Almost all of the uncertainty in a commissioned piece sits in one place: the distance between the animal you can picture and the object that does not exist yet. The approval step closes that distance at the point where closing it is cheapest — before anything is printed.
What the approval step is
On the Studio Edition, a sculptor models your pet in ZBrush from the photographs you send. Before the file goes to the printer, and before any colour is applied, it is rendered as a plain white model and sent to you as a rotating view. You watch the head turn. You see the whole thing at once, from every side, with nothing painted on it to distract the eye.
It is easier to describe as a stage in the process than as a feature, because that is what it is. There is a decision attached to it, and the decision belongs to you.
What you are sent
A link, usually, with the model turning on a white background, and a short set of stills from the main angles in case the viewer is awkward on your device. No colour, no coat pattern, no eye detail. Just the form: the volume of the chest, the set of the legs, the shape of the skull, the way the ears sit.
That plainness is deliberate. Colour is persuasive. A model with a roughly correct grey coat and two brown eyes will read as your dog even when the proportions are off, and the point of this stage is to look at proportions. Stripping the colour off makes the form much harder to ignore.
You are also sent a line or two about what to look at, which is often more useful than the model itself. The photo guide explains what the studio looks for in a reference picture; the approval note does the same job in reverse.
What you are judging
Four things, and only four.
- Proportion. Is the body the right length for the legs. Is the head the right size for the body. Most corrections at this stage are proportion corrections.
- Pose. Is this the sit, the stand or the head tilt you asked for. A pose that is nearly right is the most common thing to flag.
- The head. The shape of the muzzle, the brow, the fall of the cheek. This is the part people recognise first.
- The ears. Set, tilt, and whether one falls differently from the other. If you take one thing from this article, look at the ears.
What you are not judging at this stage is colour. There is none yet. Coat colour, markings and eyes come later, at the painting stage, and a correction asked for then is a correction to paint rather than to a file. If you are expecting a finished, painted animal turning on the screen, the white model will come as a disappointment, and it is worth knowing that in advance.
What can still change
At the white-model stage, almost anything. The file is digital, so a change is a change to the file. Ears moved, muzzle shortened, weight shifted from one leg to another, tail curled differently. None of it costs material, and most of it costs a sculptor an hour or two.
Once the piece is printed, the arithmetic changes. Printed resin cannot be stretched or thinned. A change after printing means either sculpting over the surface, which is slow and slightly visible, or printing the piece again, which means starting the print, the finishing and the painting from the beginning. That is why the studio asks you to answer at the white-model stage rather than after it.
Two rounds of changes are free, at the approval stage and again at the photograph approval before dispatch. From the third round onward, further changes are charged by the time they take.
If you say nothing
Nothing goes ahead. The file does not enter the print queue, and the piece is not started.
That is a deliberate choice and it carries a cost, which is only fair to state. Silence does not stop the studio’s clock in your favour: a fortnight spent not answering is a fortnight added to a lead time that already runs six to fourteen weeks. The studio will follow up by email, and again after that, and if something has happened in your life that makes the whole thing difficult, saying so is enough — the order can be held. We would rather hold a piece than guess at your animal.
What we will not do is treat silence as approval. There is a version of this process where a studio sends the white model, hears nothing, and prints anyway, and it is faster for everybody. It also produces the occasional piece that nobody wanted, which is a poor trade.
Do you need it?
Honestly, most people do not need it — and most people, given the choice, still want it.
From the studio’s own experience, the great majority of white models are approved on the first pass, with a note along the lines of “yes, that is him”. The step exists for the minority of pieces where something is off: a head slightly too large, a pose that reads as a different animal, a tail that is wrong in a way that is hard to explain and easy to see. For that minority it is the difference between a piece you like and a piece you keep meaning to say something about.
The 3D Figurine Essential does not include the approval stage. It is faster and it costs less, and it goes from your photographs straight into modelling, printing and painting, with the standard photograph approval at the end. Plenty of people choose it and are glad of it. What they give up is the chance to correct the shape before it becomes physical.
The Studio Edition is the one to choose if the animal is complicated — an unusual cross, a distinctive head, a pose you care about — or if you simply know that you will want to look before it is made. It is from $799, it includes the approval stage, and the process page sets out the whole sequence from photographs to dispatch.
If you are not sure which of the two suits you, send the photographs first. How much there is to get wrong is usually visible in the pictures, and it is easier to advise once we have seen them.
One letter a month
Occasional notes from the studio: new pieces, what we are working on, and the questions customers ask most. No offers, and you can leave at any time.
