Silicon mold making at the Fort (video)

As part of the sofubi toy development process, silicon molds are created using the original sculpted parts. This is done one body part at a time, so if a toy has four points of articulation (for example, at the head, left arm, right arm, and waist), it will have five body parts, each of which goes through the same steps on its way from sculpt to sofubi.

After a silicon mold is made, it's used to create a wax proto.That is the final piece of the puzzle, used to make the copper molds which are then used to make sofubi parts.

Ricky Wilson (Velocitron), shown in the above video, has been creating sofubi toys for years. In fact, he's one of the first to help overseas indy designers get characters like Kusugon and Ollie made into sofubi toys. In the video, which I shot the other day at the Fort (where Luke Rook (Lulubell/Grody Shogun) also plies his craft) Ricky is pouring silicon into state of the art mold frames. (I've been told others use Legos and other materials/barriers to hold the silicon in.) You can see little bumps sticking up in each of the frames. Those are the sculpted parts, which are slowly being covered with silicon.