How to Make Character Cookies without a Projector: My Hero Academia Cookies

I made these cookies for my younger daughter's birthday. It's a character called Dabi (Dabi is a Japanese word meaning cremation) from My Hero Academia. I, who've never interested in cartoon or anime, didn't know anything about it, but now I learned it's a very popular manga even outside Japan.

I love piping details, but I knew it's impossible to pipe all the details in this size (approx. 8.5cm), so I painted most of them. 

I noticed I should've taken some pictures of the making process, so it doesn't have everything from the start, but here you go.


1) Trace the image onto parchment paper using pencil. Put the parchment paper on the dry flooded cookie and trace the image with a ballpoint pen. You could use a scriber but it could break the paper and you could draw smoothly with a ballpoint pen.

2) Outline and flood the image except the hair. The upper forehead needs to be flooded just roughly. I don't want to work with all the tiny pointy borders of the face and the bangs. It's easier to flood the face first and then the bang. 

As for the icing consistency, I use pretty runny icing for flooding because I want to flood each part thinly. I can never get sharp outlines with runny icing, so I also need outlining consistency icing.

 

 

3)  Cut out the head and place it on the dry flooded face, then trace all the details.

 

4)  You need to see the "scratches" clearly enough, but you shouldn't scratch too hard. If the scratches are too thick and deep, lines drawn on the scratches tend to be blurred. So, I don't recommend this method if you are looking for a perfect clean, fine lines. I personally think it's good enough though.

 

   

 

5) Outline and flood the hair.

 

6) Draw eyes and other detailed lines with a fine paintbrush and black colouring (I used CK Black).  Pipe stitches (or staplers?) with light grey icing and then add some lines around the stitches.

The only parts I drew freehand were the shadows and the fine lines of the burn marks. (This character, Dabi, got badly burned or something I guess.)  Therefore, you don't need to be good at drawing at all! I

I think I heard this character is able to manipulate blue flames (or something, I don't know much about the cartoon), so I tried to make cookies with that image as well, but I'm not happy with the result. The flames were too simple compare to the character's detailed expression...