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I occured to me that since it is getting so much space in the commic25(?) topic that I should create a seperate topic and not annoy the mods/giant/everyone else with too much clutter there. So here you are, any ideas on the Thog Plush, post 'em right here.
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They're stick figures, so I think it'd be a little cool to make the plushies mostly 2d. (Think Pillow Pals from the mid 80s.) This also makes them easier to construct. The body is a pillow-esque rectangle about the size of a sheet of paper, for a Thog plushie, purple. The head would be a round pillow about 10 inches in diameter. The limbs would be black fabric tubes about the size of a quarter, and I'm considering wiring them to make the dolls poseable. That might be too big a hassle though. Pauldroons (sp?) would attach to the arms before the arms attach to the doll. Boots could be added to finish the legs.
The facial features would be felt, appliqued onto the front of the head. (One eye would of course be bigger than the other, and oval.) Hair would be yarn, sewn into the seam along the top of the head (not an issue for Thog).
Thogs axe would also be constructed, and fastenable to his back or his hands via velcro.
The above approach works on unembellished male dolls. If you were to make an Elan or V doll, it would require extra embellishment. Elan would require an extra chain shirt, a sash, and a cloak. V would require a robe and cloak.
The female dolls would be trickier, because they have a different shaped torso. I haven't decided how to do them yet.
I was thinking about making standup figurines out of pipe cleaners and small foam balls. The clothes and facial features out of felt and the weapons as well out of pipe cleaners.
If anyone actually makes a good doll, please provide a link where sketches, dimensions, and patterns can be downloaded... assuming this will not be a copyright violation.
I think these dolls would become extremely popular. For now, Thog is the obvious top priority (who would not want to hug him?), but the others would also do. Is there a tendency to favour the antagonists in this creative endeavour?
By the way, me love thog!
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considering the body and head are "flesh out" with only arms and legs are "stick figure" you could make it a UFO catcher dolls (those who are familar)
you can make a foamy round head (easily obtain from supply store) using a green cloth to cover the surface. Using felt cloth for texture for eyes, armor, and weapon.
The arms and leg will be black felt and hard pillow stuffing and should not be thicker than 1/2 inch diameter. with a possible wire inside to allow "bending"
I can work with my wife and see if we can produce a prototype (not sure if we could but that is our idea) heh
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heh. we could even get a naken elan doll. two sets of clothes, a velcro goatee so it could be nale instead, and a little sticker that says 'charisma 18' instead of a fig leaf. of course, all the 'adventure' supplies would be fun too (lantern, paddle, what else?)
it may be a good idea to use actual wood for the haft of thogs axe. you can get a decent selection of wooden rods at most hobby stores.
heh. we could even get a naken elan doll. two sets of clothes, a velcro goatee so it could be nale instead, and a little sticker that says 'charisma 18' instead of a fig leaf. of course, all the 'adventure' supplies would be fun too (lantern, paddle, what else?)
Why not put the 'charisma 18' on a fig leaf? ;D
I will try my hand at making a Thog doll this Saturday, and post pictures of my results.
I'm torn about fabric though. The obvious choice is cotton broadcloth, it's colorfast and has a variety of colors. It just doesn't seem cuddley enough. Fleece is too stretchy and doesn't come with enough colors. Felt isn't colorfast. Flannel and velvetine again don't have enough colors. Maybe if I prewash the broadcloth enough it'll get a softer look.
[Edit 1] You could make a reversable Elan/Nale doll. Make one side of the body red, the other green, the faux-chain shirt is the same on both sides, 2 switchable capes and sashes, and two faces (one with a goatee), you just flip the hair around to hide the second face.
[Edit 2] Making dolls is very, very easy - I've done it several times. My current project is a nativity set with the people sculpted from old nylons, and completed with plush animals from my collection. However this won't be done in time for Christmas, so it's no biggie to work on Thog for a day instead.
