Tmall TV, an online Chinese language show about consumer products, had a special episode on Transformers where they toured Hasbro's head office, got a history lesson of the brand by John Warden and were shown how the toys were made. Hasbro chose this as the occasion to officially reveal Voyager Optimus Prime from Transformers: The Last Knight by showing the process it took to make him. You can see screenshots of the show below where they go through all the steps, from design, to grey model, to finished sample.
The grey model shown is of the same toy and it is actually hand crafted by sculptors (before the mold for mass release is done). This model is then photographed and digitally painted.
The sample shown is confirmed to be according to the colours chosen by the designers. While anything can happen, this seems to indeed be the final colouring of the toy.
The conversion was said to take about 15 steps (with some steps being truncated as one for this estimate).
John Warden then said that Hasbro was currently working on 160 transformers toys, at different stages of course. While that seems like a big number, it would include redecos, one steps and one step redecos.
We then got a look at how an artist designs a toy, using Soundwave as an example.
The special ended with a shot of the entire Transformers team (which seems to have as many women as men, a pleasant surprise) while an exchange of gifts were. Tmall got a custom Year of the Horse Optimus Prime while Hasbro got a 5 meter long piece of art showing many different versions of Optimus and Megatron.
You can watch the entire
hour long episode here, or simply take a gander at the screenshots below. Enjoy!