Is turning pro possible? 3D Printer to Professional Toy Designer
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- Опубликовано: 14 июл 2024
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0:00 I don't know what I don't know
2:06 Chance encounter at the LA Makerfair
4:04 Two ways this could go
5:13 Option 1 - Going it alone
7:42 Option 2 - Cheating the system
10:32 Little bit of both, maybe? 
Развлечения
So it's funny, your story kinda parallels some thoughts I've had about myself lately. I'm a game designer, which is of course software development like what you did, and after 3D printing for 7 years and starting an Etsy shop of my own, I began thinking to myself that, in an alternate life, if I never really got into game-development, I probably would have gone into toy-making. Heck, maybe that'll happen for me too one day!
Also, I just wanna say, "You are a child of God, so you're special to me." is the most wholesome sign-off to a video I think I have ever seen.
Seen few Game designers get into 3D miniature printing....
Whatever you decide to do, I will be rooting for you! I also like Andrew Sink's sentiment-- you are already a toy designer. :)
You're the best.
It’s a fun journey full of so many challenges! You got this!
This video was amazing! I'm excited for you and inspired by you! You have a great attitude towards your life and good things should come to you! Thanks for sharing!
4:55 ... hahahahahahahaahahahaa It's gonna take me some time to recover from that moment.
This is a GREAT video, sir - thank you so much for taking the time to create this and share this. We have met many independent toy creators along the years, and have been inspired by their energy, ambition, and passion towards their creations.
It's infectious.
Ok, gonna watch the rest now, but we are already very excited to see where this goes... In our experience, one's life story rarely goes as anticipated/expected, there are so many variables. and other individuals which impact you along the way. Enjoy the journal my friend!
PS - isn't it just AWESOME how some random encounters can spark such a result? That's one of the reasons why we love going to Manefaires and
'getting out there and see what happens"... and also, we hope to sometimes be that random encounter someone else experiences.
it's invigorating to take chances. and engage in that whole "Toss Spaghetti on the wall, and see what sticks" thing. "Live Genuine" and the good stuff will come. (or you will be more aware that its there) ok enough robot ranting, Best of luck, buddy! -Volt
Thank you for calling out the split screen. I worried no one was watching when that happened because no one's mentioned. It took a lot of work to do it. I had to write a script!
The synergy of getting out of your comfort zone and doing something new is... scary and powerful. Scary powerful.
Super inspiring!! Glad I stumbled onto your channel
Good luck in your new endeavor!
Start small, leverage RUclips and scale to demand.
Love your openness.... and the "kind vibes" you send out. It's refreshing. Like they say, "The tide raises all boats" - try to learn from everything... betcha making that box taught you a buncha stuff. Just keep positive and keep DOING. 11:20 to the end was just SO wholesome. GOOD STUFF. xoxo
I thought you were already a professional toy designer. 😂 Starring a personal business is difficult and risky, but totally worth it. I wish you the best.
You aren't giving yourself the credit you deserve. You are a designer. A following of 53K+ shows you have a base already. But we are also 3D printers also, so selling to us is difficult. I have made it impossible for people to buy toys for me because I CAD and print what I want. Remaking yourself can be done at any age. Heck, I just became a published author and publisher 1 Nov. Akerace Books. I never thought I'd get into 3D CAD and printing until someone needed my help. It's now patented. Do what makes you happy. Is it about the money or the voyage? As a teacher, it should always be about the journey. Best of luck with your decision. May fortune show you favor.
I have a feeling you'll find your way through all this. The great thing is you'll be learning a lot, which means you'll know at least some of what you don't know and "knowing is half the battle". I think I heard that from another Joe. 😉
I would think the route you take also depends on the size of the company you go to work for, a large company will have its own complete departments for all the tasks, from marketing, legal, customer safety, e.g. what is suitable for what age group, trend following to packaging design and much more. So you would just concentrate on design and be either guided by them or not so good be just instructed by them. Even packaging has to suit the age group, safe, and multilingual, typically with a common interior but country specific sleeve and instructions, afterall just look at the packaging all your printers and domestic items have with them. Also I would be extremely cautious about uprooting your family especially if the kids are still at local schools they like and perform well at. Best of luck, Jim.
I see I'm not the only one in this uncomfortable situation! 😀 Good luck!
I'd love to hear more about your situation.
@@3dpprofessor I've replied on Discord, too long a matter 😁
I've LEARNED THE EASYEST THING IN BRINGING A PRODUCT TO MARKET IS........CREATING/INVENTING THE PRODUCT.......IT's EVERYTHING ELSE INVOLVED WITH IT THAT's DAUNTING......
That's why idea people are a dime a dozen.
