Red Dead Redemption

So, I love Red Dead Redemption.  It is a fantastic game, and I am just now going through my second playthrough of it after putting in about 40 hours in the first playthrough.  I could ride around on my horse all day, watching the sun rise in Armadillo and watching it set over my ranch in Tall Trees.

If you have never played this game, I strongly recommend it. Sure it has fun shooting sequences, and like I said, riding around on your horse is fun and surprisingly relaxing, as long as you don't let some robbers sneak up on you or anything.  I learned how to play Liar's Dice, and I learned that even if I get caught cheating at poker I am a faster draw than most anyone.  

But there are parts of the game that are just amazing--anything to do with the mysterious stranger, for one (Seriously, go watch the youtube link.  Even if you've never played the game, the writing and acting are excellent).  And the little vignettes you come across while playing make this game different than anything else I've ever played.  One time I was riding my horse around Mexico, just wandering around, and in the middle of nowhere I came across a woman who had been murdered.  Her husband was next to her, crying, and since there was nothing I could do--no one to track down, no one to save--I left.  About 10 seconds later I heard a shot fired and chills went up my spine.  I didn't go back to check out what happened.

ANYWAY!  Totally not the point of this post.  Check out my little John Marston!

 

 As you can see (well, maybe not from this picture but from the rest) I made little John Marston with legs, instead of the usual round base.  It's the same pattern as the all crochet Link I made, and I really like it.

John here is complete with his revolver, his rifle, an ammo belt (both across his chest and around his belt), his magical bag which can carry 30 wolf pelts in it, a lasso and a fancy belt buckle.  Oh, and a feather in his hat. 

If it looks like his eyebrows are moving, it's because they are not sewed down.  I really like them--I can't picture John without a look of worry and anger on his face--but boyfriend doesn't like them at all.  Plus, when I think of John smiling I think of how creepy Shepard is when he smiles.  I think John would look the same way if he ever tried to smile.

And here's a closeup of his face, so that you can see his scars.  I know they are kind of small and he's missing the scars over his nose and lip, but boyfriend said it would be too much to try and put them all on there.

Do I have a thing for westerns?  I dislike most western movies so much that I waited about 6 months to buy this game because I was afraid I wouldn't like the premise enough to bother playing it.  And then there's the new True Grit movie, which I absolutely loved, which comes out on DVD next week and which I will be buying on day 1.  And I also love Maverick!  And Deadwood!  (PS--The ONLY reason I saw the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie was because Ian McShane was in it.  The ONLY reason I liked the new Pirates movie was because Ian McShane was in it, even though I felt he could have used more screen time.  And a couple more expletives)  Maybe I will have to reconsider my stance on westerns after all.

Anyway, let me know what you think about him!  Stay tuned!

Bioshock!

Check out this awesome Big Daddy! For being made entirely out of crochet, it is incredibly detailed. Full disclosure here: I've never played Bioshock. I tried to play it, but I couldn't get over the first person view (I hate first person games) and how scary it was. Call me girly, but I like games that are bright and pretty. Like Assassin's Creed. It was bright and I loved climbing all over the buildings and jumping on people and stabbing them in the neck. That's also why I couldn't get behind Fallout 3 either, it was too gray. Alright, enough rambling, back to the craft!

I love the little drill. It's amazing that you can get that kind of effect with different crochet techniques!


The best part about this is the creator put up the pattern for free! So go and create a crochet army! Stay tuned!

And Happy Valentine's Day!

Prince of Persia!

All right everyone, time for our newest creations! Behold:
It's the Prince and Farah from the Sands of Time game. Aren't they adorable? I think they both turned out really well for being mostly half naked.
I do like the Prince. I always thought it was really funny how he always seemed to lose an article of clothing throughout the game. We were going to make him fully clothed, but he doesn't really look like himself when he has all those clothes on, you know? I like that he doesn't have any froufy head scarves, either, like in the newest game. He was kind of annoying.

Anyway, this prince has his dagger of time and two swords. He can only wear one at a time, but it never hurts to have extras lying around.
And here is little Farah. Those white poofy things on her left side are the feathers of her arrows. She has a quiver hanging off of her belt. This picture doesn't show it too well, but she has lots of dangly gold chains around her too. I really like the way her top came out, it's just two different colors of felt but I think it actually looks really drapey and natural looking, it hardly looks like felt at all. I think her earrings are adorable.

Anyway, let me know what you think in the comments! Stay tuned for more really cool stuff coming up soon.

