Hacker News Reader

Comment by jurgenwerk | Hacker News Reader

I sell handmade sculptures of influential people and famous monuments on Etsy - https://www.etsy.com/shop/jurgenstudio. Revenue is 2-6k USD depending on the season. I hired someone part time who took over production and shipping. it's mostly passive revenue for me apart from growing the business by developing new products when I feel like it. The profit margin is around 50% after all material and labor costs are paid.

View on HN

This is super cool. Admittedly, I know nothing about creating concrete figures -- I imagine the real artistic work is in creating the mold? Can you share how that is done -- is a sculpture created and then surrounded by the mold material?

1. I hire a 3d designer to create the 3d model I want. For example, I send him a couple of photos of Alan Turing

2. After I am happy with the likeness, I 3d print it. In this phase the 3d model comes to life and it's usually quite different from what we see on the computer as a 3d model. It has something to do with the difference in perspectives in which the designer designs shapes and in which we observe the item when it's produced as a real physical shape. This is very hard to get it right. Then we repeat the steps from 1 until I am happy with the likeness and the facial expression (this can be many iterations)

3. When I have the 3d printed positive, I create a mold using silicone rubber

4. The 2-part mold is then ready to be used for hundreds of castings (I use concrete)

Out of curiosity when you say you hired someone to take over production and shipping, do you mean you outsourced it? Or like that from craigslist is producing them now?

It's a an artistic person I found who is happy to produce copies of sculptures for me to get some side income. I teached her how to do it and gave her all my molds so she can do it from her home.

Is it a safe assumption to say she is relatively local to you?

I was expecting Rihanna or Gizeh, not Zizek ans the Berghain, and I love every bit of the surprise!

Congratulations!

Exactly! Spomenik! The choices are great. Probably people who like raw concrete are not exactly Rihanna fans.

I love the selection and I'm thinking of buying a couple! Is it possible to have special requests made? Wittgenstein would be a great addition (the tryptic Nietzsche / Freud / Wittgenstein has been what forged my weltanschauung )

Thank you for your kind words. I have Wittgenstein on my TODO! Should be in the shop within a year.

An Year?

How much do you spend on likeness rights for the people or the similar thing for famous monuments?

I think it depends on how the work is produced for celebrities. If it’s a mass produced product and not one off artisan creations, OP might run into problems

They look to be making several of each person.

I imagine nobody is going to bother with them until it reaches a certain scale.

Making several is not the issue, I believe. You could make several slightly different hand crafted statuettes, it’s the mass production of one likeness that’s the issue as I understand it.

Could it be that he does not use the name under the likes of Elon and Jordan, so it could be left for interpretation?

Seneca going to be real mad.

I get that question a lot. I do not worry about it. There's plenty of similar fan art selling around and I haven't noticed any actions taken to shut them down. I wouldn't reproduce anything under a trademark (for example, Baby Yoda), and as far as I know, human faces are not trademarkable.

The description says these are made from "concrete & cement". Is that to help out with Etsy SEO?

I'm curious because I have an Etsy shop and love to talk all things about optimising the shop front. The competition is steep nowadays over there!

It's intended to immediately differentiate from shops who sell cheap plastic sculptures. My customers appreciate heavy brutalist material I use. I spend zero time optimizing SEO, my product images and descriptions are pretty crappy, so I currently don't have much advice to give in that area! What's your shop?

Do you accept commissions? For example, if I want an F1 driver sculpted?

Which one? I am planning on doing Ayrton Senna.

M Schumacher for example :) (the father!)

Are you doing this automatically? or labor is doing the sculpture?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com