Jun
11th
2021
Another day, another plush: Miss C · 10:52pm Jun 11th, 2021
I, uh... I don't actually know what "Miss C" stands for, the commissioner didn't tell me. Not much to say about this one, really.
It turned out fine, I guess? Not one of my ground-breaking projects, but run-of-the-mill stuff helps pay bills too, so it's always welcome (speaking of which, I guess I should take my computer science MS and go get a real job. Any takers hiring right now? God I hate job-hunting 
)
Upcoming projects I'm definitely doing, set in stone:
- Nyx (no, not that Nyx)
- Scarlet and Wafflebottom (my first non-pony commissions, interestingly)
- Two m-m-m-myyyyystery plushies! Going to a buyer at EFNW who will remain safely anonymous until after the items are delivered to their ultimate recipients, for reasons. This will make sense later, I swear...
Upcoming projects that are more flexible in timeframe:
- An unnamed batpony OC (pending payment)
- Rarity (maybe? A commissioner is interested but not committed through payment for this one yet)
- Emerald Hues (personal project!)
- Sunburst (my OC, not the canon character, also a personal project)
- Trixie (not for a specific commission, just because I wanted to make Trixie, probably gonna be for sale once she's done)
- Sunset Shimmer (again not a specific commission, just a plushie I wanted to make, don't know if she's for sale or not yet)
And my ultimate goal right now: Princess Celestia!
Aperture Science -- We do what we must because we can.
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Not only is that the Aperture Science logo, but I'm sure the "C" is for Caroline.
(*)
Winston, if you haven't played the Portal games, do you need to be gifted them on Steam?
And best of luck to you on the job hunt. Those suck.
:0
PLUSHIE
Glad it sounds like the plushcrafting is going well for you. :)
How difficult was it to get to this stage? Going from square one to professionally making these plushies? I'm curious.
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To be honest, it was less about starting from square one and more about starting from the right background of preexisting skills that came together.
Sewing, surprisingly, is one of the easiest parts. I learned enough about sewing (both hand-sewing and machine sewing) to get started by just watching a few YouTube videos. The machine itself isn't too expensive, either, at least at the entry level; I use a single combination sewing/embroidering machine for everything, and it only cost about $300 (although that was before the Covid lockdown and the current chip shortage and I see the same machine being sold for $400-600 now - might come back down again once semiconductor supply chains are sorted out in a year or so).
Machine embroidering (as opposed to sewing) is a little bit trickier. That's where a bunch of other skills have to synergistically come together if you want to be good at it. Sort of. I'll explain:
There's two routes to machine embroidering.
1. You can hand over $1,000+ (and up to several thousands or even tens of thousands at the commercial-grade level) for proprietary software that automates significant chunks of design and digitizing conversion work. This is the route most people take because it's easy. You only really have to know how to use one piece of software, and it handles all the technical stuff for you so that you don't need to know much about what you're doing. It's all about lowering the bar to entry (at a price, of course).
2. You can use free open-source software. This is what I did. It's the less common route because you need to have more technical knowledge and preexisting skills with graphics software in general. I needed to learn how to use Inkscape (vector graphics software) and the Inkstitch plug-in for it. I also use Photoshop and Paint Tool SAI, which I already had, but there are open-source alternatives like GIMP which will work. If I wasn't an experienced digital artist before I started making plushies, this route would have been much harder (maybe prohibitive for a lot of people), so it was really all about having the right background going in. It's harder than just buying commercial software out of a box, but it has a lot of advantages in less being hidden from you and having more fine control over a lot of things. Also it's (at least) $1,000 cheaper to get started, and your designs are in plain old .SVG files instead of pay-walled under some useless proprietary file format only used by one piece of software, or even worse, forced into the cloud where it becomes the "property" of whoever made the software.
Learning how to actually embroider is a matter of practice and experimenting with your machine. It took me a few tries to get things right. I'm closing in on almost 30 plushies made so far. I think I've got it down pretty well at this point, but the learning curve is attested to in all the scrapped embroidery pieces I have lying around that were either botched up in spectacular knots I had to extract from my machine with scissors, or just didn't make the cut for overall quality.
Pattern design is one of the trickiest parts, and probably still the part I'm weakest at. To be honest, I started by looking at a free pattern someone released online to get a sense of how it's done, because this is the one thing I truly started from scratch on. I came in totally clueless and had to figure things out. I get the most practice at pattern design by having to design manes and tails, since they're different for almost every character. I've gotten pretty good at that. Body design is a little harder, and still something I wish I knew more of an engineering approach to, but in a lot of ways it's just trial and error. I have a good standard pattern that I use now, but designing patterns is difficult and takes time. It's also another thing that requires preexisting knowledge of graphics software. I use a lot of Photoshop for it, although I should probably be using more vector-based software, and probably will start trying to move that way in the future.
And that's how I got here. Summary: I started from the right place by having computer design and graphics skills before I ever even knew I wanted to make plushies. It's certainly possible to do it without being a tech expert (most plushie makers aren't), but it might have a steeper learning curve or be a lot more expensive to get into.
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I'm proficient enough in computer software where I'm sure I could figure it out, but who has the time. 
Interesting. I have enough side projects going on, plus my game, so I doubt I'd ever try it.
Looking forward to seeing you at Everfree this year!
Cave Johnson here, whoever made this horse plush, get up to my office for a promotion, or a lawsuit and prompt firing for theft of company logos for merchandise.