Stage One: Sketch and Concept
Every Labubu edition begins with illustration — Kasing Lung working through the concept for a new colorway or thematic direction in his sketchbook and drawing practice. At this stage, the emphasis is on character expression and emotional tone rather than production specifications. Lung is asking: what does this version of the character feel like? What does it want to communicate? The production team's job comes later; at this stage, the work is purely about creative vision.
Concept illustrations for new editions go through multiple rounds of refinement before being handed to production. Elements that are easily achieved in illustration — a specific texture effect, a gradated color that moves from one tone to another — need to be evaluated for their vinyl production feasibility. Some effects translate directly; others require translation into approaches the medium can support. This evaluation process shapes which illustration concepts become figures.
The translation challenge is significant enough that dedicated character illustration and production design are treated as distinct roles in the development process. An illustrator's solution to a visual problem and an engineer's solution to the same problem are often different — the best production figures find a path that honors both, achieving the illustration's emotional intent through means that the manufacturing process can reliably reproduce.
Stage Two: Sculpting and Mold Development
Once a concept illustration is approved, the design moves into three-dimensional sculpting — traditionally in clay or wax, though digital sculpting using 3D modeling software has become increasingly common and precise. The sculptor's task is to translate Lung's two-dimensional character into a form that reads from all angles, not just the front. A character that looks compelling in a flat illustration may need significant adjustment to work as a sculpture — proportions that are intentionally exaggerated in 2D may look awkward in 3D, and vice versa.
The Labubu sculpt is particularly challenging because of the design's deliberate tension between rounded and sharp forms. Soft organic curves and precise sharp edges need to meet cleanly in the vinyl medium, which requires tight sculpting tolerances and careful mold engineering. The teeth especially require precision: they need to be sharp enough to register visually but engineered so that the mold can release them cleanly without damaging the surface.
Mold development from the approved sculpt is a multi-step engineering process involving hard mold production, initial test pours, and iterative refinement. Each test figure is compared against the approved sculpt and illustration for fidelity, with adjustments made to the mold to correct any surface detail losses or proportion shifts introduced by the vinyl casting process. This stage can involve dozens of test pieces before a final mold is approved for production.
Stage Three: Paint and Finish
Paint application is where much of the Labubu figure's character is delivered — the precise eye details, the demarcated color zones, the subtle shading that gives depth to the figure's surfaces. High-quality Labubu production uses layered paint application: base colors first, then detail layers, then any finishing treatments such as gloss or matte varnish. Each layer requires drying time before the next is applied.
Eye painting is among the most technically demanding elements. The Labubu eye involves multiple precise elements — the iris base color, the pupil, the highlight dot, often an additional shine treatment or detail line — applied in sequence to a surface that is only a few millimeters in diameter. The consistency of this detail across an entire production run (which may involve tens of thousands of figures) requires very high skill levels from the painting teams.
Special editions with non-standard finishes — metallic paints, gradated color fields, translucent effects — introduce additional complexity at this stage. Gradated colors (where one color smoothly transitions to another) are particularly challenging in vinyl production; achieving a smooth gradient at production scale requires custom spray tooling and careful calibration. When these effects are executed well, they justify the premium price points of special edition figures.
Stage Four: Quality Control and Packaging
Before any figure leaves the production facility, it goes through quality control inspection — review of surface finish for paint defects, check of sculptural details for mold imperfections, confirmation that all painted elements meet the approved standard. Figures that fail inspection are typically destroyed rather than downgraded to a secondary market, maintaining the quality consistency that collectors expect from established IPs.
Packaging design is a final stage of the creative process, not an afterthought. The box art establishes the context in which the collector first encounters the figure — the illustrations, the typography, and the structural design of the packaging all contribute to the first impression. For blind box editions, the packaging must also maintain the mystery function while communicating enough about the series that collectors can make informed purchase decisions.
The full journey from Lung's initial concept sketch to a Labubu figure in a collector's hands typically takes six to eighteen months — a timeline that surprises most people unfamiliar with art toy production. This long development cycle is why new series feel considered and coherent rather than rushed: by the time they reach collectors, every element has been reviewed and refined multiple times. The figure in your hands is the product of an enormous amount of invisible work.