Frequently asked questions.

You send a drawing or a photograph, and what happens next depends on what you ordered. It starts at Create Yours and takes about two minutes to set up.

Anything sculpted — Basic, the Kit, Hand-Painted, Signature, Legacy, Landmark — goes through an approval step. We sculpt it in 3D and send you that interpretation to look at. Nothing is printed, painted or posted until you say yes. Once you approve it, the piece is printed at 20 microns, finished the way you chose, and shipped with a Certificate of Authenticity.

Everything else skips that step, because there is no sculpture to approve. PONCHICKERS™ stickers are a print of the drawing itself — printed and posted, usually within 5 days. The PONCHI Holo Card™ is made from the drawing automatically and arrives by email in 24–48 hours. Both video games are built from the drawing and arrive by email too. For these, the drawing you upload is the last decision you make.

No. A drawing is the classic — a character your child invented, in their own lines. But we also sculpt from photographs: a person, a pet, or a building. Each one takes a different path through the studio, so you tell us which it is on the first screen and everything after that adapts.

Bold outlines, filled-in colour, and a character drawn whole rather than in pieces. Crayon, marker, pencil and paint all sculpt well. What we really need is to be able to tell what is front and what is back — a single clear view of the character beats five partial ones. If the drawing is faint, go over the outline in a darker pen before you photograph it.

Flat, in daylight, straight above it, with no flash. Fill the frame with the paper and let the edges show. Shadows and angles are what cost us detail — a phone held parallel to a page near a window beats any studio setup. If the paper is crumpled, flatten it under a book for an hour first.

Detail is welcome. Physics is the limit, not complexity. Hair-thin antennae, floating parts and paper-flat wings cannot stand up in resin at six inches tall, so our sculptors thicken or anchor them just enough to survive being held. We show you exactly what we changed in the approval step, before anything is printed.

It will be unmistakably the same character — not a mechanically exact copy. A drawing is flat and a figure is not, so someone has to decide what the back of the head looks like and how a two-dimensional arm meets a shoulder. That interpretation is the craft you are buying, and you see it and approve it before production.

Two. Keepsake is about 6 inches tall and is what most families choose. Showpiece is about 10 inches for $60 more — noticeably a display object rather than a shelf piece. Both sizes are available on every edition, including Landmark.

Eight, and the physical ones stack. PONCHI Basic ($69.99) is the sculpture itself, printed at 20 microns, in white. PONCHI Kit ($129.99) arrives primed with paints, brushes, palette, mat and a guide so your child finishes it. Hand-Painted ($229.99) is completed by a fine-arts painter and arrives in a presentation box. Signature ($339.99) adds the Ponchi Charm™ and its digital passport. Legacy ($639.99) adds the time capsule. Buildings and homes have their own edition, PONCHI Landmark™ ($549). Three of the eight are not objects at all — the PONCHI Holo Card™ ($24.99), the PONCHI Mini VIDEO game ($19.99) and PONCHI RUN 3D ($29.99) arrive by email with nothing to ship. The Holo Card takes your child’s drawing, sculpts it as a 3D collectible and sets it in foil — built from their actual artwork, never a template. It arrives in 24–48 hours; the games take about three days to build. Riding along with any drawing order, PONCHICKERS™ add two stickers to the box — the first pack free on every edition except Basic.

Two stickers. Your first pack is free on any order made from a drawing — except Basic, where they are $4.99. Extra packs are $4.99 each, and on their own they are $4.99 plus $2.99 postage. Each pack holds: one is your child’s own artwork, the other is the PONCHI mascot. Both are 9 × 7.5 cm and ship flat inside the same box as the figurine, so they add nothing to postage.

They are made with PONCHI StickMagic™ — UV DTF, printed in UV-cured ink on transfer film. That is the technology commercial signage uses: waterproof, scratch-resistant, slightly raised to the touch, and bonded to the surface rather than sitting on it. It is not the paper sticker that curls at the corner after a month.

They go on smooth, nonporous surfaces — plastic, glass, metal, sealed wood, glazed ceramic, acrylic, phone cases. Not fabric, not rough or porous surfaces. Allow 24 hours to set before washing, and hand-wash only: dishwasher heat and jets will lift the edges. Full instructions are printed on the back of every pack and at ponchi.us/ponchickers. Use under adult supervision.

Because the sticker is the drawing, they are only available on drawing orders — not on photographs.

The figure is solid cured resin, printed in layers twenty microns thin — finer than a human hair. That is what resolves individual strands of hair and stitch lines, rather than the ridged layers you may associate with 3D printing. Painted editions are finished in matte acrylics by hand. The base is a matte disc with the PONCHI™ plate on the front.

