Anonymous at Mon, 16 Jan 2023 22:45:38 UTC No. 933684

>>933596
...........link to that chunners statue pls

Anonymous at Mon, 16 Jan 2023 23:50:03 UTC No. 933688

>>933596
They're still bootlegs. Get caught and get sued. It's unlikely but if you get big it's a possibility.

Anonymous at Wed, 18 Jan 2023 06:43:03 UTC No. 933860

As someone who has experience doing this not with anime girls but with religious statues, the hardest part is gonna be getting a good painter.

Anonymous at Fri, 20 Jan 2023 20:56:18 UTC No. 934270

>>933601
You cant learn without artistic talent

Anonymous at Tue, 24 Jan 2023 01:07:49 UTC No. 934650

>>934270
motivation issue

Anonymous at Tue, 24 Jan 2023 01:41:37 UTC No. 934651

>>934270
>artistic talent
This doesn't exist.

Anonymous at Tue, 24 Jan 2023 09:19:59 UTC No. 934692

>>934651
Cope

Anonymous at Sun, 29 Jan 2023 01:16:58 UTC No. 935232

>>933684
It's trash, legs are sticks

Anonymous at Sun, 29 Jan 2023 23:00:21 UTC No. 935333

>>933684
>>935232
Not that anon, but does someone have the sauce for that Chun-Li?

Anonymous at Tue, 31 Jan 2023 08:57:54 UTC No. 935471

>>933596
I tried this and theres no way to make it work with current 3D printing technology. Its just waay too slow and theres a high chance of fucking it up. For example a small piece could take 11 hours to make and because the printing area is so small you may need to make 10 pieces.

So making one statue will take you days and if you make a mistake you will have to start again.

The raw materials are expensive. The resin, the transparent film, etc. Time + Money means its difficult to mass produce.

3D printing is also not as precise and the resin is hard and britle. It will look and feel like a cheap bootleg compared to a resinnfigure.

Painting, and this is the biggest problem. You need massive amounts of skill and time to hand paint the figure and make it look high quality. This is not a process you can mass produce to make money.

So due to these reasons and more, 3D printing figures wont work as a side hussle. Its way too involved and expensive to mass produce and you wont get the quality of a real Anime figure.

The reason theyre so expensive is that theyre made by hand by hundreds of tallented artists. You cant just hit print and go.

3D printing is a good hobby, just not a good bussiness.

Anonymous at Tue, 31 Jan 2023 13:13:52 UTC No. 935489

>>933596

OP, I'm currently in the process of doing this exact thing and I'm going to throw you a bone because you didn't do a deep dive on this.

>manufacturing through the molding process
Completely forget about it.
If you don't already own an injection molding business then this part of the business is a massive money and time sink. Furthermore you have to deal with: material safety regulations, supplies issues, packaging, employees, accounting, taxes, etc.

>manufacturing through 3D printing
Completely forget about it.
While it's way easier than the previous method the material cost is 10x or 30x higher and production cannot be increased so as it can be distributed worldwide.
Let's say you buy 100 printing machines and you can print 100 units per day. That's reasonably 2000 units per month (also counting print failures). That's 24 000 units per year. UV Resin costs around 60$ per Kg. A conservative estimate is 10$ of material per unit. This means that per year you will have to spend 240 000$ per year on raw material alone.
If factor in the packaging and distribution cost you will have to spend 500 000$ per year before even making a dime.
Naturally not all units will sell. So let's say you manage to sell 75% of your stuff at 30$ a pop. That means 540 000$ which translates to 40 000$ in profit PER YEAR.

>selling the 3D sculpts directly
This is the key to this business.
There are several Patreon businesses that just sell the 3D models. Some are making 20-50 000$ PER MONTH doing this.
Here's the kicker:
>is it illegal to manufacture and sell bootleg shit?
YES.
>is it illegal to sell digital assets of characters you don't own?
YES.
>is it illegal to give away for free digital assets of characters you don't own?
NO.

Patreon is a subscription service. The product you're offering is not a 3D model but a subscription to a blog where you post free 3D models. It's a legal workaround which is going to ANNIHILATE the toy/statue industry in a few years.

Anonymous at Tue, 31 Jan 2023 13:22:57 UTC No. 935490

>>933596
cont >>935489

The only bottleneck I see is the 3D printing industry which is still in its infancy but evolving quite rapidly. In about 5 years we will get cheap (~2000$) 10 million color 3D printers. This removes the need for manufacturing at a large scale, trained labor (like painters, engineers, etc), distribution, and packaging. Once people can reliably print their own toys at home they will be less likely to pay 30-100$ for something from a store, and more likely to spend 2-5$ for a digital model. In other words expect in 5 years for the toy/statue industry to 20x in scale but not in cost/worth meaning there's going to more than enough pie to go around for any competent sculptor.

