well he's sort of here and mostly looking like angry lumpy fish

or his head is anyway

Proving I both have and have not learned anything, I immediately reached for the shitty fabric to do my mockup with.

but BUT with the caveat that I knew it wouldn't work nicely so I had nothing to lose by trying things with it

mostly. probably

that said, it really hasn't been unpredictably hard to do so far

I've decided to follow a tutorial from sew desu ne. Many idol dolls and typical chibi plushies use this same shape format for their head shaped, I've saved a lot of ref of pieces that all look quite similar so I had a vague idea of what to look for

I'm pleasantly surprised how quickly a few darts helped me create a perfect round base

even if I did somehow accidentally sew the back of the head inside out.

whoops

of course ignoring everything I said I'd do I also immediately went about puzzling how I'd do some slight hair shaping. I figured a little piece for the bangs, the classic pines-burns and maybe a couple pieces for the back of the head I could get away eith

they don't look terribly great yet, but with some thicker fabric like fleece or felt like I planned, I think this might actually work

the body I have no template for and will simply figure out by staring at all the doll samples I've collected.

I'm a little nervous about it, mainly because it had seemed SO EASY in the past and then crashed and burned hard in my attempts

but I feel invigorated by my success so far. I just have to mess around until it works

since my mockup accidentally ended up larger than planned, I have to take care to recreate alterations I'm making for a smaller template size, but I think it's doable

tonight and tomorrow are gonna be biiiiig crafting days

please enjoy pics of some more weird stages of the process

the limp hair makes him look like a belligerent flower man or aspiring lion

and get a load of the initial football head.

thankfully my main fabric won't be nearly so stretchy, I hope his shape won't be too constrained. guess we'll seeeeee!