Commission: Guude Boulderfist

Last year (what seems like a very long time ago!) I got a message on my Facebook page from a lovely lady named Elizabeth (Lilly Love on Twitter) inquiring about the first-ever Guude Boulderfist Mindcrack plushie.

I agreed to make him, and as most know, he took me a veeeery long time.  He hit me over the holidays and I had too many other things going on.  I had promised to make him in time for her to take the plushie to meet the real Guude at PAX South in Texas...and then completely forgot that it was my goal.

I hit some snafus along the way...such as attaching Guude's hands/arms backwards:

@GuudeLP Made a plushie oops...don't suppose you'd switch your hands backwards and save me a couple hours? XD pic.twitter.com/b18TFbNtjq
— Katie (@Velvet_Key) February 2, 2015

Guude (Jason) favorited the tweet!

Mini-Fangirl Fiesta!

Through a few trials and tribulations, I finally managed to finish the plushie and turn him in at Hogwarts for "Detention".  Detention applies to any project that was not started in the target month (in this case, February) but was completed during that month.

Here's Guude's official shiny portrait:

Doesn't he look just dapper?

I earned the Goblin Defiance Award:

There is a warning that there is a power struggle at Gringotts and that because many goblins recognize no wizarding master, they will not stand for any such control over their bank, regardless of what Fudge wants. Create a project that was diffiuclt for you to finish, or that seemed to want to rebel from you, causing a longer time to finish it and you’ll earn the Goblin Defiance Award.

And then of course I couldn't resist a little photo shoot to liven things up a little bit.  I thought my Pause plushie could show Guude how to vacay it up a little bit:

Why yes, those are coconut cups and that's a real ukulele.

And my favorite photo:

It's finally Friday, and tonight we can celebrate @GuudeLP style! (Because we all know Hawaii style rocks!) pic.twitter.com/q7ZLMMRnIu
— Katie (@Velvet_Key) February 6, 2015

No favorite or retweet from Guude this time, but he did favorite when Elizabeth/Lilly Love tweeted him about the arrival of her brand new plushie:

He's here! @GuudeLP looks awesome I can't wait till the next convention to show the real guude thank you @Velvet_Key pic.twitter.com/kVfOxBExRu
— Lilly Love (@LillyLove181) February 17, 2015

And of course, I did post the picture up on DeviantArt and Reddit (but my timing was very horrible, and it didn't get as many views as the other plushies--oh well!).

I've made great progress on that list from two weeks ago (a couple of snow days will do that to you); I'll be sure to share more pictures and badges with you soon!

Minecraft Crochet Segue

(Because I was mean last time and showed Etho with no context given.)

Who is Etho?  Etho is the third member of the Mindcrack server group known as Team Canada.

Etho's YouTube Channel

Although I do not subscribe to his videos, I have on occasion enjoyed his exploits with PauseUnpause and VintageBeef.  He has close to 1.5 million subscribers, and has one of the largest audiences on the Mindcrack server.

Here's the finished plushie:

This is the classic posed-against-the-doorframe photo I use for all new plushies.

I made Etho and then had no close third friend to give him to, so he remains steadfastly beside my PauseUnpause and has posed with him for quite a few photos, some of which have never been published to any of my social profiles.

Fun Fact:

I had originally planned to do

a webcomic using photos of

my plushies and their many

adventures.  I only got through

one strip before other things

grabbed my creative attention.

Here was the first and only panel of the comic:  

The premise was that the MineCon cape I had tied to the Pause Plushie would bring any of the plushies that wore it to life.  And they'd have adventures all over my house, up to and including holding my husband (the Panda) hostage so that I would crochet Etho and Pause a new Beef for them to play with.

Anyway, that never happened.  But here's the picture proof that plushie Pause went to MineCon:

Signatures include: BdoubleO, GenerikB, BlameTheController,

SethBling, VintageBeef, KurtJMac, DocM77, MCGamer, Pyro

Guude, WBaj92, Zisteau, and JustVan (Bonus!) 

But as it happened, I started working on other projects, some of which were my very first commissions, and first inventions.  I've only ever published one crochet pattern to date, and that was only here on this blog.  That will probably change in the future, as I choose to divulge the new techniques I've learned/invented/muddled through to the masses.

Other Minecraft creations:

Mini-VintageBeef

(Also known as 'why you can't make those big plushies smaller'.)

Patches done after the style of the Minecraft creeper, pig, and sheep.

A little cake keychain.

All three of the above are for sale in my Etsy store!

Well, that was a short post, but with more pictures!  Tomorrow I'll share about how I got started on taking commissions...

What?

Head of the lore writers?

Oh, right.  Hmm...maybe time for both?  We'll see!

The MineCon Adventure Map

So, back to how it all got started with the Broken Buttons!

As I started out on the build team, the senior builders would leave messages for me in Skype and ask me to do small paragraphs.

