Make Craft Game

I started the project with the head, which is not a decision I regret. Having the head establish the proportion of the figure early on helps create the final product. One thing I didn’t consider was Misery’s forehead. Misery naturally has an oblong face, so I created an egg shape,e which slowly became longer and longer.

After the head was in a place I liked (the first time), I started working on the eyes. I did one eye at a time, starting on the left. There was a lot more detail in her eyes than I realized. Not only does Misery’s eyes have a unique shape, but also the red from her inner eyelid to consider.

And making a second eye to match the first one way no easy feat. I ended up blocking out the eye first before committing anything to stabbery. In retrospect, doing this for both eyes would have immediately highlighted the issue I was going to run into.

Then I started to block out her hair. Oh, how much hair she had. Misery is interesting because her hair is mostly under a veil, but still very visible. There is a very defined widow’s peak and sloped, shaped strands. And I did not have room to give them the shape they deserved, with the head in egg shape. It needed to grow. And extending her head was not the easiest thing.

But I eventually managed to add enough forehead to get her hair into some semblance of the original character. I also added red freckles everywhere because she does have those spots all over her face, although not as prominent. I kept her hair relatively short with plans to extend it later.

Given my mishap with the head, I was a lot more conscious of using a base and modifying the top color than I previously had been. First, I added the white edged color that is her neck. Not having any skin besides the head was a blessing. Necks are hard. I did use full dark purple for the main portion of the neck just because the space was relatively small.

Then it was onto the torso and skirt. Misery only wears one outfit, and it’s very conveniently a full-length dress. I started with the torse first, trying to make an acute triangle. I wanted to have some width on top for the shoulders, but the waistline also needed to be there. 

I feel like the shaping ended up looking a bit like a broom on the bottom. The dress she is in gets wider as it goes down, which leads to a kind of handle top and fluffed-out bottom. Once I was happy with the shape, I moved on to adding color.

The bottom half of the dress is dark purple, while the top half of the dress is light purple. Well, I say the top half, but it’s more the torso section. I also added some bead details that run along the torso of the dress to the neck piece.

One of the more daunting tasks for me was creating arms. This is where I had to commit to what position Misery was standing. I went with a pose where she has one arm down and another up, holding a staff. This was a bad decision because I didn’t realize how hard it would be to create a staff. But that’s for later….

All that was left was covering the arms in a dark purple, matching the bottom half of the dress. I thought covering the wool with color would be easy. And it wasn’t exactly hard, but it did take more wool than I anticipated. And the shape was not the easiest thing to cover.

The arm on her side was easy enough. Just a bit of a shaped blob. The arm that was out was a bit more difficult as her sleeve as quite a bit of structure. Misery’s sleeve is like that of a bat with three different points, each getting longer as it pulls away from the body. Taking into consideration, the elbow bend was also quite a challenge.

What in the wide world possessed me to make a staff? That feels like one of the most foolish decisions I’ve made in a craft in a while. Not only that, but I didn’t build a core, so the rigidity of the staff came entirely from being compacted by the felting needle. Getting the right shape took a long time. Honestly, I feel like I’d spent more time on the staff than the body.

One thing that got me was the spider web wrapping around the staff. I could not get the wool to be that thin of a line with that rigid of a structure. No matter what I did, it just wasn’t working. So, I went with a mixed medium solution of using yarn. The yarn already has shape. It was a bit thicker than I wanted, but keeping that shape mattered to me more.

The solution I came up with to position her staff was to create a base for her to stand on. This would anchor not only Misery but her staff as well. It was at this time that I really wish I had woven a metal wire into the staff (but I’m sure that would have caused a whole slew of different problems). I created a base that kind of looked like a stone that was shaped into soap for some reason… Not sure why. But the base did provide a good stand for Misery.

Then I went on to tackle her hair. Misery has long hair, not short like I’ve kept it. I was worried that adding layers would cause some issues, but it turned out well. Then I realized that Misery wears a veil, and I had a panic attack. I had no idea how I was going to pull that off. I thought about doing mixed media with fabric, but that proved to be a bit too difficult. So, leaving her hair out was the easiest choice.