Treat a PONCHI as a display piece rather than a toy. It is a rigid resin object with small sculpted details that can break off, so it is not suitable for children under 3, and painting kits are an adult-supervised activity. We will not print a formal age grade or a safety certification on this page until the exact commercial materials have completed testing — when they have, the results will be stated here plainly. If you want something a younger child can genuinely play with, the Legacy edition includes a separate durable play figure for that reason.

Yes — that is the PONCHI Kit. It arrives primed and ready, with everything needed. One limitation: painting it yourself is only offered for original artwork. A piece sculpted from a photograph of a real person or pet arrives finished by our artists, because a likeness is unforgiving and a half-painted grandmother pleases nobody.

Both. Additional people or pets in the same piece are $140 each — a wedding couple is two sculpts, not one, and we price it honestly. For separate copies of the same character, simply order again; the sculpt already exists, so write to us before you do and we will sort out the repeat. Schools and closing-gift orders of ten or more have their own pricing.

Yes, and this is the part nobody expects. The same 3D sculpt we print can star in two browser games — a 2D runner and PONCHI Run 3D. Added to a figurine order they are $4.99, $9.99, or $12.99 for both, because the 3D character is already being made. On their own, without a figurine, they are $19.99 and $29.99, since that price includes sculpting the character from scratch. Drawings only.

Standard U.S. shipping is included in every price on the site. Expedited is a flat $20 and speeds up the carrier leg only — it does not move you up the studio queue, and we would rather say so than take the money twice. International destinations, duties and taxes are confirmed at checkout.

About six weeks for Basic and Kit, about eight weeks for the painted editions. Those clocks start when your artwork is in, the details are complete, and you have approved the 3D interpretation — not when you pay. They are good-faith estimates from a studio where a person paints every piece, not guaranteed delivery dates.

After your approval, and not before. We sculpt, you look, you say yes. If you want changes, you ask for them at that point and nothing has been printed yet.

Checkout runs on Stripe, which accepts credit and debit cards, Stripe Link, and Google Pay and Apple Pay on devices that support them. PayPal is available where enabled. Your card details are entered on Stripe's page and never touch our servers.

Yes — type it into the Gift card or Discount code box in the basket, before you pay. It is checked against our records there and then, and the amount comes off the total in front of you rather than being promised for later. Discount codes carry their own terms and expiry.

Digital gift cards are any whole amount from $5 to $1,000. A card can be spent in one go or across several orders, and whatever you do not use stays on it.

Type the code into the Already have a card? box on the gift cards page. It tells you the balance and nothing else — not who bought it, not what it has been spent on. Checking never spends any of it, and the card is not touched until an order using it is actually paid for.

Gift cards do not expire and carry no fees. They are not redeemable for cash except where the law requires it.

Most gift cards work on anything. Some are issued as part of a programme — the Chimera Project school cards, for instance — and those carry a condition that is printed on the card itself and shown again in the basket when you enter the code: $15 toward one item priced $19.99 or more.

One item means one item. Several smaller things cannot be added together to reach the threshold, so four $4.99 sticker packs do not qualify even though they total more. If nothing in your basket is eligible, the basket says so before you reach the payment step rather than after.

Yes. Tick the gift box in the basket and give the recipient's name, their email, and a message. They get an email telling them something is being made for them, who it is from, your words, and the date you asked for it — and never the price, the order number, or anything else that is yours. A present should not arrive with a receipt attached.

If you would rather they chose for themselves, a gift card does the same job and lets them pick the character and the edition.

You send the drawing like any other order. The card is made from that drawing — the character is read, sculpted in 3D and set into a foil card. It is never a template with a name dropped into it, which is why it takes hours rather than seconds.

It arrives by email, usually within 24–48 hours, as a full-resolution image attached to the message. Nothing ships. Every card is looked at before it is sent: if the lettering is not right, it waits for a person rather than going out wrong. If anything looks off when it arrives — a name, a colour, a detail — reply to that email and we remake it.

Yes, with the honest caveat that availability, duties, taxes and carrier restrictions vary by country and are confirmed at checkout. Import charges are the recipient's unless the order expressly says otherwise.

Your order page shows every piece separately, from the moment you pay: ponchi.us/order-status, with the order number from your confirmation. There is a Track this order link in that email too.

Each piece moves along its own journey, because they are not all the same kind of thing. A figurine goes through design, your approval, being made, a final check and then the post. A Holo Card is read, created and emailed. Stickers are printed and posted. You see where each one actually is — not a single bar for the whole basket.