Scarf Hero

Once again, I curse this stupid Texas weather! It's February, when people are knitting ridiculously cute smittens or blankets or sweaters (not like I have the patience to do any of those things, but still! Options are nice and it is 75 degrees in my apartment right now!) Anyway, the point is that this scarf is awesome but there is only about a 2 week window in Texas in which I can wear it which I probably wouldn't do anyway because I'm not cool enough to pull it off. Anyway, enough rambling, look at pretty picture!
That's right, it's a Guitar Hero scarf! You can read more details from the woman who made it on Craftster. Suffice to say, though, it's made out of crochet and then each of the lines were painstakingly hand sewed on, as well as all of the little button presses. She used a chart (from the Muse song "Knights of Cydonia") to know where to put all of the little buttons. I think it's ingenious. Very cool. Or in this weather, very hot. Stay tuned, we have a new dude done! Pictures coming within the next day or so. Stay tuned!

God of Cute

So here's one of our new dudes! Hint: he has nothing to do with the kitty. I told you we were really close to finishing him! (I know, I usually overestimate how fast we work, but this time it's actually true). Presenting:
It's Kratos! He was a custom order, and even though we said we'd stop doing those he sounded way to cool to pass up. I made him with silver yarn and then his little tattoos were painted on. He does look kind of innocent, huh? It's his eyes. They're too clear and big and black, they haven't seen enough death. Or something. He certainly has the weapons for a lot of carnage.
And his little chains can unwrap from his arms. The blades can come off the chains too, if you're into that. I also stitched a tiny scar on his right eye, but you can barely see it. He even has a secret item.
Bah! He killed Medusa! The perspective on this shot makes it look like her head is huge, but it's not really that big. I think the little snakes are really cute, they're just a chain stitch that I twisted into a little curly lock of evil.

Anyway, it was so much fun making little Kratos. I think he can be bloodthirsty and adorable at the same time. I hope you guys like him! Stay tuned for the kitty-related dude, coming soon.

Wow. Just wow.

Jeez. It's been a really long time since I posted anything here. I've been really unmotivated to make anything, and I've been really uninspired by the stuff I've seen on the internet. It's just a slump I'm going through, but I'm starting to get itchy fingers again. We're working on two new dudes right now, and I think you guys will just die when you see them.

One is a custom order, which I know we said we weren't doing anymore, but it was just too cool to pass up. The other one is just for us. We're almost done with both of them, and they should be finished by the end of the week. Wanna know what they are? Too bad. Here's a teaser pic, though.
Alright, the fuzzy thing is supposed to be a kitty, don't make fun of him. It's my first attempt at needle felting, and I think he turned out really great considering that a) it was my first time and b) I was pretty much terrified I was going to poke some fingers off. Anyway, he's an accessory to the little dude we're making. No, it's not Alf. The thing in the back is a blade, part 1 of 2. They're pretty giant and very cool looking.

Anyway, sorry for abandoning you guys for so long, but I'm back, I swear! Stay tuned for the finished products later on this week.

A team effort

Alrighty everyone! I've been tantalizing you with a hint of a new dude, and after much procrastinating he is finally done! I present to you:
A Team Fortress 2 Engineer! Okay, for those of you who don't have the Orange Box, I'll just fill you in. The engineer is this little dude here, who apparently does something very important with this little dispenser thingy. Alright, I admit it, I've never played TF2, mainly because I don't want to pay for a gold account on Xbox Live, and also because I'm scared of Xbox Live users. I do have the Orange Box though, so I'm half way there. Anyway--oh yeah, the dude.See, his little goggles come off too! And his little hat, of course. And he can hold his little wrench. I have to say, I'm most impressed with him, I think he turned out just perfect. Here's a closeup of the dispenser.

I think it's so cool! It's actually pretty big too, there's a lot of sculpey on that thing.

Anyway, if you want to see more pictures check out my flicker, as always. I'm not sure if we are really planning on anything big for our next project (DANGIT I still want to do Leonidas though), but I am working on a personal project that I'll probably post here later. Anyway, stay tuned!

Get rich quick!

Need a little extra cash this weekend? I've got just the project for you--it will literally make money materialize in front of your face! You don't even have to go looking through grass or anything! Okay, it's not OUR money, you know, REAL money, necessarily, but rupee money, so if you're planning a trip to Hyrule it will come in handy at least. For those looking to stay home (Hyrule always seems to be in some sort of peril anyway), it will make a great cat toy. Look!
They're just made out of two pieces of felt and then embroidered shut with (mostly) matching embroidery floss. As you can see, they still get the basic idea across even if you are a terrible embroiderer and can't draw a straight line to save your life. I stuffed some catnip in them too, and the cats have been going crazy over them. Wanna see? Hm, what's that? You don't want to see pics of my kitties? Too bad, here they are anyway.

Reach, Dorian, reach! It's worth 20 rupees!
Bah bah! Yuki just found a blue rupee!
Dorian's rolling in dough.

Was this whole post just a giant excuse to show pictures of my kitties? Perhaps. But it really is funny to see them running around with rupees in their mouth, and there aren't enough geeky pet toys out there. Or any, really.

