How do we find original creators of a sculpt?

I have been wondering this for a long time. Is there any way to ever know who sculpted some models? How many do we know? I know many artists are well known, especially of high end brands like Breyer or small companies with high quality pieces like Southlands where the artists names are promoted by the company, or ARE the company. But what about the more ubiquitous models, or the lower quality stuff? The Chinamals or the Wal-Mart brand toys, like Kid Kore? Do we ever know anything about who created those? Or the very old vintage brands like Britains, was there ever artist names attached to any of those? I would personally just love to find out who sculpted the Funrise horses specifically. Each series is so distinct and has such character, I am endlessly curious about the mind behind them. You can tell at least three different artists worked on them, possibly four (or many artists who could mimic each others style well!). Also all the tiny Play Visions, they are all really nice and there are so MANY. Who was making all those little animals? Who sculpts the Yowies? How are artists hired to create plastic animal sculptures? If a mold is stolen from another brand, like the knock-off Britians that are just everywhere, are those created by using the original figure to cast the mold or does someone look at the original and sculpt a similar one?

For vintage brands, the best way to know who sculpted the figures, is through the books some collectors write about these companies.
For modern famous companies, it is not always easy, some series are devoted to a specific sculptor and you can find the information on catalogues.
A famous example is the CollectA Horse Collection by Deborah McDermott.
We also know our Anna-Dobrowolska is sculpting Mojö Fun Horses and a few other models but as far as I can see there's no mention on Mojö Fun catalogue.
Though, Schleich horses, are sculpted by many different sculptors. The only way to find it out is gathering the information anytime it is mentioned on social media or so.
There are also those rebranded figures, best kknown example are the Maia & Borges models which can be found with many different brand names. Obviously someone sculpted them but it is hard to know.
Britains knockoffs are copied directly from the originals. Britains were manufactured also in Hong Kong and many other manufacturers just copied the models through the called "factory sculptors".
Actually, almost every figure, despite having a main sculptor, suffer always little changes when they go to the moulding process. This work is performed by a kind of "resident" sculptor who makes the needed adjustements. It is not to turnr the figure more realistic, it is just to facilitate the moulding process or to turn the figure more durable and according with the safety specifications, etc., etc.
I have no doubts Funrise is your love, you must read a book about the company. First you need to find who manufactured these horses. Earlier series are Toy Major but latter series are probably not from the same manufacturer.
Funrise was never a manufacturer and I doubt someone sculpted for them. Likely, what happened was that they designed what they wanted and the workers of the manufacturer created the moulds. I fear you will never know who they are but please don't give up.
I agree there are clearly three different styles but in all series, figures are made after the breeds what means Funrise was not using existing moulds as Play Visions but those models were produced to this specific collection.
when you compare the Funrise/Toy Major Clydesdale with the Play Visions/Toy Major Clydesdale, it is evident.
The Funrise collection could also be based in books with illustrations of horse breeds or even inspired in existing collections.

Yes, that is an interesting topic !

I can add that one of the tool makers at Bullyland made several of their models.
There was a video about him that showed him making the Polar bear , but silly me, I didn't take notes, and now I can't find it

Ohh, yes, and Marolin :  Julius Weigelt , as you can read here https://www.marolin.de/en/manufactory/history/

Ingo Koblischek made Schleich'  so called "Artist horses"

The guy who made the WWF-models for Schleich was called Helmut Diller.
His sir name is extremely funny and a little dirty in Danish

Roy Selwyn-Smith & Charles Biggs were sculptors for Britains.

Interesting topic!Helmut Diller also illustrated a number of books including a really great one on African mammals.

Taos wrote:

Interesting topic!Helmut Diller also illustrated a number of books including a really great one on African mammals.

I found some of his sculptures on the net. He was/is enormously talented.
Strange, I can not find him on wikipedia

Thanks everyone for all this information! It's awesome that we do know so many of the artists, even though there may be many more we never do. It makes sense that there are sculptors on staff working on different projects. I can imagine it might be difficult to be primarily a horse artist and then be assigned a series of birds or something, or vice versa. It's also so cool that many modern artists are in the community. It would be really neat if anyone who was one of these anonymous artists in the past ever turned up.

Roger wrote:

Funrise was never a manufacturer and I doubt someone sculpted for them. Likely, what happened was that they designed what they wanted and the workers of the manufacturer created the moulds. I fear you will never know who they are but please don't give up.

I hardly know where to begin, but it will be a piece of information I'll always be curious about!

@Jill, give me the scans of the boxes of your Funrise models and I may be able of finding the manufacturer. I love codes.

A few more sculptors.


