[thechris]

To do stuff like this is extremely time consuming and expensive. It takes about a day or two just to do a new mold for a pre-existing casting. The chemicals used for these processes only last about a month after you open them (and there is a lot of it) and 3 months if you don't open them. Head castings are easy enough when they're bubble free but to be honest, not a lot of people buy. Since most of us make more than 5 bucks an hour, to make 5 bucks in 3 days doesn't really sound that appealing. By the looks of these, these are mostly old school hand poured castings. Yes, a lot of times, there are bubbles in castings and you end up having to recast.

It's not much better with a plastic injection machine and the molds for those are more expensive as they usually have to be made from epoxy or tooled rather than cast because you need a hard mold to stand up to the pressure and silicone will warp and hot plastic will squirt from the seams. With one of those, you're looking at the $1000 to $10000 for even a crappy one. And even then, you need a milling machine to tool the molds which is going to be 4000+. Not to mention these things are heavy and you'll likely have to get it shipped.

Especially after you package and post the damn thing and some people include shipping in the cost. For most people, they do this "for fun" and "accolades". A faster way would be to create a larger mold to accomodate 10 or 20 heads at a time, but as I said, they don't often sell. As for the shrunken heads, he either did it chemically by casting a mold of the original head and then used shrinking agents to reduce the size of the casting and then recasted the smaller version, or he used a 3D scanner, scanned it in and then used 3D software to shrink the model and then reprinted it or retooled it.

Stuff like this is a "neat hobby" but if you have ideas of making money off of it, think again. If you ever wondered why those little companies who do small production runs like ImpossibleToys and iGear charge so much for their little add-ons, this is why. More than likely, over $20,000 was spent on equipment that they have to make back. Plus the labour required to make these things. It's WAY cheaper for a company like Mattel to do stuff like this because they already have the big giant automated factories. They just need the molds tooled and it goes through the assembly line. They know they'll sell more than 10 or 20 and their expensive equipment has already been paid for many times over.

Don't get me wrong, it's definitely neat. How do I know all this? I own a lot of this kind of equipment and it's great for hobby stuff like making extra weapons, heads, custom stands, building blocks, etc. It is however also a huge headache. I'm not surprised people are tight lipped about this process. They're already making NOTHING on it. Can you imagine if they had to compete with the rest of you?