Anime hair (Patreon)

Alrighty where to begin? Not a whole lot of steps but a few key techniques I use to turn that hair from wild and woolly to styled and spikey.

First thing I do is pattern (most of) the hair. I create a scaled version (digital) of the reference and use that to sketch most of the pieces, usually lengthening then to take into consideration the curve of the head.

Most pieces here were created with no sewing. I find that sewing 2 pieces of faux fur together is just too bulky. The aim here (at least for the look I personally prefer) is to avoid bulk and keep things sleek.

To hide the raw side of the cut fur pieces, I use a cat hair slicker brush and brush the crap out of the wrong side of the fur. This will drag fibers from the right side to the wrong side, eventually making both look the same. Much faster than sewing too!

Once I’ve got my pieces cut and brushed, I pin them on the head to check placement. You’ll usually find that you need to make additional hair pieces to those shown in your ref to fill in gaps. Make more than you think you will need.

Next up we are going to give the hair gel treatment to our fur. I’m not a fan of letting those fluffy fibers fly loose, so I mix up a 50-50 tacky glue (eg elmers) to water mixture. I then dip the tips of the fur pieces into the mix, and use my fingers to drag some of it through the rest of the piece, acting as a hair gel. Don’t go too crazy though, you only need just enough to control your whispies. Dunking the whole piece will make it rock solid once dry. Aim for light overall coverage and dense coverage at the tips where you want those spikes to stay sharp.

Place somewhere that the glue won’t stick to anything (eg plastic) and leave dry overnight. The next day you can either glue or sew your pieces down (I use both).

The glue has an added benefit of reactivating when wet. If you want a piece to sit in a certain way, saturate it and pin it in place. It should stay that way when dry.

I did multiple wash tests with this and came to the conclusion that as long as you aren’t soaking the fur in water for hours it holds up very well. You’d have to really soak it and spend a long time scrubbing and teasing to work it out. You could also apply more at a later point if need be.

Making hair like this is very time consuming. This took me 3 full days (30 hrs or so) and I have a lot of experience with making this style of hair on plush. Make sure to charge substantially if offering this on a commission.

Hope that helps!