It’s a tough journey I’m sure, finding a passion that pays the bills. I think you should definitely come up with a core product set like your portfolio box, design it for injection molding, trademark and pursue some specific utility patent and work with a Chinese manufacturer to mass produce it for retail. Toy companies have 1.) marketing budgets and retail channels 2.) insanely cheap overseas manufacturing. Toys are meant to be consumables if you think of it like that. Content creation with niche products with your brand is probably the best way for a small creator to continue doing what they love without the disappointment of monopolies like Mattel owning your soul.
Maybe not the printablok set, but there might be something.
Do what you want to! Keep doing what makes you and your Family happy 😁‼️ Greatings to all, stay safe, stay awesome, healthy and share love ‼️‼️‼️
Good stuff Joe. You are definitely a smart guy, after all you're the professor... At least you profess to be the professor hahaha.
With your knowledge if you put the work in you could make it happen. The key is do you really want to put the work in and how will let it affect your family life which is obviously way more important. Good luck my friend.
I hope you find you're way into it. You're gonna be hearing the word "toyetic" a lot when you're there!
I always wanted to be a toy designer but never found my way into the industry. So I just did all by myself in my own little way.
I remember an episode of Freakazoid that introduced me to that word, and now it's just part of my lexicon.
Good video, sage advice:)
Good luck on your adventures in pursing your dreams! I would recommend considering putting some focus into marketing and market focus. Toy designers probably need to be flexible and able to design to different audiences and understand what and how to appeal to them. A good exercise might be pick a toy field you don't know and figure out something to make that targets them and if possible in a new an engaging way. That is what probably differentiates a toy maker from a toy designer in my opinion. Products you explore would probably get more traction if they were presented packaged, so keep up your vacuum forming and try to understand the qualities of design packaging too. A toy that neatly fits in a shipping box and regular space on store shelves is a real thing that designers need to consider and understand. Look at store, recognize typical packaging sizes and price points and use that to define constraints and approaches to design and you will be heads and tails ahead of the rest. Your age creates wisdom and experience that can be really highlighted with that kind of attention to detail. GL 3DPP
This is definitely something that I think could make a future video. It's a question that can definitely stand a cost/benefit analysis. I've through that a shelf worthy box for my PrintABlok BattleMecha kits would be good... on shelves. But would the increased cost of packaging result in increased sales, or only increased costs? It's something to consider.
This would be awesome to see I myself am looking at ways to monetise my prints so would love to speak with you about it at some time!
This guy is so underrated
Invent, design and sell the rights a manufacturer or toy company. Use 3D printing for prototypes and small initial batch.
That's another idea. Build up an idea big enough to sell off and profit. Might look into that.
You don't have to sell original design parts… there are many businesses just making modifications or part replacements. Car restorations, foam blaster parts, even Gunpla. Find your niche.
Yeah, not really any of them, but worth looking into I guess.
Im not knowledge enough of the industry to speak, but I get the impression that like with vfx, game development and other crative ventures people are passionate about, companies are used to abusing this passion, working them harder and for less than any other people in related industries (for instance, I as a relatively new dev would never work in game dev just because of that even though in theory Id love to make a game).
That brings me on to the second problem though.
When you work for someone else, your work is someone else's. They get the credit, profit, and ip rights and most importantly for a creative type, they get ultimate control.
That part can be soul crushing and I think it often is, and I think its part of why any former game devs or game devs who manage to find any spare time try to make it on their own, because making it on your own is far more desirable when you have control over a creative process; where no one will force you to set you creativity or morals asside because somewhere on one large yacht of 7, someone wants to see a number go up even more than it went up just 3 months ago.
I think there is luckily increasingly room between these 2 positions for instance. Many small batch fabrication setvices now exist and while still massively expensive more services are coming to life to help the uni man company exist and get all the necessary paper work done. Furthermore, as we get even more specialized, there are increasingly options to just handle delivery for you, handle qc for you, handle the web store for you.
Of course that all costs money, and no doubt youll have to put up a lot up front for an idea that may not pay off. I mean you are basically setting a flame to at least 50 grand it you do it whole heartedly, and that might not be enough to get into the black.
So what then exists out there to help you overcome that new business hump? Government grants (varying by area), small loans (lotta risk), and of course, investment.
Investment is a wildly varying field and as far as I know it carries similar risks to what the toy lady warned you about with idea theft (you can just look up Amazon's legal history to see how common it is). That being said, if you use the unfortunately rigid ip systems availible to you, you can have more security. Furthermore you can maintain control.
While if your idea is barely off of the ground investors won't be willing to give you a good enough valuation for you to maintain control (which is, I think, critical to make it not soul crushing), if you can show that people are already interested in what you have to offer, and if you can show that you have built a moat (which is a very unfortunate reality), I think you might be far closer to your dream than you think.
