This is the question that stops most orders, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a page of reassurance. The category is not one product at one price. The first useful thing is to separate what is actually being sold.
Three different products, one search term
Search for a custom figurine from photo and you will be shown at least three unrelated things, sorted by nothing in particular. Custom figurines are sold as a single category, and they are not one.
A printed reproduction. Your photograph is printed onto a flat panel, a cushion or a low relief, often from a file sent straight to a machine. A marketplace listing at around $29 is the usual shape of it, and it arrives in days. It is your animal’s photograph applied to an object. There is nothing dishonest about that; it is simply not a sculpture.
A mass-produced figurine. A stock mould of a breed or a type, painted in a factory and sold in numbers. Some are charming. What one cannot be is your animal specifically, because the mould was made before your animal was photographed. A mass-produced figurine is a figurine of a dog, not of your dog.
A commissioned piece. One animal, your photographs, one person doing the work over weeks. The whole of the object is decided by the pictures you send.
These are not versions of each other at three price points. The cheap one is not a smaller, simpler example of the expensive one. They are different products that happen to share a search term, and comparing them on price alone is comparing a poster with a painting.
What you are actually paying for
A commissioned piece is priced mostly by time, and that time cannot be scaled, batched or recovered.
The work is done once. There is no stock and no production run. Your piece begins when a person reads your photographs, and it is built for one animal. Nothing can be started earlier, because nothing exists before your order.
Then the hours. A resin piece is modelled in ZBrush against your photographs, printed in full colour, then finished and hand-painted. A felt piece is built up in merino wool with a barbed needle, layer on layer, until the fibre holds — a single coat is needle stroke after needle stroke, and it cannot be hurried. Silver is engraved and polished at the bench. There is no version of these steps that runs twice as fast.
And the elapsed time, which is the part buyers find hardest to price fairly. A commission runs six to fourteen weeks. Some of that is bench work and some of it is curing, printing runs and the two-way exchange in the middle. Standard shipping then adds ten to fifteen business days. You are not paying for a queue; you are paying for work that has a floor under it.
The studio is small and the pieces are made by hand, which is the whole reason the number is what it is.
Why size and changes move the price
Two things move the price more than anything else.
Size. More material, more printing, more surface to finish and paint, more bench hours, a wider base and a larger box. The increase tracks the work rather than the shelf space, which is why the step between two sizes often surprises people.
Changes. Every commission includes two rounds of changes free. In practice: you are sent photographs of the finished piece before it ships, you say what you would like adjusted, and the studio does it. Twice, at no extra cost.
From the third round onward, further changes are charged by the time they take. That is not a penalty; it is the only honest way to price something measured in hours. The two free rounds are usually where a piece is settled, because by then both sides are looking at the same photographs and the same finished object. When more really is needed — a marking nobody noticed, an angle that reads differently in daylight — it is quoted before it is done.
The one thing that cannot be adjusted afterwards is the reference angle. Once the form has been built around a photograph, changing the pose means starting again, which is why that conversation belongs at the start. If you want the full sequence, including the 360° white model approval on the Studio Edition before anything is printed, how it works sets it out step by step.
Where our prices sit
For completeness, the range, since a number is more useful than a principle.
- Silver Memorial Pendant — from $219
- Mini Keepsake — from $329
- 3D Figurine Essential — from $329
- 3D Printed Pet Statue — from $329
- Framed Pet Portrait — from $379, to $899
- Plush Replica — from $579
- Full-Body Sculpture — from $749
- 3D Figurine Studio Edition — from $799, to $1,449
The bottom of the range is the pendant: a solid sterling silver disc with a portrait engraved into it, and the least expensive way to have something made for one animal rather than chosen from a shelf.
The top of the range is not there to be aspired to. The Studio Edition is larger, modelled in more detail, and includes a 360° white model for approval before anything is printed, along with hand-finishing and a numbered certificate. It also takes the longest and holds the most bench time of anything the studio makes. If none of that is what you want, it is not the right piece. A bigger object is not a better one, and the Studio Edition is not the standard piece with more added to it.
The full list is in the shop, with sizes and what each piece is designed to sit on.
When a cheaper piece is the right answer
Here is the honest part, and it is not a sales technique.
If what you want is a printed keepsake at a low price, that is a good purchase and this is not it. A marketplace listing at around $29 will give you a photograph of your dog on an object you can hold, for the price of a takeaway meal, and it will arrive in days. If that is the thing you want, buy it, and this page has no argument with you. What it will not be is the object itself. It will be a picture of your dog on something else, which is a real and often entirely sufficient thing to want.
A commissioned piece is worth the money in one specific case: when you want the object itself to be the thing. Not a record of the animal, not a photograph applied to a surface, but a made object that exists in the room and is looked at. If that distinction does not matter to you, the price will never feel justified, and it should not be paid.
On buying for someone else. If the piece is a gift, spend less. A memorial piece is chosen by the person who lost the animal, and that is the whole difficulty with choosing one on somebody else’s behalf: it is a decision about a particular animal and a particular room. A pendant, a small keepsake, or an ordinary gift and an afternoon of your time will usually land better than a four-figure object the recipient did not pick. The memorial pieces are worth reading about before you decide which of those you are buying.
If you are still unsure, the studio will say plainly whether the piece is the right answer for your situation, and it will say so before anything is paid.
The Silver Memorial Pendant is where to start if you want a commissioned piece and not a four-figure one. From $219, made for one animal from your photographs, in sterling silver, over six to fourteen weeks. It is a small object. It is also the real thing rather than a version of it, which is the only question this page was ever about.
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.
