How to Draw Anime Pillow

Today I'm going to talk about my experience making my own dakimakura.

JUST TO PREFACE THIS my dakimakura is not NSFW at all. It's not even particularly suggestive, but if you're sensitive to anime characters sprawled out on a bed, then viewer discretion is advised.

For some reference, I'm not a super amazing artist, though I'm sure that statement will definitely piss off a bunch of people. Probably people are gonna look at my art below and think "WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT YOU DRAW PRETTY NICE." The thing is, as an artist, you're always going to inevitably hate your art so having your own printed out on a body pillow is just a high risk type of deal. Once you have it printed out what if you hate it? I didn't give much thought to it because I was too high and giddy by the idea of MY OWN PERSONAL DAKIMAKURA OF MY FAV CHARACTERS YEAH!! But as time went on after I ordered it, I began to wonder if I was going to regret it.

Well, it's been about a year since the dakimakura came into my possession, and I'm just glad to say that I still think my art looks good and I'm very glad I don't absolutely despite it like some other pieces I've made in the past.

To start, I love the Vocaloids SF-A2 Miki and Kiyoteru Hiyama. A lot. I really adore them a ton. Images of them below for reference.

One January night around 3AM, I got the bright idea to start drawing a dakimakura as a joke.
Now, I'm none too good at drawing full bodies and stuff and I decided it might be a good challenge. I mean, no one else was gonna ever make a dakimakura of these lesser known characters so it was up to me to do it if I wanted to have a stupid body pillow with them.

Here are some pictures of my sketching and drawing process, which is none too glamorous but here it is. I did look up a few refs for ideas for what kind of pose, but honestly half of it was asking my college roommate at the time to pose for me (which they did almost way too willingly I might add).
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My initial sketch, I did start line arting Miki a bit.

Line arting the top part of the bodies. I suck at drawing legs and I kind of ended up avoiding drawing those for as long as possible haha.

Colored in the flats, I did add a notebook for extra sensual™

And finally, after the art was (mostly) done, I shoved the images into a custom printing service just to see how it would look and I sort of ended up regretting my decision a bit here haha

Of course, I did add shading and sheet wrinkles and some extra fancy schmancy art magic to jazz it up a bit before submitting the order.

And finally, after ordering it, I received it sometime late February. I didn't actually have a pillow for the cover, and didn't end up getting one until half a year later which made me wonder why I thought it was a good idea buying it pffft.

The unadulterated covers I received about a year ago:
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The dakimakura now (pictures taken today):
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If anyone is interested in making their own dakimakura, I'll talk a bit about how I got it done.

So basically there's a site called ArtsCow (I do recommend it, it's a nice site and I have ordered other custom items from the site after making my dakimakura) and they offered a custom printed "body pillow." Of course, someone on tumblr found it and people started en masse making their dakimakuras and now on the ArtsCow website it's even listed as a dakimakura.
See for yourself.
Two sided version also.
The basic gist here is that you take the ideal image size (in pixels [W * H] :6000x2100 or Higher) and make sure it has a decent enough resolution (at least 300dpi for god's sake). When I started drawing my dakimakuras, it was actually as a joke so my own dakimakuras were not the ideal image size. Ordering and buying it was actually an afterthought believe it or not.

It's sort of weird having a dakimakura, because it's just a huge red flag of "you're a huge weeaboo and everyone is going to judge you harshly" and I know I am judged VERY HARD for owning this but I still like having it on my bed even if I don't actually hug it that often.
One might say it's kind of narcissistic to have a body pillow of your own art, but something about it still makes me happy especially since even now a year after I drew it I'm still very proud of it!

If you're interested in seeing the full art of my dakimakura, you can see it on my pixiv here.
That's my story here, and I'm just sort of reminiscing on my 1st anniversary with this dakimakura I made. Thank you for reading this dumb thing.

How to Draw Anime Pillow

Source: https://myfigurecollection.net/blog/27294

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