A plush arrives, everyone agrees something is off, and no one can say what. There are usually only three culprits.

Too few panels in the head

A sphere cannot be made from two flat pieces. The more panels a head is cut from, the closer it gets to a true curve; too few and it is a faceted egg with a flat forehead.

This is where cost comes out of a cheap plush, because every extra panel is another cut and another seam to sew. It is also the first thing to look at when a toy reads as generic rather than as your character.

A seam through the face

Run a seam down the middle of a muzzle and you have drawn a line on your character’s face that does not exist in the artwork. The eye reads it as a feature.

Good pattern work routes seams around the face, into the sides of the head and under the chin, where they disappear into the shape.

Proportions that only fail in profile

Flat artwork has no depth, so how far the muzzle projects, how deep the head is front to back and how far the ears sit forward are all decisions somebody has to make.

Make them badly and the toy is fine in a straight-on photograph and wrong on a shelf. This is why we send side and three-quarter photographs of the sample and not just a front view.

What to do about it

Approve a sewn sample, not a rendering. Look at it from the side. Put it on a desk and walk past it.

If it is wrong, it is fixable at the pattern stage for very little. After the run it is not fixable at all.