Have you ever been excited about a cute blind box? Designing blind boxes is so fascinating, with their unique charm and delightful surprises. However, the design process behind them is not easy.
Figurine Blind Box Display
Angel Boy Series Family Portrait
Pop Mart Series Blind Box
Figurine blind boxes like the ones above have their unique characters, which can be cute, cool, quirky, or any other style, making them recognizable in the market. They also have background stories, including the character’s origin, special abilities, and personality traits, helping people better understand and connect with the characters. Based on the characters, the figurine designs are created, considering materials, sizes, shapes, etc., to produce the prototype, and finally, the figurine is manufactured. Therefore, relying solely on AI painting to directly create finished figurines is unrealistic. What AI painting can do is create a prototype based on the IP character and background story. So, how do we create our own figurine?
Process of Creating a Figurine Prototype
1. Choose a Base Model
Most figurine blind boxes have a cute anime style, so we should also choose a cute anime-style model. It’s best to use a 2.5D or 3D style to achieve the texture and three-dimensional feel of a blind box.
You can search for the keywords “2.5D” or “3D” on C Station to find many related models. Remember to check if the top left corner indicates it is a checkpoint format model.
2. Choose a Lora Model
A single base model won’t give us the best results, so we need to use some Lora models together to achieve the best effect.
We choose the “blindbox” Lora model, and by combining the two, we can achieve the desired effect.
3. Generate the Figurine Prototype
Let’s take our monkey-mouse as an example.
A very casual creation – Monkey-Mouse, ugly but cute.
Then we import it into ControlNet, select the Invert Colors preprocessor, and lower the weight and intervention time to give AI more freedom and let it use more imagination.
Monkey-Mouse Figurine
We then get a bunch of ugly but cute Monkey-Mouse figurine prototypes. Doesn’t it look like the real thing?
Cute Mushroom Figurine
Mushrooms, cute, no humans, white background
Cute Dinosaur Figurine
Dinosaurs, cute, no humans, white background
Summary
Using AI to design figurine blind boxes has advantages such as innovation diversity, efficiency improvement, and personalized customization. However, disadvantages include a lack of human creativity and emotion, technical limitations, and copyright issues, which may not meet market demands. AI can help designers save time and effort, but the generated designs may lack appeal and detail. Additionally, AI designs may infringe on others’ copyrights, leading to legal issues. Therefore, when using AI for design, these factors must be considered, and human designers’ creativity and expertise should be combined to ensure the final design meets market demands and resonates with consumers.
