Plush Writeup - Chloe the Lion

Second commission of the summer 2021 batch complete! Chloe is a lion inspired by a character of the same name from Life is Strange. I love making complex characters but I also like to take on simple projects from time to time as well. Her triple toned hair appealed to me, as it was a style that'd look great in faux fur and I hadn't yet attempted anything like it.

Chloe wouldn't need any major modifications to my anthro pattern, but I wanted to take the opportunity to develop some Lion King style feet paws because the shape of them is just so appealing!

It only took a couple tries to get right, thankfully! The trick was adding a very curved dart on the sides and doing some thread sculpting behind the color separation. The toe separations that are usually from thread sculpting are just the seams of the darts.

I was so happy that my client picked mochi minky for her nose and paw pads, because I've been wanting to use it for that purpose for a while! I just love how it looks. A really nice contrast to the normal minky, and looks great with my puffy paw pad technique.

Chloe has a beautiful spot design on her arm, I had hoped to do this entirely with applique, but the outer spots were just too small and detailed for it. So the inner spots are applique and the outer spots are embroidered.

All the applique and embroidery for her body

Body complete! No complex markings across seams means it comes together quickly!

I used the same head pattern as a previous plush of mine, Leon. But I still wanted to do a test head to get the eye placement right and the hair.

Eye tests! First on the top, second on the bottom. Made her iris wider and needed some placement adjustments on the outline objects.

Eye embroidery!

The hair was done with 3 different colors of faux fur, using the color blocking technique to acheive the transitions. It looks really beautiful!

Her hair style translates really well to plush!

​With everything sewn together, time to finish her up!

Plastic armature for posing!

Thread sculpted paws!

Time for her outfit! It had a lot of pieces to it.

There was no denim color that matched her ref at my store, so we went with a darker blue. I weathered the knees, and later made a tear, a patch, and faux suspenders.

Her tank top was two pieces, one black piece underneath and the outer gray one.

I used the same jacket pattern I've been using for Karma, Fishbone, etc. for Chloe as well.

She also has some jewlery: a necklace with bullet charms, and two bracelets that I braided together.

Final piece was a hat! The first try came out too boxy. The pattern wasn't tall enough so it caved it on itself.

Next version was better! There are holes sewn into the hat for her ears to poke through.

With that, she was all done!

You can watch a video showing her off here: