Didja guys see the new Ena plushies that have just been revealed at Fangamer? Not only did I prototype them, but I designed them too! I'm really happy with the result; it gave me an opportunity to shake things up with Fangamer's usual plushie style and also to challenge myself with less-than-conventional designs.
In case you don't know what Ena is, it's a series of bizarre youtube videos, and is soon to be released as a game. You can check them out here.
Moony was especially weird to design; I didn't know what the heck I was looking at when I first saw her! One of her characterizing features is the square hole in her face that has things sticking out of it, so we imagined her as a kind of cup cozy at first. The idea got rejected, as the hope was that she could be fully spherical instead of flat.
I thought that it would be very fun to have an internal compartment built into her to store objects. But holes can be a bit tricky to make in plushies; they require some foresight to keep their shape and to keep the inner pocket material from herniating outwards. The idea with Moony is to basically create two hemispheres that are joined together, with the space between them forming the compartment, plus a tunnel leading to the outside.
I had a hard time grasping what Moony looked like from various angles, so I sculpted her from polymer clay and took a bunch of photos. (Immediately after, I was guided to her 3D model which I could have used instead. Thanks, team.)
This is the second prototype I made, and the one that got sent to the factory. My theoretical pocket design worked out, but the most challenging aspect was probably the exercises in pattern manipulation I had to perform in order to achieve that perfectly spherical face shape with a minimum of darts. There was also a bit of a hiccup with the notch in Moony's hair. Without any additional support, the protruding parts of the notch will want to collapse inwards and the deepest parts will want to bulge outwards once stuffed. So I devised an internal pillow to be sewn right against each side of the notch to keep them in shape. The facial expression is only pinned on for now; I played around with other expressions before I decided on this one. (I was too lazy to digitize the embroidery so I just left that for the factory to do)
Photo from Symbiote Studios
Now let's talk about Ena!
Photo from Ownaj
This is an earlier Ena plushie produced by another company. It's always a bit daunting for me to make plushies of things that already have plushies made of them. I get concerned that whatever I come up with is gonna be inferior to the existing one. For example, the dividing line between the blue and yellow half of the face! How were they able to sew so many opposing angles so consistently on something so small? I can't figure it out! My solution to that problem is to basically applique the blue half on top of the yellow with a thick black embroidery line down the face in order to connect the two halves together in a controlled way. It looks great, but I still wonder how the other company managed those seams...
Check it out, a turnaround I drew! My concept for Ena was to make her asymmetrical in her body and pose, which suits her character perfectly. Her blue limbs are all more angular than her yellow ones, which can be seen in the relative sharpness of her knees, elbows, and toes. Her arms are going different directions and her head is tilted to one side. This called for a lot of careful markings on her pattern pieces to make sure that parts aren't connected incorrectly.
Actually, the toughest part of Ena was her hair. In a lot of other plushies with long hair, the median line dividing the front and back of the head provide a convenient place for the bangs and hair back to be sewn into. But Ena has one single complication that necessitated a whole new approach. On the yellow side of her head, her long hair goes right over her ear and continues on to the front of her face. I can't make use of the head's median line as a consequence. So I made her hair into kind of like a 'bag' attached to the back of her head. If it isn't tacked down, it will start behaving like an empty sack.
For her accessory, we made a Turrón, which is a traditional Peruvian cake. My idea for it used a specific size of corduroy to simulate the cylindrical layers of cake and glued-on pom poms as sprinkles.
Photo by Fangamer
It looks great!
As for the other Ena plushie, she's styled after the upcoming game: Ena: Dream BBQ. I don't think I'm allowed to show pictures of her yet, but I should be able to talk about her. I don't have any prototype pictures of her anyways; she is so similar to the other Ena that I never made a full prototype. I just needed to make adjustments to her pattern and a few sample pieces to help guide the factory.
Here you can see sample limbs I made. The raised hand is clawed and the lowered hand is more of a mitten, in keeping with her asymmetrical design. Her body also needed some tweaking because she wears pants now instead of having a skirt built into her hips. Here's a sample torso I made plus some stylish shorts.
Ok, I've written enough, and this is a good picture to leave on. I hope everyone enjoyed this writeup on the Ena plushies!
