Hello 2025! Also hello new website revamp. It’s me, Tas, and I’m here to talk to you about one of my big projects last year: the Dino Loafs, because they were something that had been in the works for years. Plus, I wanted to use this space here to talk more about our processes for our projects, so let’s kill two dino-birds with one stone!
I’ve always had a soft spot (ha) for plushies. I even made a whole blog about it last year. After collecting a lot of Kickstarted plushies, I floated the idea of designing my own. It felt like a far-off dream, then, but little did I know it would become reality in just a few years!
Early Ideas
These were the first sketches I made in 2021. Of course, it was always going to be dinosaurs. I even started with Microraptor first, which stayed constant in this whole project.
This was a very ideal plushie design, but I quickly decided it wasn’t what I wanted to start with, especially as my first plush. It felt like something that worked great in 2D drawings, but translating it to 3D might pose more of a challenge, and not one I was prepared for as my first run. Still, you can already see some of the design sensibilities here that eventually made its way to the Loafs!
First Drafts
My next pass came about a month later, and already this is looking pretty familiar! I channelled chickens, and the idea of them “loafing” because I thought that would be a cute, fun shape to apply to the dinosaurs! This also gave them an tear-drop shape that would be easy to translate into 3D. The colours also got more funky, though I tried (for all of the Loafs) to still keep them in line with what colours we know the actual animals had (albeit exaggerated!). I’ll talk more on that below.
I also didn’t just design Microraptor for this one. All of the Loafs had their first beta rounds this time!
Even beta Shortcake shows up here! This is actually where I got the design for Shortcake, because I don’t think I carried it further from this point.
Originally, the designs were taller, less chunky, and the wings were loose and “flappable”. I was already liking this direction a lot more, but something still felt off. That, and the fact at this time, I didn’t really have the means to produce plushies; the biggest factor was storage space, because, well, plushies will take up a lot of room. So these guys all kinda sat on the backburner for a few years, while I picked at them here and there.
Second Pass
When I came back to the designs I focused mostly on the Microraptor and the skelly one. I chunked them out, and refined some details. This is pretty much how the designs sat for a few years–once again, I had no means of storing the plushies once made, so the idea just sat there idly in my iPad until… 2024…
Final Passes
In 2024, we had more space to store things! Which meant the plushie dream could be real. I returned to the designs and spruced them up, and added Sinosauropteryx (Croissant) and Anchiornis (Muffin) back into the mix from the old designs. I changed the eyes, still wanting to keep that “sleepy” look but more stylized, and added red highlights to the fossil (Toast).
From these designs, my partner made a good reference sheet which we could then send to our manufacturer. They looked something like this:
(Bless them for putting these together, honestly)
The Prototype
In early 2024 we contacted our manu and got to work on the very first protoype: Rye the Microraptor! It was truly incredible seeing these designs finally turned into 3D plush.
I got the first prototype photos and I remember being so over the moon about them:
It’s him! It’s Rye! Oh my god!!
The manu knocked it out of the park, honestly. It was only colours that needed to be adjusted (we darkened the fabric on his head), but otherwise? Perfect. You might think that’s weird, because if you notice, the wings are different! They are fully stuffed and attached, not “flappable”, as I envisioned. It’s something I could have asked for, but honestly… I quickly fell in love with the chunky wings. It’s not what I expected, but when I got the plush and could hold it in my hands, the wings had such a good grip and shape, I wanted to keep them that way!
Final Production
We got the other plush to be prototyped, ran the Kickstarter campaign, and the rest is history? Prehistory? The only big changes we had to make to the original designs was adjusting Muffin’s colours–the manu sadly didn’t have enough range in the purple fabrics, so he got skewed a bit more into the red-purples, which I think ended up working for it even better.
It was a dream come true finally making these fun plushies! I don’t think plush will be a big thing we do–the hassle getting and mailing these guys out was quite a lot–but it was something I wanted to try, at least once, and here we are!
I’m so glad people have been enjoying the Loafs, too. I’ve had some people say they remind them of Pokemon designs, which makes me happy because I sure do also love making Pokemon. As I mentioned, too, the dino nerd in me couldn’t not be in some way accurate, so all the dinosaurs I picked for this series have at least a part of them that we know the actual colours of!
Microraptor, Sinosauropteryx, Anchiornis and even Archaeopteryx have either their whole bodies or parts of them mapped out and revealed through actual colours. Let’s compare:
 by Fred Wierum |  | Microraptor’s colouring was determined to be all black, and shiny like a modern crow! Rye’s colours are dark blues and blacks to give that impression! |
 by Fiann M. Smithwick, Robert Nicholls, Innes C. Cuthill, Jakob Vinther |  | Sinosauropteryx’s colouring was determined to be a reddy-brown, with a striped tail and a raccoon-like “mask”! Croissant has a lot of the same, including the iconic stripey tail! |
 by Matt Martyniuk |  | Anchiornis was determined to have a red crest, and black-and-white striped wings! Muffin has the crest, and uses purples in place of black! |
 by Nobu Tamura |  | Archaeopteryx hasn’t had its whole colouration determined, BUT it was found that at least it’s wings were likely black, which is what I did for Shortcake! |
I also decided to go with the bread/loaf theme because… well, they’re loafing. That’s really all there is to it. It made it fun picking out the names for them, all being yummy baked goods: Rye, Croissant, Muffin, Shortcake and of course, Toast.
These huggable friends are now available on our shop, if you fancy one!
Take care!
-W&W
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