Anime Guy Body Pillows

Walk through any dakimakura shop, online or at a convention, and the ratio is obvious. Female characters fill the tables. Male characters are a short row at the end, if they are there at all.

The demand is not the problem. Husbando is a word for a reason, and the people asking for these have usually been looking for a while by the time they find a printer who will take the order.

Which is good news if you are printing your own

Because the shops are not making them, almost everything in this category is custom. Somebody has a character, or has commissioned one, and is having a single piece made. That is exactly the kind of order that print on demand handles well and batch printers refuse.

There is no minimum here. One is a normal order and costs the same per piece as twenty would.

The pillow is the same. The drawing decisions are not, and a few of them catch people out.

Broader shoulders fight a narrow frame

50 cm is not wide. A male figure drawn with broad shoulders and a wide stance hits the edges before the pose is finished, and the usual fix is to angle the body slightly rather than draw it square on. Doing that at sketch stage is easy. Doing it after the art is finished means a redraw.

Clothing carries the design

Male character designs tend to lean on layers: jackets, coats, uniforms, folded sleeves. All of that is detail, and detail enlarges well as long as the line weight is confident. Heavy fabric folds are one of the few things that genuinely look better at 150 cm than on a screen.

Dark palettes need the right fabric

Black coats, navy uniforms and dark hair are common in this category and are the hardest thing to print. Deep blacks read as slightly lifted on matte peach skin. On 2 way tricot they stay darker and the contrast against a pale face holds.

Where the face lands

On a pillow standing upright the face sits in the top third, at roughly the height of your own head when you lie against it. Keep it 3 cm clear of the edge so the seam never crosses it, and keep nothing important on the long edge where the zip runs.

The same rules as everything else we print, stated before you order rather than after.

• Original characters you created
• Commissions you paid for, with the artist's agreement to print
• Your own photographs and your own brand artwork

Not characters owned by a studio, publisher or game company. That includes fan art of them, however original the drawing is. The character is the protected thing rather than the picture, which is the part people find counterintuitive.

We also do not print sexually explicit artwork, or sexualised art of characters who appear to be children whatever age is claimed for them. If you are unsure, send the file before ordering and you will get a straight answer.

Two fabrics, and for this category the usual advice shifts a little because the palettes are darker.

2 way tricot

Smooth, slightly glossy, stretchy in both directions. It holds deep blacks and keeps line work sharp, which matters when a design is a dark coat against pale skin. Most character art prints here.

The trade off is that it marks more easily and needs a laundry bag in the machine. It also stretches over a firm insert, which shifts the print slightly across the middle.

Peach skin

Matte, soft, breathable and much more forgiving day to day. Colours are accurate but a touch quieter, and very deep blacks read slightly lifted. If the pillow is for sleeping rather than display, that is a fair trade.

Short version

Dark clothing, sharp lines, display piece: tricot. Soft palette, daily use, something you will actually sleep against: peach skin.

People with a husbando and no shop that sells one

The most common story. The character exists, the art can be commissioned, and no printer would take an order for a single piece. That is the gap this fills.

Artists with original male characters

Illustrators whose own cast is male, printing one for themselves or a few for a convention table where the rest of the room is selling the other half of the market.

Gift buyers

Commissioning a character to a brief and printing it once is a present that cannot be bought anywhere else, which is the whole point of it.

Couples, with photographs

Not a drawn character at all, but the same pillow. A full length photograph of a partner who lives somewhere else, printed close to life size.

• Upload the artwork at the largest size you have, PNG, JPG, PSD or TIFF
• Choose peach skin or 2 way tricot
• Choose the cover alone, or the cover with an insert if you do not own a long pillow
• Approve the free preview of both sides

About three days to print and sew after approval, then four to eight business days of tracked shipping. Nothing waits for a batch.

If the file is too small

You are told in the preview, before paying. Usually the fix is exporting again from the original working file rather than sending the version that was sized for posting online.

If it arrives wrong

If what turns up does not match the preview you approved, we reprint it. Approving both sides first is precisely why that almost never happens.

• Anime body pillows, the full art guide, covering every kind of character
• Dakimakura explained, sizes, inserts and care
• Dakimakura covers, ordering the cover alone for a pillow you already own
• Custom dakimakura printing, resolution, bleed and file formats