Felting a cat portrait

Just saw this on reddit and thought it was amazing.  This artist felts a portrait of your cat:

https://gfycat.com/shoddyfalsehypsilophodon

Mike ; That's way cool!
I did not see any contact info on the artist?  
Would love to contact them.

Those felted cat portraits are so realistic looking, I think they're a little creepy

Artist's name is Wakuneco.

https://www.waku-neco.com/about-english

The last one he sold was over $3000.00.  I like them but wow I would have trouble justifying that.

Here's a link with video
http://www.spoon-tamago.com/2018/07/25/wakuneco-will-create-realistic-3d-felt-portraits-of-your-cat/

At $3000  they are beyond me.

The cat in the video looks so real I was a bit disturbed to watch the needles poke it in the face.

denise ra wrote:The cat in the video looks so real I was a bit disturbed to watch the needles poke it in the face.

Ahahahahaha! When I was making the mini Paul Wheaton figure, it was rather awkward continually stabbing mini-Paul over and over to get him into shape!

Trace Oswald wrote:The last one he sold was over $3000.00.  I like them but wow I would have trouble justifying that.

I can kind of understand the high cost. I haven't quite gotten my skill level up to making cat/dog reproductions (at least, I don't think I have. I haven't tried making one yet. I've gotten pretty good at chickens and I like realism). It literally does take a lot of hours of poking to make a figure that size, and a lot of work working at multiple different angles. It probably takes at least 25-50 hours of work to make one, depending on the size. So, if you pay the person $10/hour, it's something like $250-500.....If I got good at these, that's probably what I'd charge.

This is a cat I made for my niece--I was going for cute and fluffy and not accuracy or dense felting (to do that would have taken many more days, just because of the time spent poking the figure):



These were chickens I made, focusing on accuracy:

James Freyr wrote:
Those felted cat portraits are so realistic looking, I think they're a little creepy  

This is why I make most of mine without eyes. Once you put eyes on them, they look kind of creepy to me...

That's why the sheep, horse and animals, dragon and elephant have no eyes...




If someone wanted to commission a cat face (or miniature figure of a cat, probably about the size of the sheep), I would do it for $60 as I've never made one before. That'd cover materials and a bit of my time. I would do my very best.

Etsy is a really good place to find things like this. Search "needle felted cat portrait" and you'll get quite a few in the $100-300 range. They aren't quite a good, of course.

When looking for these kinds of portraits, or miniatures (people will make miniature reproductions of cats or dogs, too), make sure you can see it from various angles. I've found a lot of people can make it look accurate from one angle, but not from multiple angles.

Here's some I found on etsy:

$340



$431



$150