Plushing your own designs

Time for more beginner plush advice! This time on making your own patterns!

So as some or all of you may know I don't use other people's patterns. The general process I go about making plush patterns consists of these steps:
-Sit on the couch with a pad of paper and make little cute doodles of possible plush.
-pick my fav doodles and make a larger doodle of the size it will actually be on a separate piece of paper
-Cut out the shape and start plushing!

More complicated patterns may contain more steps... but thats the general idea... think of what you want to plush, and then think of all the shapes you'll need.

But it can't be that easy right? Well I think it is this easy since I've been sewing since a kid and I've had a seamstress job and such, as well as i've been making plush now for 9months, but what do you do if you're a beginner?

My suggestion is start with some basic shapes first(circle, triangle, square, etc) and definitely start with 2d plush(notice I said circle, triangle, square as opposed to sphere, pyramid, or cube). As you get used to making these basics and get the hang of how basic shapes work, start making your own shapes.

Take this elephant:

It started by this basic shape of a cookie cutter I found(Or I could have made a similar doodle):

I then transformed that basic shape to this:

I used that paper cut out pattern to cut out the body for the elephant. Yes in this case I needed to add ears and tail and eyes, but the primary shape was that simple.

After you get used to this 2d pattern making you actually have the skills to make A LOT of plush now! You will also be able to move onto basic 3d shapes like cubes, cylinders, and spheres- you can find patterns for these shapes online, and I would start with their patterns unless you have good geometry sense, if you work with these shapes, you will get more familiar with making certain other similar shapes.