Designing an Amigurumi Pattern: How Do You Do It?

Dear users, dear authors,
on Tuesdays we discuss trends and design topics.
The new trend for 2018—or rather, the new trend color: yellow, a sunny, warm yellow. I’m just letting you know so you’re aware. Red, the current trend color, won’t disappear anytime soon, of course, but yellow is catching up.

Now to my opening question:
If you want to design an animal/amigurumi pattern, how do you go about it?
This is primarily a question for the authors, but I’m sure our users will also be very interested in reading about it.
Tell me what you think.

The ideas usually come from my grandchildren. They want a specific animal or little doll. Sometimes I make a sketch and then I start experimenting.

Unlike Petra, I always start with the head—that’s the most important part to me, because it defines the amigurumi’s character. Only once the head is right (often after several rounds of unraveling) do I move on to the body.

While crocheting, I take notes. (Sometimes they’re pretty illegible because I scribble them down quickly as I go.) Once I’m satisfied with everything, I crochet the amigurumi again from scratch, following my notes. That’s when I take the photos.

And right at the very end, I type up the pattern on the computer and insert the photos.

Once I’ve uploaded it, I’m always very curious to see how it’s received.

I do it similarly to ruthk. My amigurumi projects often come about because of requests from children. I start crocheting (usually with old leftover yarn and colors completely different from what I planned), take notes as I go (some of which are almost illegible even to me), and then write everything down neatly. In the second round, I crochet the whole thing again following my pattern, using the correct yarn in the planned colors, and take detailed photos as I go.
For the pattern I’m currently working on, I even made a sketch beforehand...

When I work on animals or mythical creatures, the requests always come from my kids. They see something on TV and then they want it too.
Then I look around to see what photos are out there that I can use as a reference and that they’ll like.

Yarn isn’t really the focus at the beginning. I have to make test versions of all the animals first. I always use a size 2.5 crochet hook and yarn for that hook size.

I start with the body, working from top to bottom. The little animal is always worked in stripes so I can easily count the rows afterward.

Then I make the legs, fins, or wings, and finally the head. All of this is accompanied by comments from the kids and my husband. If it doesn’t quite fit right, my husband draws sketches to show me how to get the proportions better. He’s really talented at that!

It takes a while to finish the sample piece with all the notes.

Then, of course, I work on the piece in the color and size the future owner wants.

Once everything is perfect, I make the piece for the pattern, take the photos, write the instructions, and after the photos for the cover image turn out well, I upload it.

I can’t contribute much on the topic of amigurumi—probably because we don’t have any small children in the family.
I just wanted to say that I’m really happy that the new trendy color is sunny yellow.

Good morning, I just read the article with interest. I wanted to ask which program you use to write the patterns. I'm looking for inspiration. Thanks in advance. Greetings from Braunschweig. Sabine D.