Today I wanted to give you all a peek behind the scenes to see what went into producing a product like the Scratch Fury Maquette. Working with the talented people at Gensen figures was an interesting process. They are located in China and so our emails would pass each other in the night. It felt like designing a statue via the floating stone tablet from the B.C. cartoon. You would send your notes out into the ocean, go to sleep and hope that when you woke up you had a response.
The first step was designing the figure itself. Gensen required a turnaround of the figure: a drawing showing it from all sides. This step was the biggest challenge for me creatively. Not only do you have to draw something that doesn’t exist yet from all angles, you have to take careful consideration how some things that work well in 2D will translate into 3D. It took a while, but here’s the final drawing I sent Gensen.
After sending in the sketch, the waiting process began. In china, Gensen’s sculptors were busy trying to recreate what I had put on paper into a fully realized 3D clay sculpture. They had nothing to go on but my notes and drawings. After a couple of weeks, Gensen sent me some pictures of the first sculpt.
It was a promising first attempt. Scratch’s body and his wrench were dead on, but the face was off. It looked squished. Clearly the sculptors had misinterpreted my three-quarters view when preparing it. It also became clear to us that trying to interpret the one-sided mouths I draw in the comic strip wouldn’t work well in 3D. My brother suggested duplicating the open bite on both sides. It was time to send back some very detailed notes and corrections, so I decided to take their picture into Photoshop and alter it to look the way I wanted it. I also added very specific details to make sure there was no margin for error.
Chris, our contact at Gensen sent me an email thanking me for the detailed notes and assured me that all the changes could be made very easily and that they now had a better understanding of what I was looking for. So the waiting began again. This is so important to remember if you ever take on this process. You can not give these guys too many notes and drawings. Ours paid off, as the next pictures we got were perfect. They nailed the concept!
Chris asked us to now send a color guide to help them paint the prototype. They wanted pantone colors and I didn’t have a Pantone book. Now, Photoshop will let you know the Pantone color of any hue you choose from the color picker, but I was worried what I saw on the screen would not translate in the real world. Pantone swatch books are really expensive, and I didn’t want to spend the money for picking four colors. So…I went down to the local art store and I looked at theirs and just made notes. I know, right? Pretty pathetic, but hey, times are tough and I wanted the colors to be right.
We went with a simple black detachable base. It was important to me that the figure could come off the base for one reason: so fans could bring JUST the base to cons for me to sign. This way, you don’t risk your figure getting damaged on a plane trip just to get a signature.
Once Gensen had my color guide and base specifications, they took a final photo of the prototype for my approval and sent it to me via air-mail.
I hope you got a kick out of seeing what went into making the Scratch Maquette. We’re still taking orders for this limited edition item. Once I send in the orders to Gensen to being production, we’ll never be making this particular resin figure again. If you want to be sure you get one, place you order now.