Anyway, it's just a fun weekend craft that takes less than 20 minutes, so make some up and watch your kitties go crazy! Stay tuned for more craziness--I promise, no more kitty pictures.

Crazy Cute Cozy

This is so cool--a toilet paper cozy. I bet you guys never realized that you needed a toilet paper needed a cozy, huh? Well, after you see this you'll change your mind. This was made by craftster user jancola for the Craftster "Cozies WITH Irony" challenge. There are actually some really cool entries there, I like the ice cube cozies myself, it's just too hilarious. Anyway, take a look!
It looks like a little statue, doesn't it? It would be pretty cool to have just on it's own. But it gets cooler.
The little piranha plant is removable! So you can just have the plain pipe by itself if you want. Here are the logistics of how it fits over the toilet paper:
So this thing is cute, it has removable parts, and it's functional--it can't get any better than that. I love it. Stay tuned for more cool stuff everyone!

Etsy Finds

Hey all! I was trolling around etsy today and I found some neat stuff I thought I'd share with everyone.
First off, a little Pika statue! It's a little polymer clay statue that looks like the trophies in Smash Brothers. Cute little sleepy pikachu. Pika was one of my better characters in the Smash Brothers games, Zelda being my other good character. Gosh, I haven't played that in a while! Me thinks it might be time to get smashed soon.


Okay, everything else is Portal stuff. I know, I know, so overdone, but these are actually kind of cool. This vinyl Portal sticker can be put up on any clean surface. How cool would it be to put this up on a window somewhere?

From the same seller as above, a cake logo, also a vinyl sticker. The cake is the only one they offer, but wouldn't it be cool if they had the rest of the tiles available too? Like, you could put them in your hallway, right outside a door. It would be hilarious.
And lastly, here is a cake charm--well, actually a bunch of little cake charms. I thought it was kind of neat, because you only really see companion cubes, and I thought this little cake was still cute but different from the rest of the stuff that has come out.

Anyway, let me know what you guys think! Also, if you come across anything cute like this, feel free to send it my way--I'm always on the look out for cute video game crafts. Coming up this weekend--geeky t shirts made with freezer paper! They're very sharp looking. Stay tuned!

Portal Crafts!

I'm sorry I haven't updated in a while, we have been working hard on new guys and we saw Iron Man yesterday. It was awesome, by the way. We don't really go to the movies very often (mainly because I hate being around so many people who are annoying) but I'm glad we saw it in theaters.

Anyway, I wanted to share with you guys some Portal themed stuff! If you haven't played Portal, you should, it's amazingly fun and it's sold separately from the Orange Box now, so it's only $20. You can download it here and you don't even have to get out of your pajamas to play it! Okay, yeah, crafts. Everyone has probably seen the plushy weighted companion cube, so I'm not going to post it, I'm just going to post some other stuff I found/made I thought was interesting. Here we go.

1. Of course, I'm putting mine first. Bleh.
Ignore the blue, it was still blocking while I took this picture. I knitted this! I suck at intarsia/fair isle, it's really hard. There are parts of this that are bumpy and stick out really funny, but overall I think it turned out all right. My plan was to make nine of these squares from the game and then make a blanket out of it, but this one square took so long to do that I kind of scrapped the idea. Maybe I'll pick it up again once I finish making dudes.

2.This is from an egg challenge over at Kotaku, and this guy was the winner. Okay, it's not so much a craft, but I still think it is really clever. There are more egg entries (including another Portal one that I really like, plus an Okami one) here if anyone is interested.

3. Okay, I know I said no companion cubes, but this one is a cake! A cake companion cube. I wonder if GlaDOS would approve. Probably not.
4. Okay, I thought this one was really cool. Unfortunately, it looks like it's half finished, or maybe I just can't find any more pictures. This is from Craftster user DinkyTiny who made a little hair clip for her cosplay, which from the tiny sketch posted looks pretty cool.
These are the little spheres that fall off of GlaDOS at the end of the game. This one is the anger sphere, but I can't find any pictures of any of the other ones. It looks like she's going to AKon though, so if anyone is going there make sure to take pictures! I'm not going this year, all I like to do is sit around and make fun of Naruto cosplayers and that's not really worth $30 to me.

5. This one isn't a craft per se, but it's a really interesting article written about GlaDOS and some insights into what the game developers might have been thinking when they made her.
The first picture is from the game, and the second picture is an artist's rendering of a personified GlaDOS. Anyway, I can't explain it very well, but it's a really interesting article and I'm not doing it justice talking jibberish about it. You can read it here.

Okay, that's all the Portal crafts for today! I think we might possibly finish up Boba Fett today, but no promises. He's taking a lot longer than I though, but he's going to be super awesome. Also Roy Mustang from FullMetal Alchemist is almost done, I'll post pictures of both of them once they are finished.