Character Design

Naturally since I want my character to be a plushie cat, I've been looking at a lot of plush toys as references, some of which can be found on my mood board. But in particular I want my character to be a rather old, worn looking toy that's been around for years and played with a lot (and damaged in the process). So rather than a modern toy, I decided to look more at traditional teddies and rag dolls, toys with patches that are imperfect. But even thought I want it to look like its been around for years, I don't want it to look old in personality... In its mind it hasn't aged, so it can still come across as cute and innocent, despite the wear and tear. My idea is that a cute toy can look even cuter if its a bit worn, since then it'll win the sympathy vote with the viewer because its not in the best condition. I want my cat to be a little forlorn looking... So I looked at plushies with obvious stitching flaws or patches to start with. The first being the C'mon Corsa mascots.


The Comfort fabric softener's mascots also show great stitching and different patches of cloth making up hair and faces, which I thought could be useful.I then remembered the Blue Nosed Bear and his friends all have patches and are usually a little sad looking or seem bewildered, making them look adorable. Their designs are typically traditional, but still very sweet and good for


And here are some other cartoon cat references that I found useful or liked the shapes of:

I especially like the glued on eyes for the Gatomon plushies above... mostly because they're large and have light spots which can be used to show where the character's looking, plus they're black with a white 'pupil' rather than the usual white with a black pupil. I can imagine my character having one big eye like that and one smaller one which is the opposite in colour... Perhaps because its original eye was lost somewhere and that was the only replacement its owner (or its owner's parent) could find.

Here are the rough ideas I sketched after looking at all my research:

My notes on what I thought of each idea are written on the page... hopefully they're readable if you click on the scan to enlarge it. I liked the bottom two best, but since I'm going for cute and pitiful, I didn't think the drawing on the right would be quite suitable on account of it looking rather sly and haughty... Plus as much as a love that curved, crescent moon shape while its laying down, I don't think it'd work standing on two legs. So in the end I decided to go with the left drawing which is much cuter and more rag-doll like, which is what I was aiming for. I incorporated the patches and different sized eyes from the references, and got the idea to tie a knot in its tail to make the tail look more like an old strip of cloth, and to make its whiskers bent. I'm quite pleased with the design and I like it a lot. Below is the refined version with some expression experiments to get an feel for how the character will react to things. I exaggerated the ears to make them much larger so the can be used along with the facial expression to convey emotion. Flat ears are a great way of showing sadness, and are perked up ears for surprise or fear.