We have a screen!

So in my last post about my arcade game design, I had a couple of sketches and a general idea about the shapes that would be involved. With any design featuring a screen (like Error and TV Guy), I always start out designing that part first, since it’s going to be the “face” of the character, and I can figure out the dimensions of everything else based on that.

As you can see, I made my intarsia color design on my computer. I use Illustrator for this, because its Live Paint Bucket feature lets you make a grid and then fill in colors really easily. But even when I make it on a computer first, sometimes I need to make adjustments after knitting. This was my first version of the screen:

It was’t tall enough the first time around. You might wonder why I didn’t just make a grid with more accurate stitch proportions on my computer—the reason is just that I’ve never bothered to make a “master” grid to start with, and that’s something I should probably do. Just because I’ve been designing for seven years doesn’t mean that I’m always organized and doing everything the most efficient way possible.

After finishing a screen that I’m happy with, it’s time to be a little more specific about figuring out the rough dimensions and stitch/row counts for the rest of the project. That means doing something that I actually don’t do that often: checking my gauge.

I tend to only do this when I’m designing something with more structure and strong angles, and not when I’m making an animal or other character with mostly round shapes. My gauge-checking is not so complex (just measuring how many stitches and rows per inch, then doing some multiplication), but it’s helpful as a guideline for how many stitches to cast on and how many rows to work on the base of the design. Another sketch follows, with more annotations.

At the same time, I’m still thinking about what this arcade’s game might be, and how that would affect the design. If I’m going to use more intarsia on the cabinet, I should at least have a general idea of what that will look like and where it will start. I hope to figure that out and get started on the rest of the piece soon. Stay tuned!

Good news! I’m in the middle of working on new designs for a future book! Not Huge & Huggable Mochimochi, which is coming out October 15th, but something even newer than that. It’s very exciting! The bad news is that while I’m putting most of my creative energy into this project, I can’t really share any of it here, or else I’d have to kill you all.

Instead, I thought it would be fun to share a different knitting project that’s just in its infancy, especially because it’s a challenging design that may take some time. It’s an arcade game!

(You can see that I’ve also had doughnuts on the mind.)

I’m so excited for this project—you’ve got the screen, all the surfaces of the cabinet, plus the joysticks and the coin slots. So much fun detail! And if I’m making an arcade game, it might as well be something specific, so I’m also brainstorming about what kind of game it could be. John suggested Super Mochi Sisters, which might be too awesome not to go with.

Right now I’m still in the sketching stage. but once I’m feeling a little more solid on the direction of this guy, I’ll get started with the knitting. I’ll probably begin with the screen, then I’ll build out the rest of the design based on that, and I’ll try to document my progress here as it comes along. So check back for updates!