A Special Commission - Part 2

The other character from Rayman I was commissioned to make was a warrior princess called Barbara.

She was more of a challenge than the Teensy Wizard as she is significantly more complex and detailed, but I was sure she would come out well.

I started with her feet and legs, and bent a pipe cleaner down each leg and into each foot to both provide strength and allow her to be posed.

The join between her feet and legs did not need to be perfect, as the character wears fur gaiters which once added would cover the join.

The finished shoes & gaiters were made using small pieces of fur fabric sewn into tubes around her ankles and then sewn in place so they don't slip down.  A mid brown yarn was used for the strapping.

 Her arms also have pipe cleaner in them so that she can be posed and can hold her axe, which is made from a bamboo skewer.

Double thickness of grey felt (for rigidity) forms the blade, with detail added using a dark grey Sharpie pen.  Rivets are brads with the 'legs' removed and glued in place, and the handle is finished with brown yarn strapping and a wooden bead hot glued in place.

Her hair is made from ginger-red yarn, and the two braids each side of her face have sewn beige felt covers finished off with yarn wrapping and real wooden beads glued in place.

The skull on her belt presented a problem - I had no skull beads and my air dry clay had, ahem, dried in the packet.  I have Fimo (polymer clay) but our gas oven is very poor at baking it properly (a mini electric oven for my craft room is on my wishlist!).  After cutting the basic skull shape from white felt I found the flatness unsatisfying.  Suddenly I remembered some pound shop glass beads I had bought (but never used) ages ago.  They had zero quality control and many were very thin and flat.  They looked exactly like cartoon skull eye sockets, and once I glued them in place on the felt skull shape I thought they looked really effective.

 
A distinctive feature of the character is a generous bust - I've never had to crochet tiny boobs before! They look good, however, and I added a stitch when sewing on her green felt top to accentuate her cleavage.

Her helmet has embroidered crosshatched texturing, and the wings are made from chunky white pipe cleaner. 

A colour matched pair of large & small glass beads are sewn and glued in place to finish the top.

 

The brim of her helmet is golden coloured felt with two sized of gold brads inserted to make the studs.


 
I tried to make cartoon eyes to look more like the images of the character but no matter what I tried they just didn't look very good.  I opted for my usual amigurumi 6mm safety eyes and a little chain stitch nose.  I think the result is suitably cute :)

Overall, Barbara took about 10 hours to make, spread over about 6 days.  I am very, very pleased with how she came out!

Please note - this character created, owned and copyright Ubisoft.

A Special Commission - Part 1.

A few weeks ago I was tasked (by a friend) to make some characters from the video game Rayman as a birthday gift for a fan of the game.  After some discussion we decided that the character Rayman himself wouldn't work well as he doesn't have arms, legs or a neck (though he does have hands, feet and a head).

Without using 'invisible' thread to hold the bits together (which would have looked a bit odd) or using a prop like a chair to affix them to, he was just never going to look right.

We settled instead on two other playable characters - a Teensy Wizard, and a warrior princess called Barbara.  In this post I will showcase the Teensy Wizard, in the next I will showcase Barbara.

The Teensy Wizard. 

This character is a blue, long faced creature with a cute wizard hat & coat.

I made the head first - a sausage shape in mid blue which tapers to one end and is rounded at the other.  After that I was able to make the plump body in a pale blue to the right scale.  I made the rounded cone shape first, then made the base separately as a flat circle.  This meant that he would sit properly upright. I then sewed the conical shape onto the base to make the finished body.

 His arms were made from the same mid blue as his face, using a simple chain and slip stitch technique to make the three fingers and thumb.

The swirl on his face was embroidered on using a darker royal blue yarn, and his wry smile using black yarn.

The hat and robe are made of royal blue felt, sewn together, and the stars are made from a mid blue felt.  The same colour stars are on his body and his coat, the felt needed to be darker than his body but lighter than his coat.  Thankfully I have a lot of felt lying around! I made the stars using a sharp paper punch with the felt sandwiched between two sheets of paper for a cleaner cut.  I had planned to sew the stars onto his body and coat but it is almost impossible to hide the stitches on felt, so I opted for a thin layer of hot glue instead to ensure they would not come off.

His eyes protrude from his head so rather that using my normal safety eyes I opted for two black beads sewn on with strong thread.  As this amigurumi was not for a child this was OK, and looks really effective.

I added two little feet in the same colour as his face an arms - simple dome shapes folded in half , lightly stuffed at the front and then sewn on to the base of his body.

I'm delighted with how well he turned out.  He took about 6 hours in all, over a few days.

Please note - this character created, owned and copyright Ubisoft.