My Niece and Nephew are awesome, and even though they're getting a little older now they still love me crocheting stuff for them. But they love to set me challenges. So when my nephew asked me for "Dry Bowser" (a character from the Super Mario games) I had to have a good long think.
There were a couple of photos online of someone's attempt to make Dry Bowser (which, admittedly, were far superior to my attempt) but rather than trying to work out what they'd done I thought I'd just use a reference image or two, and have a go myself.
Since I started crocheting 3 years ago I've made a lot of stuff from patterns and found various little techniques that help me to 'sculpt' things. With Dry Bowser I started out with the head as a big white oval shape (the usual Magic Ring / circular crocheting). I then shaped the brows and the cheeks before adding the jaws, horns and teeth.
At this point Bowser didn't have a body. I think I made so many magic ring ovals and circles for this project that I can do them in my sleep!
Then I had to start thinking about arms and legs. Bowser is a pretty big thing so I wanted to make some nice meaty looking arms and legs.
These were done in two sections each, with a sort of mushroom shape (ironic eh?) to make them look like arm and leg muscles.
Easy peasy. Added some ribs at this point to make him look a bit more skeletal, and added some binders around the tops of his arms as well as a little 'cap' for where his hair will sprout from.
I think the first thing I wish I'd done better is work on the skull shape.
It should have been a bit taller and not so squished but at least the thing can sit on its own haunches.
I had to then think about more details so started work on the hands and feet. These are pretty claw like and I was a bit disappointed with the results, I just couldn't get a fine enough set of each to make proper claw-like fingers and toes so ended up making some flat round ones instead.
They still look vaguely OK though!
Then I started working on the hair detail (one strand at this point) and the shell. I think the shell is the bit I am most pleased with, though it could probably have done with being a bit bigger.
BUT it does at least look nice and spiky. I think there were probably better ways of doing it, but this worked OK in conjunction with the shape of the back of the model (it's basically one large grey magic ring worked up to about 40 sts, with a smaller red magic ring at about 35 sts worked into a semicircular shape to form the shell).
The spikes are just tiny little 2 sts increases then worked into rows of about 5-6 sts.
Finishing off, he needed a bony skeletal tail and some wrist binders with spikes on, plus a few more
plumes of hair and the last few ribs on his tummy.
Et voila! I don't think I'd ever have the patience to write this one out as a proper pattern (and Nintendo are a bit 'funny' about fan art!) Suffice to say that there were lots of fiddly little details in this that would need proper working out, and I would love to have another go at a better version with some yarn that could stand a bit of a 'stiffer' modelling process.
And I'm still not happy with those hands and feet..!
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