Shaping Amigurumi: How to Make Mouths and Snouts

Have you ever made an amigurumi and thought something doesn’t look quite right? Maybe you were going for a dog, but your toy looks more like a teddy bear. Especially with animals, certain features can really distinguish the type of creature you’re trying to make. While a lot of factors can play a roll in the overall look, mouths and snouts can make a huge difference. In this article, Shaping Amigurumi: How to Make Mouths and Snouts, we’re going to cover the different shapes and techniques you can use to create awesome and distinct animals!

Shaping Amigurumi: How to Make Mouths and Snouts

Whether you’re free-handing a project, writing your own pattern or trying to tweak an existing one, I always recommend looking at reference photos of the animal you’re trying to make. It will give you a good idea of the kinds of shapes and colors you need to make your animal come to life.

Basic Snout Shapes

Most animals have some kind of snout and by playing with some basic shapes, you can create just about any animal you like. If you’re interested in learning more about creating basic shapes for amigurumi, check out this article: Easy Guide to Crocheting 3 Basic Shapes

Let’s look at a graphic to break this down.

The first (and probably easiest) is a simple half-ball shape which gives the face a Teddy bear look. This is great for all kinds of bears and pandas. Just change up the coloring! The next snout is a short cone shape that works for tons of mammals like foxes or dogs. Finally the third shape is a longer cone shape that works for larger mammals like deer and fantasy creatures like dragons.

Changing the length of the snout makes a huge difference in the overall appearance!

For these examples, all the snout shapes are worked separately from the ball shape of the head and then attached later. This method is great for beginners because it gives you practice with basic shapes and you can take the time to adjust the placement during the assembly phase. I know sewing is kind of a pain, but it’s also a necessary skill for amigurumi. If you’re struggling with sewing, check out this article on How to Sew Your Amigurumi Together Like a Pro.

Working the Head & Snout Together

While the above method works great, you can make your project look smoother by working the head and snout together. There’s actually 2 main ways to go about this, but one of them only works well for shorter snouts.

1. Snout First

In the first example, the starting point of the project (the magic ring) is at the tip of the snout. It then flares out in the same cone shape before sloping upward sharply to start the head. This is done by manipulating the placement of the increases.

When you increase at regular intervals, your project flairs out regularly. However, if you focus all (or some) of the increases on one side of the project, you can make just that side curve out. This also creates a distinct center-line in the face, so you’ll need to keep that in mind for any other features you’re adding.

This is my preferred method because it give you a lot of control over the snout and head shape. Plus it works with all three of the snout types we talked about in the first section.

2. Head First

In the second example, the starting point (magic ring) is at the top of the head. Similar to how you would start a ball, you work out and down until you want the front of the face to start flaring out. Like with the previous example, you focus your increases on one side of the face until you’re happy with the length of the snout.

The downside to this method is that you can’t increase too far away from the center without the project warping. Technically some warping can be worked out when you stuff, but not always. However, this way of working the head and snout together benefits a lot from face sculpting. It really helps define everything. If you want to learn more about face sculpting, check out this article here.

Technically there is a third method and that is when the starting point of the project is neither the head nor the snout. For example, if you start working from the bottom of the body, the feet or the tail. This is pretty common with dolls, where you work from the feet up. The main difference is that you’ll have to define the snout and the head by focusing your decreases as you move up the head.

While working the head and snout together is my favorite method of designing these pieces, it is slightly more difficult and doesn’t work well for every occasion. For example, when I made Freya the Fox, the all the color work and shaping involved meant it was easier to attach the snout separately.

Uncommon Snout & Mouth Shapes

What happens when you want to make an animal with an unusual or uncommon snout/mouth shape? Using reference photos, break down the animal into simple shapes and then decide the overall look you want. Of course you don’t necessarily have to stick with realistic features.

Take Milo the Moorish Idol for example. While the mouth shape of this fish is typically much thinner, I wanted to try out an ‘O’ shaped mouth with an indent and let the fins be the defining feature.

Another fun method of creating unique snouts and mouths is to create an animal with an open mouth. While this is a bit more challenging, it really gives your amigurumi character. There’s several ways to do this and it really deserves it’s own tutorial, so I’ll go into more in another post.

However, my new pattern, Farrin the Frilled Lizard, uses techniques for making an open mouthed project. If you want to follow along as I create this cutie, check out my Design with Me series on YouTube!

Creating Definition

If you want to keep your head and snout shapes simple, you can stick to basic shapes and then build on top of them later. For example, you can attach another piece to create a lower jaw or make a face piece that will define the upper jaw.

Now I’ll be the first to admit, I personally haven’t done a lot of this so if you want to learn more, I highly recommend checking out Complicated Knots on YouTube. She has tons of free patterns and several videos where she explains how to build up features on simple shapes.

Two other amigurumi designers that are excellent at creating more realistic snouts and mouths are Hooked by Kati and Projectarian. While their patterns are on the more intermediate/advanced side, I highly recommend trying out their projects.

I made Buzz the German Shepherd from Projectarian back in 2021 and I learned so much. It was also the first time I’d tried making crochet eyes!

Summary

There’s so many different ways to approach making even the simplest of snouts that the possibilities are endless. And that doesn’t even begin to cover all the fun things you can do with added pieces, surface stitching, face sculpting and open mouth variations.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and are excited to create some new critters! Do you prefer to work the head and snout together or keep them separate? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!

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Have a beautiful day and happy stitching!