Introduction
Here I will write about background and especially the beginning of our little Anthro Happy Dragon project.
The Idea
This project started back in 2015 when there was lack of anthro dragons. The idea came simply from the need to make a dragon you can carry with you to a different situations than the pool toy one.
One day I decided to draw a basic shape and colored it with my favourite Intex Grumpy dragon colors. I posted it however, for fun I added also blank dragons hoping someone suggest me a better coloring pattern.
Magically it happened and soon after I got dragon colored as the 2005 Intex Happy.
Bright colors fits the dragon much better so we decided to continue this way.
The Name
When posting the first drawing I spent quite some time creating a name of the post. I decided to use the "Abandoned Character Play." People no more taking out my favourite old dragons on water spending nice time with them. Also collectors seems to be posting almost no pictures of them anymore. The idea of the name came from trying to bring them up with a new shape as we also became an adults since the time most of them were made.
3D Model
Having the colored picture I was already dreaming about the inflatable and wanted to prepare everything to be ready to arrange the production one day. I got not much information about the actual process of ordering a custom toy that time. I decided to create a 3D model first to see how the dragon may look in details. It took a lot of time to finish the first and than the second 3D model a year later.
As a beginner in 3D SW you feel the limitations so the model was not perfect at all however finally there was something we could show more people or even the manufacturer.
The Manufacturer
Firstly we tried to contact Inflatable World which seems to be accepting custom projects from time to time, making one batch of multiple toys per year. My local friend helped me a lot when contacting them. However, they told us that anthro toys sells not much good and they already had them in stock.
I tried to make few toys with the you know which manufacturer however the quality of even much more simple toys was not good enough. Especially their ability to misunderstood everything and making it they completely wrong way without any possibility of adjusting the final shape without paying a lot of money again and again.
I still dreamed about Jetsonic. The very well known manufacturer that made my beloved big Nessie. Over the time it became harder to get toy made through them and people who did were telling us about the high prices it may cost to create the prototype.
Puffy
When times changed a bit and the price was no longer a problem I finally decided to contact Puffy. At first it looked he's open for a small run so we tried to get people interested in this project. In few months we got about 10 dragons to be hypothetically ordered which as I expected is not enough when comparing to other recent small projects.
In the autumn 2018 I finally decided to get the prototype made even if it was just one single expensive dragon. After so many years I simple wanted to see it made.
I went through an interesting process of getting the build sheet made right before Christmas and it was nice experience. That time I realized that the 3D model in not even needed and given the length of the process I finally understood why it all takes such long and why to time spent on the details is so important.
After Christmas and the long Chinese new year holiday the dream finally started getting the shape when I was getting pictures of blank prototypes from Jetsonic.
The Prototype
The most important on the way how Puffy and Jetsonic works is that you payed for the prototyping process and especially for the little adjustments before making the actual toy. It took few months but now the actually two prototypes are made. And the result is simply amazing.
