Learn To Make Your Wool Buddy Popular

  Two days ago, I asked my fans to make a choice between 2 completed wool Totoro (Cartoon character in Japanese animated film My Neighbor Totoro, which is written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Ghibli Studio) on my Facebook Fan Page. And I get a lot of answers and reasons of their choice. In order to get an objective and fair answer, I didn't tell them whom the 2 Totoros were made by. But at the end I told every choice maker that I made the smiling one. Here's the captured answer from this post:

Here is the result: 8 among 9 people chose Totoro B (the one has a green background). Big win of B! Only one person TingTing Xu chose the other one. Apparently, I get a very clear answer from this compare, totoro on the right side is the more popular buddy from people's aesthetic value. 

I find there are some factors or values make the Totoro B super popular according to the choice from the crowd:

1. Cute "Tosonality". It's the most frequent word appears in the comment board. That means it's really important for a buddy. Yali Yao, Ruichen Zhou and Justin Xu thought Totoro B was "cute". Dalu Li said "the left one is so ugly" and we can regard this reason as "not cute enough". While "cute" means a lot of things: good shape, proper scale, balanced design etc. Like Xiangfei Bai wrote "this one is really more three-dimentional" when it refers to Totoro B, so I believe he was talking about its chunky body and well-balanced shape.

2. Energetic Facial Expression. Both Ruila and Yali said they like B's "teeth", they like the smile on its face, so we see YiWen Hu wrote "Totoro B makes me feel hopeful and energetic". I guess the smile on B give this buddy more possible to be liked since people released their pressure after viewing it. That's also the reason why Ruila Lin said she felt the "humor inherent and full of surprise".

3. Details make it "alive". Angel Cabrera and Xiangfei Bai mentioned "detail" was the key factor helping them made the choice. Actually, details really helpful to emphasize the vivid feature of a buddy. But too many details could be a burden for a little craft. So that's the reason why Xu Tingting prefer the abstract one. After all, it just a wool craft or toy, we don't have to add every detail on it. So keep a balance on it will be an essential part.

4. Restore the original figure. Dalu Li said "because it looks like real totoro", which pointing out the more it likes the original character, the more he likes it. So here is someone who prefer concretization more and by no means dislike the abstract one. And YiWen Hu wrote "A looks like a nerd Totoro", that is a compare with the existing figure.

So now we get four principles from this crowd: Cute Figure, Facial Expression, Details, Revivification (if it has a well-known figure already). From now on, you will be able to design and make wool buddies that most people will love!