FO: A Tauren for Rob

It's safe to unveil the supersecretspecialpresent now, because the recipient will not be able to read this before his birthday!

It all started with this.

Or, well, I should be honest, it started with the BF and me joining this little guild in World of Warcraft called Vintage. Fast-forward to almost 4 years later (whoa), and we've made some great friends, one of whom is turning 40. What would you give a gamer geek who doesn't want to celebrate his birthday?

If your answer was 'Something he doesn't need but that's related to WoW', you think like me. (I'm not sure if that's a good thing.) So I started sketching. And drawing. And crocheting. And frogging and unraveling and throwing away, because the process was very much trial-and-error... And in the end, I came up with this.


Isn't he cute? Don't you want to fluff his cute little mane?

He's got a nice big sword, an unfairly small shield and a massive belt, all the way Blizzard intended gear to be. I opted out of making the characteristically humongous shoulderpads that WoW-players all know and love/hate, because it got too bulky. My endless playing around with paper models for a helmet all just ended up in frustration, so I left it out as well.


The whole thing was a massive learning experience, and I'm happy about most parts and not too happy about some, but I'm determined to try this again. It's so much fun! The crochet part was mostly a no-brainer, though the body did take a few takes to look just right because I had always made the head and torso in separate instances. With this one, though, I decided to see if this was more sturdy than having to sew the head on afterwards. And it is!

The sword was the hardest piece. It's a ton of tiny pieces, all sewn and glued together around a sturdy cardboard base so it would stay straight and not flop around like a fish on dry land. It turned out okay, if I say so myself!

The belt and the shield both were built slightly different than the original model, due to colour variations and construction. The belt was a matter of material: I couldn't get the felt cut so thin that it could resemble the light piping on the original, without it falling apart in my hands. The shield was a matter of 'this sorta looks like it should be something like this, right?' And.. yeah.. let's call it 'an artist's interpretation', shall we?

"Hey there, baby!"

All in all, I'm pretty happy with mini-Grimbull! I hope he is, too!