A Skunk Plushie!
I decided I wanted to make a plushie for my friend, Christian Sandberg. (This is his skunk character)
I realized that ZBrush's UV Unwrap tool could accomplish what was the most difficult part of making a plush, the creation of a pattern. Usually this takes a plushie artist a great deal of pain and finaggling to get right. I was able to quickly model the character, print out templates for his skin and then get right to sewing.
Overall this was a fun project that took me out of my comfort zone.
The skunk plush takes form! I used furry cloth for the stripe, and filled him with cluster stuff. The eye detail is drawn on with fabric marker, and the rest of the skunk's body is tightly sewn together by hand.
Upon UV unwrapping the skunk along the bright blue lines, the cloth cuts turned out rather different than expected. Traditional plushie making is hard.
The Zbrush model I created to figure out the dimensions of the cloth I'd need to cut. I wanted his arms to be splayed out and huggable.
My original pencil sketches of how the plushie would look, and guesses for the different cloth cuts.