For whoever wanted to make OotS figures out of styrofoam: Don't. Foam is nasty to work with, dosen't hold paint very well, and is just not fun. (< has done too many solar system/flower aranging/assorted projects to recomend foam in her right mind)
Use polymer clay instead. It's really easy to work with, and some of it already comes pre-colored. You do have to bake it, but that's not all that difficult. I've heard Fimo is good, but SculpeyIII is rather cheap and good for playing with it. I made some OotS sculpey figures some time ago, and throughly regret using sculpey. Next time I get overly crafty I'll use the nice stuff that only comes in white and paint them, it's an okay excuce for buying mini-paints.
I LOVE the idea of putting wire in the arms and legs to make them posable. And if you feel like expirementing 20 guage wire should work, maybe 18 if you can find it, but 18 might be a little too thick. 20 would be easily bendable, but sturdy enough to hold up a bit of fabric and batting.
If it was me making these (only reason it ain't is finals!) I'd buy a bunch of different types of fabrics from the remnants bin and play with them until I found something that I liked for what bit I was working on. I think that cotton calico's would work well for the head and armor pieces, and possibly arms and legs if you were going to do the tubes. (Oh for tubes, I highly recomend getting a tube turner if you don't have one, I made something with drawstrings over the summer, and it was the most useful thing I think I've ever purchased for a fabric crafts project.) And crushed panne would be awesome for cloaks and clothing and such. It's fuzzy and colorful, yet strechy, but not too strechy (Pain in the bottom to cut out, but after that it's not too bad).
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Crushed panne is a wonderful idea! Especially for V's and Elan's cloaks. Miko would need something less luxurious though. For Haley and Sabine, I think I'd use some leatherette, or if I could get my hands on the scraps, suede. For the chainmail shirts, there's this wonderful funky silver lame that I have some scraps of, it would also work nicely for Miko's skirt.
Wire and posable figures, while cool, might make them less cuddly, and even the best wire figures can't stand up to repeated posing, the wire will eventually break. The alternative is putting seams at the joints in the limbs, and stuffing the limbs with lighter material - they'd be more floppy but also more cuddly.
I'm going to do Thog first, and if he works out well, I'll try making the rest of the characters. But I can't get to the fabric store till Saturday, so we can discuss this stuff ad nauseum until then! :D
I'd really like to make a Belkar plushie as a Christmas present, but I don't know what I should use exactly. Any suggestions?
Well going off of some of the ideas that Amalthea has had, I have a question, how cuddly do you want your Belkar? I'm just compiling information from the rest of the thread, so it's pretty much a repeat, don't read if you don't want to.
But the basic supplies are: sewing machine or lots of patience with hand sewing, fabric, batting, thread, some felt, and time.
Fabric options: Cotton calico (pros: colorful, easy to use, colorfast, and cheap. cons: not so cuddly)
flece (pros: super cuddly. cons: a pain in the butt to work with, not so colorful)
felt (pros: colorful, keeps shape well. cons: not colorfast (means don't wash it, and keep it away from white things)).
crushed panne (pros: super fuzzy and strechy, good for cloaks (which Belkar has one of), feels good. cons: strechy=pain in the butt to cut, really fuzzy so not so good for armor.)
wander around the fabric store for an hour (pro: you'll find something you're looking for, fun! cons: well your checkbook won't be too happy if you're anything like me.)
flannel (pros: felt will stick to it. cons: haven't worked with it yet, so I don't know)
So specific things for Belkar: He'd need hair (could be made out of yarn), Feet (made out of face fabric with bits of yarn on them), daggers (gray fabric, velcro onto hands), cloak (crushed panne is teh awesome for cloaks!), head (fabric sewn in a circle, flipped inside out, and stuffed with batting), face (felt attached to head either with glue or sewn on before anything else is done to the head, or maybe velcro), body (rectangle made a lot like the head, only with two pannels sewn together for people with "pants"), limbs (possibly either pipe cleaners or stuffed tubes depending on size of plushy)
Edit: Here's a link to Hancock fabrics. (I hope that dosen't get censored) Look around there if you wanna look at different colors and stuff, and Hancock's is a pretty big chain so there may be one in your area.
