So I’m guessing they’ve done something very smart here and didn’t just airbrush acrylic paint through a stencil.
Does anyone have any guesses for how something like this, on such a weird shaped thing as a yoyo is possible? They even got great detail in the undercut?
So funny. I was wondering the exact same thing!! No one else probably even thought about it.
I was going thru my head thinking they probably came up with their genius stencil that they manufactured themselves. Probably some form of vinyl stencil or something. Or probably something way simpler that I would never even think of.
That’s definitely one of frustrating parts about ti anodizing. I know there’s good stencils out there that would be perfect for yo-yos. I just can’t find them
this could be etched after the anodize with a 6 axis cnc machine and a very fine tool perhaps.
High voltage > etch > lower voltage?
I thought, maybe they made a shell that would perfectly incase the yoyo to spray with mask, but there aren’t any obvious edges or seams, so I was thinking maybe it had to be something else.
Then I thought like @Tempura and @Sleeper80 maybe they used laser engraving, but the pattern is anodized, and if you look at the back half of the yoyo, the pattern includes the same high voltage pink as the fade in the negative space, so it can’t be that even if it was that.
Now I wonder if they jigged up a pinstriped in the laser engraver.
And now this is where I’m stuck
The cyan main colour is a higher voltage colour than the pink. If they have a way to rotate the yoyo while increasing the voltage to get their fades, all they would need to do is use a lower starting point for the second pass.
Can masking be applied by pad printing? That would allow an intricate pattern.
The tricky thing is this looks like a massive stencil applied to a surface with compound curvature. It would be like wrapping a globe with a map and getting all the creases and seams out. And that would already be impossible on a perfect sphere let alone a shape as complex as a yoyo.
Idk much about pad printing, but I will look more into it when work is taking most of my brain.
I don’t know too much about it, but pad printing can be used to “stamp” pattens on 3D objects like bowls. A flexible, cushion-like pad presses into (or around) the object.
If there is a compatible masking agent, this seems like a way to achieve these results.
My thought;
Anodize,
Mask the Whole Yoyo,
Laser/Engrave through the mask,
Anodize.
Seems like it “could” work in my small brain.
That could be a good solution to the problem, sadly that would make a homebrew solution nearly impossible, so I hope you’re wrong 
@Pun1sh3R that’s pretty nifty thinking actually, so coating the whole yoyo in mask and then scribing the mask in some way that wouldn’t affect the yoyo. This seems way less labor intensive than any of my solutions, and it seems like something I could do at home (with drastically less detail and quality)
One thing is certain… it’s a real work of art. The fine details are just astounding. So I hesitate to postulate on this profound quandary before us, but I must insert this one obvious certainty. It’s magic… pure and simple!! The manufacturer waves a wand over each yo-yo and a whirling harp-like tone penetrates the air while sparkles of light encompass the yo-yo. When the manufacturer steps away, a purely perplexing conundrum of manufacturing remains. Pure and simple!!
If you could find a suitable masking material, something light/thin enough transferred by a stamp, I bet that a homebrew scale version is possible using similar principles.
The “pad” itself could be replaced by stamps that are custom molded to the actual yo-yo (using yet another hypothetical material ).
I completely agree with this, yyfr really seems to be on the cutting edge for colorways on “exotic materials.” Getting splash effects on stainless steel like this pic, idk if they innovated the moonrock finish that solved a decades old problem of white aluminum, but they seem to be doing it more than anyone else atm. When I see something like these kois that make me think “how?” It really is magic.
When I was really into RC, we would use a liquid mask on the lexan.
Paint it on, let dry, scribe what you wanted, peel that portion off, and paint. Rinse and repeat.
They may have been the first to apply it to yo-yos.
I looked up the process a while back and found this informative: What is Plasma Electrolytic Oxidation?
Since there wasn’t a store link yet:
I think this is some kind of decal/overlay instead of laser engraving or etch. Looking at the cup vs the outside walls, it appears that the design is larger on the curved-surface than in the concave inner-cup. This would happen if a gel-like decal was applied and the curved-shape made it stretch vs the inner cup; which would make the decal appear smaller due to concave shape making the decal shrink.
Looks like masking agent is printed onto transfer sheets in seperate sections for hub and rim to avoid creasing. Every picture of the crackle has a different alignment of rim and hub stencils.
XL has what looks like a stencil edge, but the rims sure do look amazing! I’m assuming that pad printing the masking agent was used for the cups.
The donut totally looks like someone drew the mask for each sprinkle by hand
I have no idea. What I do know is that someone is very skilled at their art. If you owned something like that during The Dark Ages… they probably would have called you a witch and burned you at the stake.
