Arcade Mochi: The Prototype

Here’s a project that got put on hold for way too long: my unnamed arcade mochi! He sat unfinished on top of my yarn drawers for a good two months before somehow making it through the move to Chicago without unraveling. It felt so good to pick this guy up again and finish the prototype yesterday!

(I really need to start putting things on my office walls—yuck!)

I don’t usually make prototypes for my designs, but I wanted to get the shape of this one just right before adding colorwork and other details. (The pink rectangle was just to help me see where the top front panel will go.) I’ve had second and third thoughts about the final colors, and now I’m anti-black and trying to decide if he’ll be orange, red, pink, or some shade of blue. Or who knows, maybe even green! Pretty much any color but black is what I’m thinking right now.

While I think about colors, I’m getting started on the color chart for the sides and back of this guy. Just getting ready to make a design takes some time, but now I think I have the correct number of squares to work with.

I use Illustrator to make my charts—it can be time-consuming (especially when I forgot how Illustrator works, as I often do), but I like the control that I have and the way that I can easily fill in squares with the Paint Bucket tool.

The thing that really motivated to continue with this design is the toy design class I taught at the Lion Brand Yarn Studio last month. I’ve already gotten updates from several of the people who took the class and went on to finish their designs! I hope to teach this kind of class again soon—it was really inspiring, and I may have learned just as much as everyone else.

In case you haven’t been following along, here are my earlier posts in this series:

Arcade Mochi: Face Off
Arcade Mochi: Taking Shape
Arcade Mochi: The Screen
Arcade Mochi: The Sketch

I’ll be back with another design update soon(ish)!