All it takes is convincing one rich person/entity that youll create them more money than they put in for you to get your foot deeply wedged in the door, and the more interest and growth you can show, the more close to a reality that is.
Basically, I think you've a lot of options between the 2 you presented, but if there is anything I feel is the biggest takeaway, I would be cautious about accepting a toy designer job under a company, because you have to remember they want your creativity not to make children happy or be inventive, but to maximize returns, so youll be forced to make a lot of decisions you wont like making.
Even in my short time as a professional developer, its already something I face frequently, and so Ive simply had to start building up a shield around actually caring too much about my work. Luckily though I do actually enjoy development in my spare time. Not necessarily the task itself, it's fine, but satisfaction from figuring out unique solutions and mainly satisfaction from being able to create novel items with my specialized and increasingly powerful skillset.
This is the same mentality that applies to areas that are outaide of my professional job scope like with what I can only think of calling hobbyist product design where Im slowly trying to build up my skills in CAD (pretty confident already), ee(brand new), and production processes.
Anyhow, that was all a long way of saying that I think you have many more options and maybe youve even thought of some of these but left them on the cutting room table for brevity, but I think more than ever one man companies can be things.
You bring up a lot of good points, and I'd be lying if I said I hadn't through about some of it already. While I know know they're gonna make me do their bidding and stifle my creativity, I also feel that there'd be valuable industry experience gained. Plus, you know, a regular paycheck.
But, like I said, i have some unreasonable demands, so maybe there's no chance at all. Who knows.
Honestly, I think you're already a toy designer! You've got the experience, and it would be a seamless transition for you if you were interested!
awesome. congrats!!
I have been making a lot of things so it makes me hopeful that maybe some of my designs can help me earn some more money for my family on the side
Maybe a service like slant3d that can mass produce parts for you is the way to go.
I definitely think that's an option for the future. But I do have all these 3D printers, kids who aren't doing anything, and all this filament that isn't going to use itself.
Been watching your helpful videos for some time. Think we can get some new videos with Blender 4.0? Appreciate it!
I'll have to update @blenderfor3Dprinting
Good, thanks. Some of us had software development careers without realizing anybody might do it just for fun.
Thinking outside the box: instead of mass market toys, look into making medical devices. A lot of physical therapy aids require all of the same elements as toys.
A friend of a friend made an app that allowed you to text images of an emotion. It was a flop on the consumer market because emojis came out the next year. However the app made huge waves in the neurology industry because they found that autistic people could use the tools in the app to help craft emotions that they had a hard time expressing, while at the same time help them to understand how neurotypical people form expressions.
Perhaps there is a marked for building blocks tailored to people with limited dexterity? (Or to help people rebuild manual dexterity through exercise!)
I'd start with your local university and just ask around in the biomedical department if they need a maker as an advisor.
I hear you on not making the plunge into a hyper-competitive/low reward field. People ask why I don't do game design. The answer is that I do work in game design. It just so happens the US navy pays a lot better than the board game companies.
(When I was 10 I liked to build model ships and write video games. Today I build models ships IN video games.)
But... toys.
For sure, finding a niche is key. Not sure if medial is the niche for me, though. Mostly because I have no connection to it.
@@3dpprofessor Sorry about that. I started that post thinking about how fidget spinners end up being used in physical therapy... And I think I lost the bubble. You are right, it's basically about having contacts who ring you up to ask "Hey... think you can make: XXX".
@@seanwoods647 You're right, though. Thinking outside the box is where success is found.
@@3dpprofessor 20 years ago me would never have thought "Naval Simulation" when thinking about my dream job. It just sort of happened. Though, oddly enough, by attending a programmer conference (despite being a network guy at the time) and managing to strike up a conversation with Richard Hipp, of all people. (The guy who wrote Sqlite.) Never underestimate the power of wearing the right T-shirt.
Don't be the person shipping plastic. Use your reach and audience. 3D printing is ripe for distributed manufacturing. Have people with printers sign up as local distributors and route orders through them. instant scaling.
I kind of already do that with my $5 Patreon tier, and I definitely want to leverage that to distribute and democratize the manufacturing. But, if I were making these products to sell myself, I'll bet they'd be more desirable for others to jump on and sell, too.
@@3dpprofessoryou could use slant 3d for printing your toys. They have an Etsy integration.
I was lucky - got into 3D printing after a career in computers and have never tried to make money, I have done some projects under duress for only the cost of materials, with the motto i will refund your purchase price if you are not happy
Dood. I buy a lot of reasonably expensive bootleg TMNT figures that are all just 3D printed. They are sold on preorders and are very high quality. There are also several other small shops that do the same that I buy from as well. I’m talking $200-300 figures. Just so you know 😅
Sounds like there is a market.
