All set? Then make sure to read and understand the Terms and Conditions. This document contains really important information about your rights as a designer! When you're ready, use the form on the next page to submit! If you have any questions about the Terms, make sure to contact us before you submit! Here are a couple highlights:

• By submitting a design, you're affirming that it's your own work and no one else's! We can’t accept a character owned or created by another artist or company. We need to reject any characters taken from copyrighted stuff like TV shows and movies. Sorry! Submitting on behalf of another person is not allowed. All designs must be originals. No recolors or redesigns of Squishable designs or other artists' designs.
• Please note: We are not currently accepting designs for the Squishables lines: Boozy Buds, Undercover Squishables, or GO! because our internal Art Team already has many, many secret designs for the future in the works!
• You're promising you're over 18!
• Your submission must be in .JPG form, and final file size must be under 10MB.
• Don't take a photo with your cell phone - if your drawing is on paper, please use a scanner! :)
• Your submission must have multiple views (front, side, back, top, etc.). We're looking for at least 3 views!
• We have the right to reject a submission for any reason. :(
• Changes in design and color almost always have to be made to a design’s construction and colors to make it work!
• Be nice! That means being courteous and fair to the other competitors and respecting their artwork. No voting down everyone else's designs to make yours look better, scoring doesn't work that way anyway.

A simple piece of clean, white paper, canvas, Photoshop or Illustrator document will do just fine! Use whatever you feel most compelled to create with! :) If you'd prefer to have a starting point - feel free to download the Design Template below in your preferred format! (though they are totally not a requirement to have your design accepted!)

It can be intimidating, we know, but if a design isn't quite ready to go up for voting, we provide one-on-one feedback on each design to try and make it the best it can possibly be! Some common problems that we find with artwork that you can preemptively consider before submitting:

• The artwork is not in the right format!
• The linework of the artwork is too rough or sketchy. It just needs some polish!
• The character is too similar to a current, retired, or in process design!
• The character is too similar, or copied, from someone else’s work. :(
• The design is too complex to be created in plush form. It needs a little simplification!
• The design is somehow inappropriate or not kid-friendly. Oopsie!

Well, we have answers! Probably! Below are some of the most common questions we get about Project Open Squish, but click right here to be taken to the FULL FAQ! :)

How does voting work?

If we think that your design will make a good plush, and if it passes all the requirements, then the Squishy fan community will vote on which designs make it into Squishy round-ness! Tell your friends! Tell your fans! And don't forget to answer the questions that voters ask you on your design's page! At the end of the round, the highest scorer(s) (who make it over the minimum scoring threshold…yes, sometimes there are multiple winners in a round!) will be sent for prototype!

Why did you reject my design?

There are many reasons why your design may have been rejected. We get thousands of submissions, and we unfortunately cannot accept everyone, even though we wish we could! We have been running Open Squish for over 10 years now, and we do get so many submissions that acceptances are highly competitive! Some fans are only accepted after trying and practicing for years! It takes a lot of time and practice to get to the professional-level designs that do best in voting. But if you are rejected we do want to encourage you keep working on your skills and try again!

Here are a few tips to better help you in future submissions. Make sure the art for your future designs is very clean and neat; simple clearly defined lines work best. We highly recommend using flat, solid colors and clean, thin black outlines. Digital artwork is also usually the most popular with voters. For inspiration, please check out our In-Process page for some great examples of clean, simple designs. Also make sure that you submit 360s views, because we need to see the side/back/etc. in order to run the design. The best-voted designs are usually digital, but we also accept hand-drawn designs. We use Photoshop here, as well as other Adobe Creative Cloud programs like Illustrator, along with Wacom Intuos tablets. There are plenty of online tutorials that are helpful for when you are just starting out. Digital drawing takes a lot of practice, but the more you do it, the better you will get for sure! And if you do decide to submit hand-drawn designs, as we said above, just make sure to keep them very neat and clean, and scan them in for optimal results.

I submitted a while ago. Why haven't I heard feedback yet?

We have an amazingly huge amount of awesome Project Open Squish submissions, and we try to get you feedback within one month of submission (or sometimes sooner if we can)! We go through them every day, but it can take a little while to get through the volume! Rest assured that we did receive your design and will get back to you with information as soon as we possibly can!