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For those of you looking for chainmail (for Elan dolls etc) and wanting to use actual metal cloth, I have a fencing tournement coming up the second weekend of January, and we always have a few damaged-beyond-repair lemays that I can probably get my grubby little mitts on. *I know that's too late for the Christmas crowd, but for those of you who are willing to wait...
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I've not made a lot of dolls I guess but I've been sewing the occasional plushie since I was little so I do have some experience. Felt is easy to work with because it doesn't need hemming and can't fray, but it will wear out a lot faster than proper material. On my most recent dolls I used ultrasuede because it's got a nice softness to it and it's also got a bit of stretch which makes it easier to stuff and turn and so on. It might be hard to find all the right colours though; I needed deep dark brown so it wasn't hard to find. Velour is nice and soft but hard to work with and gets holes pretty easily so probably not a first choice. I've not tried working with 'fun fur' or anything along those lines but something like that with a shorter pile might work? Or does anyone have experience working with moleskin?
I do know that on specialist cloth doll sites they sell fabric specially made for doll 'skin' - muslin is the most common but there are some newer 'peachskin' fabrics as well which are supposed to be good. Failing that you can always go for the old "fiberfill in old pantyhose" trick although it's not the sturdiest!
My favorite plush stuffed animal is a feivel I got when I was four. I still have it in good condition (missing marts of his outfit, like his pants, belt, and his hat is detached from his head, but I still have it).
I've also been sewing for a long time, a little professionally, and before that, with a medieval reenactment/ Larp group. It included designing a lot of garments.
So, the experiences I have had led me to the following ideas. I'm thinking about a foot sitting, a foot and a half standing (if they could stand, which I wasn't envisioning). Totally cuddly, IE throw it in your 4 yr old's bed.
I think the skin for the dolls should be fuzzy. Cottony, textured, but short pile, kind of like a cross between terrycloth and those cordy bathroom rugs. I've seen fabric like that before. A good second choice, but less washable (but very cuddly) is some good, short fake fur (about 1/4" pile). It will be very silky, and very easy to embroider (I think, the easiest and best-looking way to make the faces.) Either of these could be used to make the whole body, with 3 pieces for the head/torso/arms (more for girls, haven't decided how yet) , 1 under the butt, making the doll in a sitting position (or 2 more for the arms if you want/need to make them seperate pieces), 1-2 pieces for each leg (i would do one each and pinch it flat at the top, placing the seam on the insides of the legs), and possibly an extra piece for the feet if I wanted to make detachable boots (if not, I would just stuff boots and sew it to the leg).
The boots could probably follow an altered baby bootie pattern with a fake suede type cloth and fleecy inside. I would probably go with Velour or velvet for the nicer garments, like cloaks, Sabine's skank-wear, and V's robes, and something fleece-related for the more "common" looking outfits like Thog's, Haley's, and Belkar's garments. Although, for Nale and Elan, it would be funny to use hand towels, since I have seen hand towels that look like their cloaks. Soft nylon rope would work great for single color belts, with more satiny, ribbon-like fabric for sashes. For Roy and Thog, I would make their shoulder armour out of shoulderpads and cover then with a metallic, preferrably scaly fabric.
Other fun notes: I would go with detachable wings for Sabine. Make the basic shape on scaley serpentine lightweight red fabric, fill with a few layers of solid batting sheets, close it and make detail by sewing the shapes into her wings with a darker red (deep burgundy?) thread. Her eyes would have to be the soft sides of vecro, with red jewel eyes that velcro on when she shifts.
Roy should definitely come with a mop (with detachable head that serves as his stick), and shattered Greenhilt sword.
The doll hair should definitely be ... errgh, I saw these dolls that had hook-latched in hair that was somewhere in between hair and yarn. Like they had curlies for some, but stright for others, and it was kind of yarn-like, but slikier, and had shiny and otherwise doll-hair like properties. I have no idea what it's called.
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How to create a Thog Plush