Boris Dmitrievich
Vintage Russian figures

Brigitte Eberl:
Many Breyer, Peter Stone, Bullyland specials, WIA Horses

Dan LoRusso
Battat and many more

Dirk Wachsmuth
Several Elbrador Monsters for Schleich

Doug Watson
Lots of Safari models from many series

Eiichiro Matsumoto
Kaiyodo

Forest Rogers
Many figures, most noticiably the Carnegie collection

Greg Wenzel
Some Battat prehistoric figures

Jane Lunger:
Many G# and G4 Stablemates and several Safari horses

Jason Smit
Southlands Replicas and also some Science and Nature models

Kathleen Moody
Breyer and also a few Safari Ltd

Kazunari Araki
Many Favorite dinosaurs

Kazuya Kira
Many Kaiyodo

Kikimalou
All sorts of macaques

Matt Geiger
CollectA prehistoric figures

Sommer Prosser:
Some Breyer and Safari Ltd

Terry Norton
Some Mojö Fun models: Newer generations of the African elephant, red kangaroo, Smilodon, spinosaurus, Nile crocodile, warthog, gorillas...

Vincent Lange
Some Schleich: 2019 Schleich 42456 Trakehner Mare, 2020 Schleich 13909 Trakehner Gelding , 2021 Schleich 13915 Sorraia Mustang Stallion , Fantasy too

Vlad Konstantinov
Some Schleich prehistoric figures: Psittacosaurus, tawa, more?

WOW

...and Kikimalou ?????

Wonderful topic to recognise all those amazing artists out there- without them we wouldn't have these lovely collections!

Here a few more:

Shinobu Matsumura
Kaiyodo

George Ford
Britains

Kitty Cantrell
Peter Stones and a few Breyer

Hirokazu Tokugawa
Favorite

Michael Lovejoy
Copperfox

Sandra Garrity
Mirliton SG

Maureen Love
Breyer, HAGEN-RENAKER

SUSANNE wrote:

WOW

...and Kikimalou ?????

Isn't Kikimalou eligible?

Roger wrote:

SUSANNE wrote:

WOW

...and Kikimalou ?????

Isn't Kikimalou eligible?

Ohh, yes, of course

He made my wonderful chocolama

Wow, thank you for that list - I'm glad there are so many known names. The only Funrise packaging I have is for the cats. I don't know if that's helpful? What did you need from it? Somewhere I have a plastic case the horses came in, but I can't find it so I am not sure if it even has anything on it.   Someday when it turns up again I'll check . . .

We can't forget Anna of course! Sculpted many beautiful models for Mojo Fun!

Jill wrote:

Wow, thank you for that list - I'm glad there are so many known names. The only Funrise packaging I have is for the cats. I don't know if that's helpful? What did you need from it? Somewhere I have a plastic case the horses came in, but I can't find it so I am not sure if it even has anything on it.   Someday when it turns up again I'll check . . .

What I mean is the manufacturing batch number but as far as I can see from a good scan of a Funrise set, the brand does not provide it. This codebar apparently does not show the place where it is manufactured but the card mentions China as well as the figures.
What we see is the product number "07041". On the card I checked, the product number was 07040, also a cat themed set.
Funrise is still active, maybe you have to try to contact someone as those book writers do. They're closely connected with Walmart.

NightLioness wrote:

We can't forget Anna of course! Sculpted many beautiful models for Mojo Fun!

I mentioned Anna in my initial post. Maybe a good idea could be to update the first post with all names we can find.

Roger wrote:

Funrise was never a manufacturer and I doubt someone sculpted for them. Likely, what happened was that they designed what they wanted and the workers of the manufacturer created the moulds.

Sorry, there are surely several imprecisions in my posts but this one couldn't pass. Funrise is a manufacturer for a long time, we can find it on their website, Wikipedia, etc. I can even find it in my own posts but it seems I forgot. The fact they started the horse series with Toy Major models is something common when new companies start. It requires a lower investment and also a lower risk. It means there is a big chance that the latter series are Funrise productions.

Great to see these lists of sculptors. I wish companies told us more often who the sculptors were. It adds to the interest of the model and suggests that they took the sculpting seriously, so I don't quite understand why the sculptors remain so often anonymous. And I think it's no more than fair to acknowledge the artist.

Slightly off topic, I wonder how well the sculptors are paid. My impression is that companies often use independent artists rather than employees who work for the company full time. I hope it isn't the case that the sculptors get a meagre fee and the toy company makes the money.

Roger wrote:

Funrise is still active, maybe you have to try to contact someone as those book writers do. They're closely connected with Walmart.

That's a good idea, I found their customer service contact so maybe I can look into that.

rogerpgvg wrote:

Slightly off topic, I wonder how well the sculptors are paid. My impression is that companies often use independent artists rather than employees who work for the company full time. I hope it isn't the case that the sculptors get a meagre fee and the toy company makes the money.

I wonder that as well . . . It seems like designers and artists often do not get credited for their work once it belongs to a larger corporation, in many fields, and I think that's a shame.