Anonymous at Tue, 31 Jan 2023 14:26:18 UTC No. 935497

>>935471
3d printing is only for the prototyping stage,
you should make molds for a large production after clean and prepare the printed parts

Anonymous at Wed, 1 Feb 2023 12:27:22 UTC No. 935618

>>935489
Patreon creators are already taxed as if they're selling the things that subscribers reasonably expect to receive as part of their subscription. It isn't a loophole so much as a situation where companies don't currently care enough to stop them.

Anonymous at Wed, 1 Feb 2023 14:17:03 UTC No. 935632

>>935618
No.
This is retarded because that would make Patreon directly responsible for the quality of the service provided and if the service is provided in the first place. This opens them up to litigation. Not only that but if what you said were true, the contract you would have to sign in order to create a Patreon account would be very lengthy and detailed with penalties and such. Which is not the case.

There are Patreon accounts out there which make tens of thousands of dollars per month on Marvel and DC, stuff which they have zero rights to. This means hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in profit. This is more than they make selling comics lol.

Stop talking shit.

Anonymous at Wed, 1 Feb 2023 21:30:35 UTC No. 935680

>>935632
In any jurisdiction where patreon operates you are legally considered to be selling the thing that your patrons receive by subscribing. That isn't my opinion; it says so on the fucking website. "You give me money and I just so happen to give you this thing for free *wink*" is the oldest, most obvious loophole in existence and as such, doesn't actually exist.

Anonymous at Wed, 1 Feb 2023 22:46:22 UTC No. 935693

>>935680
>In any jurisdiction where patreon operates you are legally considered to be selling the thing that your patrons receive by subscribing.

You do realize that people have patreons where they get paid yet post nothing?

>That isn't my opinion; it says so on the fucking website.

Patreon ToS:
"A creator is someone who creates a membership page on Patreon to engage with patrons who have purchased memberships from Patreon to support the creator’s creations."

LMAO, nice opinion there, bud

>You give me money and I just so happen to give you this thing for free *wink*" is the oldest, most obvious loophole in existence and as such, doesn't actually exist.

https://www.patreon.com/eastman
aprox 7000$/month

https://www.patreon.com/3dWicked
aprox 20 000 - 27 000$ /month

https://www.patreon.com/NomnomFigures
aprox 26 000 - 78 000$ /month

>doesn't actually exist

L
M
A
O

Anonymous at Wed, 1 Feb 2023 23:01:42 UTC No. 935695

>>935693
>You do realize that people have patreons where they get paid yet post nothing?

Yeah, then they're not selling anything, so there's no problem.

>Completely unrelated passage from ToS

>Random patreons
Those people are paying tax as if they're selling digital goods. Patreon takes the sales tax automatically. They completely acknowledge that what patreon creators do is sell goods.

Just because reality doesn't match your genius "if I pretend I'm doing it for free I can legally violate copyright" idea doesn't mean you can't operate a business this way. Clearly these people are already successful. What I'm saying is if the rights holders decided to put a stop to it these people would be absolutely fucked.

Anonymous at Thu, 2 Feb 2023 02:09:12 UTC No. 935707

>>935695
>Yeah, then they're not selling anything, so there's no problem.

epic self-pwn
Glad you agree with me now.

>They completely acknowledge that what patreon creators do is sell goods.
Meanwhile Patreon's ToS:
"A creator is someone who creates a membership page on Patreon to engage with patrons who have purchased memberships from Patreon to SUPPORT the creator’s creations."

I'm so sorry that you're dumb. It's such a burden to some people.

Anonymous at Thu, 2 Feb 2023 02:18:54 UTC No. 935708

>>935707
Come back to this thread to apologise when you actually set up a Patreon and you go through the process of having to itemise the value of each reward tier and declare what proportion of a given tier's rewards constitute digital goods for sales tax calculations.

One of us runs a relatively successful patreon already, and it isn't you.

Anonymous at Sun, 5 Feb 2023 11:13:16 UTC No. 936023

>>935708
>Come back to this thread to apologise when you actually set up a Patreon and you go through the process of having to itemise the value of each reward tier and declare what proportion of a given tier's rewards constitute digital goods for sales tax calculations.

It always amazes me how americans are cucked by a simple line of text

You're literally creating your own problem because you're defining your own service as "digital goods" and then complain about how you have then to pay taxes.

Did it ever occur to your smalltime brain to define your business as a "subscription to a blog in which I post FREE digital goods"? You can't tax shit you give out for free, bro.

You're welcome.

Anonymous at Sun, 12 Feb 2023 12:37:49 UTC No. 936765

>>934270
>autistic talent
Ftfy

Anonymous at Sun, 12 Feb 2023 17:45:17 UTC No. 936788

>>933596
how much are those