I wrote a few summaries for some websites concerning maps I had never seen, mentally praising my informative writing professor Dr. Spence for teaching me the value of action verbs and word limits.  Although I'd originally thought that everybody was hard at work on Kingdom of the Sky III, it seemed to be on hold.  The upcoming project was some kind of map for MineCon that featured Mindcrackers.

Doesn't sound like a big deal, right?

Or so I thought.  Here's the teaser trailer:

At 0:15 when Guude speaks, official nerd-outs began.

As it so happened, it was a map designed to showcase the entirely redesigned resource pack system, which included for the first time custom sounds.  In addition, it was the official MineCon map, and needed to have references to Mojang, the history of Minecraft, and lots of other things I had no idea about.

And they needed a script done ASAP, because they were going to distribute it on USB drives in the MineCon goodie bags, and Guude had to get it all sorted out a few weeks in advance.  The builders had to have time to finish the map, add the custom monsters and all additional redstone devices (apparently there have been significant changes in command blocks that now render all this hard work a whole lot easier) and on top of it all, debug the entire play space.

They. Were. NUTS.

And I was apparently as crazy as all the rest of them.

This time praising my choice to take Play Writing instead of Technical Writing in college, (yet cursing my short-sightedness in not also taking Script Writing), I roughed out a script format in Google Docs and shared it on the private Broken Buttons forums.

Then the mad writing began!  I took multiple tours of the different completed areas in the map, trying to fit them all into the script in their correct order, and then make that order seem logical.  I couldn't believe that the team had made these enormous, beautiful builds without knowing precisely where they were going to fit into the plot!

But that, as it turns out, is a lore writer's job.  They build it, we interpret it into the overarching story for the players.

So I worked, wrote, deleted, and wrote some more.  I tried to get the Mindcrackers into my head enough so that I could write them believable dialogue using some of their inside jokes and catch phrases.  I factored in the different quests and requirements laid out in the flow diagram and spreadsheets.  I got confused, held quick TeamSpeak conferences with some very patient builders, and then went back and rewrote entire pages.

And finally, I reached the point where I either needed to tell the builders the script was finished, or spend the next week picking over it looking for errors.

...I sent a message and took my hands off of the keyboard.  And then (of course!) I panicked.  What if it wasn't good enough?  What if I had missed something crucial?

What if the Mindcrackers hated it?

For all my years of college study, I have never had anything published by a paying publisher.  I have written a few successful fanfictions (some more than others), and I'd only submitted one short story to a publisher because I was forced to in Short Story Writing.  (And subsequently rejected, which we were all warned would happen.  I still have the rejection letter somewhere, to remind me that success doesn't happen at first.)

Thus, I am a huge critic of myself, and I fear public humiliation.

But then BTC sent us a zipped file of all the sound clips that the Mindcrackers had recorded so far.  I opened the file, and just listened.

They were saying my words.  With almost-straight faces.  My words.

(Bet you can't guess what happened next.)

Fangirl Fiesta!

It was beyond awesome!  I wanted to dance around like a moron!  (I restrained myself for the public safety of everyone I might have given black eyes to with my flailing fists.)

And then came the questions.  As it turns out, when you're the one who writes the script, that sort of makes you the authority when it comes to last-minute details.  The other builders, (particularly the redstone team) were working for hours just up until the deadline debugging, tweaking, and making sure everything ran all right.

(I even helped work on some building while I was online.  I actually designed and built most of the Museum of Mojang in the final area at the end of the game.)

Finally, finally, I thought it might be all over when the teammates attending MineCon started leaving for Orlando.  I had already sent the Pause plushie up to Washington state for Whitherunn, and he had arrived safely.

(I myself was heading north to visit my parents in New York.)  But over the weekend I watched the feeds from MineCon, checked for updates, and kept my eye on Twitter.

Perhaps my favorite moment from all of this was from Mhykol:

(To this day, I have no idea if he knew I was the lore writer on the project.)

The feeling of accomplishment was amazing.  I had finished something!  And for the most part, people liked it!  I felt like I was ready for the next project, whatever it was.

(No, you don't get a hint right now.  Check back tomorrow!)

It's Been An Exciting Past Year...

But I feel that I should lay it out in a somewhat-chronological order, for my sake.  One day I'm going to look back on all this and either say:

1)  You were crazy!
2)  That's so cool!
3)  What were you thinking?

Or possibly a combination of all three of those things.

So, rewind with me a bit to June 2013.  I was expecting my friend April back from her school year of teaching in Dalian, China.

I knew I had to make her birthday and Christmas presents special.  I also knew that handmade goodies are the best goodies.

So I began this project:

With my beginner-to-intermediate crochet skills, the plushie soon took shape:

And thus VintageBeef became the first Minecraft: Mindcrack plushie in the series that is gaining me some crochet business today.

For those who don't know, Mindcrack is the largest publicly-known Minecraft server, populated entirely by YouTube personalities.  It was started by GuudeBoulderfist, and he invited the current members.  (It is private and white-listed.)

View Beef's YouTube channel here.

So, did I get the plushie finished in time?  Was he the only one?  Stay tuned!