A carrier tracking number is emailed the moment a finished parcel is handed over. That number only exists from shipment onward; before it, the order page is the honest answer.

No. Checkout opens with a short panel: log in, or carry on as a guest. Guest checkout is a real option, not a lesser one — you will never be made to register to buy a present.

What an account adds is that every order is listed in one place, with its progress, without you having to find an order number. If you are logged in, your account’s email address is filled in and locked at checkout and the order appears in your account by itself. If the receipt needs to go somewhere else — a partner, a work address — there is a Use a different email for this order option, and the order still stays in your account.

Yes, and there is nothing to claim. An order is matched to an account by the email address it was paid under — not by when the account was made. Create an account with that same address and the order is already there.

This is also the answer when an order seems to be missing: the first thing to check is which address it was paid under. Almost every “my order has vanished” turns out to be a second email address rather than a lost order. If it still is not there, email us with the order number and we will find it.

Nothing is asked of you. The drawings came with the order, so there is nothing to upload and no second form. Your confirmation email itemises what you bought, line by line, with what each one cost and when it arrives.

Anything digital starts immediately — a Holo Card is usually in your inbox within 24–48 hours. Anything sculpted waits for your approval before a thing is made. Anything printed goes straight into the post.

Up to the approval step, easily — that step exists precisely so you can. Say what you want different and the sculptor adjusts it. Once you approve and production begins, changes depend on how far along the piece is, so tell us early rather than politely waiting.

Before production starts, yes. After it starts, cancellation rights are limited, because a figure of your child's invented character cannot be resold to anyone else. The custom-order terms shown before payment are the ones that apply.

Photograph it where it sits, including the packaging, and email us within 7 days. A piece damaged in transit or that left us with a production fault is remade — we still have the sculpt, so a remake is far quicker than the original. You will not be asked to pay twice for our mistake.

Every piece is made for one family and cannot be restocked, so we do not offer change-of-mind returns once production has begun. What we do offer instead is the approval step before anything is made, and a remake if a piece arrives damaged or is not what was approved. If the finished piece does not match the interpretation you signed off, that is on us.

The child does, and nothing about ordering changes that. You grant PONCHI only the limited permission needed to review, sculpt, manufacture, document and fulfil the order you placed.

Yes. A parent or authorised guardian approves the proposed 3D interpretation before anything is manufactured. The process is parent-controlled by design, not as a formality.

As little as possible. A first name or initials is enough wherever the form allows it. We ask for a name and a date only where they are printed on the Certificate of Authenticity, and you choose what goes there.

Neither. It is a creative keepsake. It does not diagnose, treat or guarantee any psychological, developmental or academic outcome, and we will not imply otherwise.

The kits use water-based acrylics intended for craft use, with adult supervision expected. As on the product questions above, we will not publish an age grade or a safety certification until the exact commercial materials have completed testing. The instructions supplied with the kit are the ones to follow.

Ask at the approval step and the sculptor revises it. Your order terms set out which revisions are included, what counts as additional work, and the standard for a remake caused by a production error.

Only if you have given permission for that specifically. Buying a PONCHI is not consent to advertising or public display, and we do not treat it as such.

No. The school hosts the creative activity. Purchases are made privately by families, directly with PONCHI.

Never. No school staff member sees or collects payment information at any point.

No. Every student takes part in the activity and every student's work is treated the same way, whether or not a family orders anything. A programme that quietly ranks children by what their parents can spend is not one we would run.

Classroom time for the activity, a way to send the artwork to families, and a named contact. Materials, instructions and the ordering path come from us.

Minimally and separately. Families provide their own details directly to PONCHI; the school does not pass on student data for ordering purposes.

No, and be wary of anyone who does. What we can describe is what actually happens: students design a character, see it become a real object, and talk about how it was made.

Where a sponsor funds kits, they are allocated by the school under its own policy, and recipients are not identified in any PONCHI material.

Every student who takes part in a Chimera Project activity gets a $15 PONCHI gift card. It is a gift from us, not something the school or the family pays for, and every student gets the same one — participation is never affected by whether anyone buys anything.

The card is good for $15 toward one item priced $19.99 or more. It cannot be split across several smaller items. Since $15 does not cover any single qualifying item outright, a grown-up will always need to finish the payment — which is deliberate: nothing can be ordered by a child alone.

Schools receive the codes to hand out on paper, or we email them directly where a school has collected addresses for that purpose and has the consent to do so. We do not ask schools for student email addresses otherwise.