Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Super Secret Project Revealed: Knitted World of Warcraft Figureprint

Everyone, meet Thayolin, my level 80 Horde Paladin on the Durotan server of World of Warcraft. Why, you ask, did I knit a rendition of her? Well there's a bit of a story there.


The backstory
:

My husband and I have been playing World of Warcraft together for about 3-4 years now. Recently I got an iPhone and started listening to podcasts on my way to and from work to entertain myself. My favorite is The Instance, a podcast by Scott (@ExtraLife) and Randy (@RandyDeluxe), that gives WoW players the news, rumors, and general discussion of all things World of Warcraft on a weekly basis with heavily douse of hilarity. In their most recent episode (#164) they announced a contest they are running to give away a free FigurePrint of a character from Figureprints.com Now, the concept getting a free FigurePrint is damn near irresistible to me.

Brian and I each have on of these and they are very cool. They are a 3-D rendering of your character wearing their armor and weapons and run you about $150 a piece. Brian got me one of Thayolin for Valentines Day this past year. I was so excited!

But I digress. To enter the contest I had one week to make my own figureprint out of anything I chose: whatever I wanted! Hmmm, what do I do for fun all the time? KNIT! And what do I have a metric ton of just sitting around our apartment? YARN! So, given this wonderful idea, I decided to give knitting up a Thayolin doll a go. I mean why not? how hard could it be?

The process:

Ok, it was pretty darn hard!!!! The podcast came out on Oct. 1 and the due date for submitting a photo of your figureprint was Oct. 7. That is not much time. Especially since I'm not a fast knitter, I have never made anything like this before AND I'm making up the pattern as I go along. So, 20+ hours later Thayolin's knitted persona was born. Below are some pictures of the process of making her. I have some notes on the pattern, but I generally just improvised it, so if you are interested in making one for yourself, I could give some tips, but that's about it.


Ahhh, the early stages... It's always fun to see a disembodied knitted head sitting on your desk.



Working down to the hip area. I even tried to make a basic skeletal system so I could bend her at the waist and legs. She bends a little but not too much, so I obviously have to work on this more next time.


For awhile she just looked like a voodoo doll because of all the needles sticking out everywhere. A certain member of my family who shall remain nameless was a bit concerned of what others might think if they saw me working on her at this point. Hehe...


A little bit of intarsia for the Wyrmrest Accord tabard. Not too bad for exactly zero planning beforehand.


Getting close, just the gauntlets, shoulders and helm (shudder) to go!


Here's a closeup of her helm. That is the piece that took the longest to make because I had to embroider the detail on it in order to make look even remotely ok. I probably put 3-4 good hours into this alone. But I am very proud of it. It even kind of looks like the original :P


So, wish me luck on the contest. My friend Amy also made a figureprint and hers is awesome. You can see it on her blog here. I know I have some good competition. Hopefully we will find out soon. My fingers are crossed and I'll post the results once I find out.

7 comments:

gale (she shoots sheep shots) said...

wow, and I mean both wow and WoW! I hope you win. That's some good knitting.

Frost said...

Great Work!!!

Your Yarn-Fu is strong!

Bahston Beans said...

Looks great, good luck!

jjphotoFTW said...

Thanks so much everyone! I'm so nervous about tonight when we find out. Apparently the top five were sent to The Instance's crack panel of judges this morning.

Frost said...

You are a finalist! So is Amy!!!

jjphotoFTW said...

HOLY CRAP both Amy and I are finalists!!!! YEAY!!!!! :D Jo's so happy.

Dr. McTeacher said...

Kick to the ass! You rock, Jo-Jo. I could give two craps about WOW, and even I'm incredibly impressed!