👍👍😎👍👍
Toy design went down the drain compared to the toys I had in the 80s and early 90s. What happened to fully articulated die cast action figures? Go get them, wishing you the best of luck
You can still get some impressive fully articulated toys these days, and with 3D printing and digital design they've only gotten better. I don't know if I would say that 3D printing is going to make it better, but it's defiantly allowed one person to do the job of... more in the past.
Hello, just found your channel. I am also in the LA area. You should move to a country with a low cost of living and run your business there. Maybe you could live off of your RUclips income.
I'll let you peek behind the curtain a bit. This month's RUclips income is higher than usual, and it's only $250. Not sure where I could life off that with a family of 6.
I can only be completely honest on the blog: www.3dpprofessor.com/2023/11/15/one-weird-question-is-changing-my-life/
You should look into slant 3ds and implement other 3d print farms for any production needs and focus on the part you enjoy designing and sharing your knowledge. Best wishes and God bless which ever way you go
@@osgoodblack6464 I definitely think farming out production is a possibility for the future. But for right now I've got all these printers and all this filament that isn't going to use itself up and some kids not doing anything.
We are slaves of "the algorithm". Creators only creates what pleases the algorithm, and viewers only get what the algorithm wants.
I think you think the algorithm is something it isn't. There's probably a whole video worth of content about this subject, but the short version is:
Like soylent green, the algorithm *is* people. RUclips shows a video to *people* then tracks their response, and based on that decides of it'll show it to more people or not. So if a video doesn't do well, it's not because the algorithm says so, but because *people* didn't love it.
ALL HAIL THE ALGORITHM!
hey when im looking through my subscribe feed, I need to know at least an idea of what the video is about if I'm gonna click on it This title and this thumbnail truly do not indicate anything about the contents of the video. There's nebulous click bait and then there's this. That's too far.
Thank you for the view and the engagement.
@@3dpprofessor that's fair. You were a click bait channel anyway. Ciao
@@oEQjet You know, the truth is I don't like having to use engagement grabbing techniques like titles and thumbnails that tease. I'd much rather just be clear. But, if I want to make RUclips videos, that's the game I have to play or I might as well not do it. Veratasium made a video called "Clickbait is Unreasonably Effective" a few years ago that, despite my protests, convinced me to stop hating and start baiting.
That said, I planned to change this video's title and thumbnail, which I did today. Maybe you'll appreciate the new title and thumbnail more.
By the way, The Italians use "Ciao" for both a greets and partings.
@@3dpprofessor Indeed ciao can be used for greets and partings. Another thing that's interesting is the concept of survivorship bias. That's when the only measurements you can take is when something survives to the point that you can take that measurement. For example, if someone ultimately engages with your channel, you can measure how effective that channel is on your population, but you can ONLY measure it based on those that survive your strategy.
ie. The only possible feedback you can get is: 1. people saying its fine.
The people that left wont tell you anything. Unless someone say... puts themselves out there.
Can I tell you something? I used to be pretty dismissive of the "Return youtube dislike" extension, because "the quality of the dislikes will be lower now that it has a much lower sample size." Until I realized: "Oh. I have much more in common with people who installed that extension than people who just left youtube on default."
In the same vein, maybe you should think about the audience you're targeting. Are you a pop sci youtuber dabbling in one weird tricks? Are you sure you're not trying to farm apples when your orchard is oranges?
@@oEQjet Oh, I would love to be in the pop-sci crowd. I never get enough of those guys. Unfortunately I've got more of a late stage Mr. Wizard or Captain Kangaroo.
Your designs are not toy designs they are 3D print optimized toy designs. This is a different nieche. No big toy company would 3D print their designs they would use mass production means like injection molding which is way cheaper and faste. Your designs are for a lower volume and try outs which is good but different from conventional design. I assume you have little experience in injection molding or other manufacturing technologies outside of 3D printing.
Keep on your current path, they toy industry is not looking for your ideas they are looking for your explotation. Stay self employed.
Maybe if I do well enough on this path, I could *change the world!*
@@3dpprofessor Maybe, but you don´t need some toy company to do so. You seem like an open friendly and smart guy, stay true to yourself, continue to invent new 3D printing stuff BUT probably do more marketing advertising and stuff like that.
You build o´blogs thingies are already a good idea, so is your sample box why not marked this stuff for instance ?
when you realize you can be tommy pickles dad
I'm not sure how this helped you realize you were Stu, but you do you.
@@3dpprofessor 🤦♂️youre tommy pickles dad in this joke statement. Your opportunity sounds exciting but i don't envy the position youre placed in with it. Meet it with prayer and discernment is all could ever really say. I'm just a random guy on the internet who says dumb things.
Better to keep political games to politics and enjoy the hobby life 😉
There's merit in that. Nothing kills the joy of a hobby more than it becoming a job.