Do you ever do sketches or notes or somesuch to plan out how a plush is going to look before you get started with the 3D side of the process, or do you just kind of work from a mental image and general idea of what you want the end product to be??

Hi there UuU

When initially designing a plush, I sketch the entire thing out. The proportions, the size, etc. This way I have a framework to build my pattern onto (once you know how to pattern you can kind of base the size of your main panel or piece off of the drawn reference). I think I actually still have my sketch for Xelloss (the template I later used for all of my big plushes) and for Rin (the orginal armature plush I made)… Though it’s funny! rin started out as me just wanting to make a scaled down plush , small and quick to make, but I was hit by a bathtub epiphany of “I wonder if——” and I decided to make a stop-mo style body. I only ended up using the head. Actually winged the entire body once the head was made without a drawing ^^;; lol

But once a basic pattern is made, I adjust everything “blindly” (this means basically that I extend or reshape parts of the pattern piece while I’m marking my fabric.  do this especially for the head. idk how obvious it is in pics but every troll head has a different facial shape depending on their design and character age)

The only thing I do in 2d when working now is to place any sculpted parts and to determine the expresion of the face. I’ll take a picture of teh blank head and then draw on it in photoshop. I think I have a few. They’re really crude, so please ignore XD

(back when I had planned to have his eyes open!)

  (like I said, these are crude. Paula had suggested a more UFUT karkat so I just scribbled a really cute-but-still wary karkat face)

the photo I took of mituna’s (very unfinished, I ended up poofing his hair up way more) head in order to do the mockup face.

hope this helps :) I definitely recommend keeping a camera and photoshop handy for something like the face.