Designing a Plush Toy

Published: January 11th, 2024
Last modified: January 11th, 2024

Turning a 2D drawing or idea into a fully-realized, 3D doll or plush toy had long been a dream of mine, which came true for me this year with the completion of the Lemon Dragon & Friends Kickstarter!

Now my house is overtaken with hundreds of tiny fruit dragon plushies. A blessing and a curse!

But how do you get from a drawing to an actual plush toy – especially if you don’t know anything about sewing or toy design yourself, and you’re just a digital artist with an idea?

It was a very intimidating prospect, but I’m hoping that by sharing my process and experience, I can instill some confidence and excitement in others to pursue this rewarding endeavor!

Research & Gather References

The first step is to look at other plush toys that you like the look, feel, and style of. Even if only one small aspect of the toy is appealing – like the paws, the face shape, the tail – save that image and add it to your folder of reference materials. Circle those paws in red to remind yourself (and your future manufacturer) what part you like. Build up a digital collage of references and use those to sketch your first reference.

I, uh… I didn’t do this for my first plush sample. I just drew something without any idea of how it would work practically.

Create Reference

Going in completely cluelessly, here’s the first reference I created, trying to show the plush from multiple angles, what kinds of seams I wanted, and what the embroidery and other details should look like. It’s helpful to show the details both on and off the plush. If you have a sense of 3D modeling/UV unwrapping/texture painting, you know that a design can look wildly different on the three-dimensional shape versus on a flat surface.

Get a Sample Made

This design was sent to 2 different manufacturers who specialize in plush toys, as a way to compare their ability to interpret a design, and to test the quality of their materials, sewing, and willingness to accept revisions.

I worked with Catstealers to get in contact with plush manufacturers, so that I didn’t have to do the research or cold-contact them. Working with a middleman is great because that person already has a repertoire with the company.

The sample plushies cost $100 each. So it cost $200 to get a good sense of each manufacturer’s abilities.

This produced two samples, one from each manufacturer:

We all thought that #1 was the superior sample – even though #2 has cleaner embroidery, the wings and ear-fins were just stuffed pillows and the material wasn’t soft. #1 was fuzzy and more snuggly and the limbs had wonderful floppiness, and the wings and ears were nicely shaped and poseable..

Revise & Repeat

Now that I knew which manufacturer I wanted to work with, I got started on a revised plush design. Seeing how my original art was interpreted into a plush was very helpful, and I did much more research on other plush toys to draw something that would translate better into a three-dimensional doll.

This was submitted to the preferred manufacturer, along with some references of other plush toys, color IDs for fabric swatches that they had previously sent, and measurements. I tried to make sure all the text instructions and measurements were sent separately, not handwritten or flattened into the image, so that they could be easily translated. I also sent an Illustrator .svg file of all of the embroidered components, like the eyes, paws, and lemon “cutie mark”. This package of files became the basis for a new sample, which cost another $100.

Sample Revisions

So, after submitting the new design references, I got my first preview of the new sample. Thankfully, the manufacturer that we were working with had already stated that they would be willing to do 3 revisions before charging extra, because this was the first image they sent me of the new sample:

Oh my god.

After a good laugh at hydrocephalus dragon, I simply gave the feedback that the head needed to be narrower, and the ears to be bigger. This created the first revision:

Much better! And I didn’t even need to provide specific measurements or draw over their sample photo to get the point across.

But now my revisions were much more specific, so I needed to provide as clear of instruction as possible. I took these new sample photos into my art program and drew red lines, arrows, and other symbols to indicate changes I wanted. I even referenced the ears and wings of the original floppy-legged sample, since I liked the way those were handled.

These resulted in the second revision:

Very close to perfect! I asked for these last few changes as illustrated – lowering the ears and changing their shape slightly, and making the back of the ears and wings solid-colored. I found it helpful to provide both images, like below, and text to describe the desired changes, like “make back of ears and wings solid color”, and “move ears down and adjust shape as shown”.

This resulted in the final sample:

There he is! Once I gave my approval, they mailed this sample to me for in-person review. Once I had him in my hands, I was able to look over the stitching and embroidery closely, squish his head a bit, and took my sample photos for the Kickstarter campaign.

If all I had wanted was a single super-cute custom plush toy for myself, I would have been done! But since I wanted to mass produce these little guys for a Kickstarter, there was further discussion with the manufacturer about minimum order quantity, cost per unit, and any required import procedures. This factory was able to do all of the required testing to make sure the plushies would pass through import customs – y’know, like making sure the fabric isn’t made of toxic materials that could poison a child who chews on the toy. I did receive a copy of the lab test results for my own records.

I was also encouraged by the manufacturer to include a sewn-in tag, which helps legitimize the plush toys and identify the creator/copyright of the design. This was an additional $1 per unit charge, and I got to design the tag.

As the importer, I didn’t have to do much, honestly – it mostly was just a long wait, as big orders come via cargo ship rather than air mail.

I did have to fill out and print an Application for Pennsylvania Toy Registration with the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry – Bureau of Occupational & Industry Safety and send that along 1 sample plush to be legally allowed to sell the toys within the United States. I got back a registration number once approved, but you won’t get the sample toy back, so you may need to ask your manufacturer to air-mail an additional sample if you don’t want to give up your only one.

The manufacturer was kind enough to allow me one final revision before the toys went into full scale mass production – I asked for the tips of the dragon’s tails to be white, like the feet, and for wire to be included in the ears as well as the wings. They didn’t show me any samples or mockups of this, so I just had to trust that they knew what they were doing at this point, and I did trust them!

I hope this was a helpful breakdown of the work required and process of designing a plush toy as a primarily 2D digital artist. This was a very rewarding experience and has made me very excited to design another toy soon!

If you want to make your own plush toy, contact Catstealers LLC for information about their purchasing liason and middleman services!

If you want to buy one of these Lemon Dragon plushies (or any of his other fruit themed dragon friends), check out our Etsy shop! They won’t be up for sale until all of the Kickstarter backer orders have been fulfilled.

Interested in learning more about the process of running a Kickstarter or other crowdfunding campaign? Let me know and I’ll work on a guide for that!