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Pikachu – Free Crochet Pattern

Posted on May 13, 2012 by Queenie Chan

I’m really flying through the pencils for Small Shen… I’m already near the end of Chapter 8. After that, it’s only Chapter 9 and the prologue, which is about 20 pages. After inking and toning, that’ll be the end of July, which is just in time for a Xmas release. WOW!

Then, what’s up next is… this.

Anyway, this week, I get to do a pokemon crochet… of which many people have asked for. Previously, I thought Pikachu may have been too complicated to do, but it seems not. This wasn’t that much harder than some of the other crochets I’ve done. Either way, here’s Pikachu!!

Pikachu Pattern

Here’s a list of what I used to make this crochet. It’s not a definite list, so feel free to use whatever you have, as long as it’s appropriate. It’s crocheted in the round, like most amigurumi, so only basic crochet skills are required.

NB. This pattern is created by me, so please give a link back to me if you want to use it or if you want to sell your crochet. Please give credit where it’s due. I should also that I don’t own the copyright to these characters – obviously Studio Ghibli does.

Yellow, black, red and brown 8 ply yarn
4mm crochet hook
Two pairs of 8mm black safety eyes – 6060 from Etsy is a good place to buy these
Large sewing needle, to sew the bits and pieces together

Crochet Abbreviations

Here are a list of the abbreviations I use, and what they mean. These are pretty standard, so if you know how to crochet, this won’t be hard to decipher:

ch – chain
sc – single chain
dec – decrease
* – beginning/end of a repeating part of the pattern

Pikachu Body (Make 1, yellow)

Rnd 1 – Ch 2, 6 sc in 2nd chain away from hook (Magic Ring method)
Rnd 2 – *2 sc in next stitch*, repeat 6 times (12 stitches)
Rnd 3 – *2 sc in next stitch, sc 1*, repeat 6 times (18 stitches)
Rnd 4 – *2 sc in next stitch, sc 2*, repeat 6 times (24 stitches)
Rnd 5 – *2 sc in next stitch, sc 3*, repeat 3 times (30 stitches)
Rnd 6 – 8 – sc (30 stitches)
Rnd 9 – *2 sc in next stitch, sc 4*, repeat 3 times (36 stitches)
Rnd 10 – sc (36 stitches)
Rnd 11 – *dec 1 in back loops ONLY*, repeat 18 times (18 stitches)
Rnd 12 – *2 sc in next stitch, sc 2*, repeat 6 times (24 stitches)
Rnd 13 – sc (24 stiches)
Rnd 14 – *2 sc in next stitch, sc 3*, repeat 3 times (30 stitches)
Rnd 15-22 – sc (30 stitches)

Stuff the body now, and add 8mm safety eyes
Rnd 23 – *dec 1 in back loops ONLY*, repeat 15 times (15 stitches)
Rnd 24 – *dec 1*, repeat 8 times (8 stitches)

Bind off, and then sew the facial features onto Pikachu with black and red wool.

Pikachu Feet (Make 2, yellow)

Fold each foot in half, and sew them together to make a semi-circle. Sew onto the bottom of the body to make the feet.

Pikachu Ears (Make 2, yellow, black)

Using black
Rnd 1 – Ch 2, 4 sc in 2nd chain away from hook (Magic Ring method)
Rnd 2 – *2 sc in next stitch, sc 1*, repeat 2 times (6 stitches)
Rnd 3 – *2 sc in next stitch, sc 1*, repeat 2 times (8 stitches)

Change to yellow
Rnd 4 – 10 – sc (8 stitches)

Bind off, stuff lightly, then sew onto the top of Pikachu’s head to make the ears.

Pikachu Hands (Make 2, yellow)

Rnd 1 – Ch 2, 6 sc in 2nd chain away from hook (Magic Ring method)
Rnd 2 – *2 sc in next stitch, sc 1*, repeat 3 times (9 stitches)
Rnd 3-7 – sc (9 stitches)

Bind off, stuff lightly, then sew onto the sides of Pikachu to make the arms.

Brown Strip on Back (Make 1, brown)

Rnd 1 – Ch 8 (8 stitches)
Rnd 2 – sc (8 stitches)

Bind off, then sew onto the back of Pikachu.

Pikachu Tail (Make 1, yellow, brown)

Rnd 1 – Ch 9 (8 stitches)
Rnd 2-4 – sc 8, then sc an additional 4 chains off the end of Rnd 4 (8 stitches)
Rnd 5 – sc 8 stitches (8 stitches)
Rnd 6-8 8 sc, then switch to brown. Then sc an additional 4 chains off the end of the last row (8 stitches)
Rnd 9 – sc 8 stitches (8 stitches)
Rnd 10-12 – sc

Bind off, then sew onto the bottom back of Pikachu to make the tail.

And Viola! You have a Pikachu to fit into the palm of your hand!

Posted in Free Patterns, Hobbies-and-Crafts | Leave a comment

Doodles for Odd Thomas books

Posted on May 7, 2012 by Queenie Chan

This week, I am blazing through the pencils for the last 3rd of Small Shen. I also went to Free Graphic Novel Day at Kinokuniya, which was a lot of fun. I signed some books and did some sketches for them, and here I show you a bunch of sketches I did for a series of signed (by me and Dean Kootz) books that I get to send back to someone who’s been doing this since the very first Odd Thomas graphic novel. This book is the last Odd Thomas book I’ll be doing, so I look back with some fondness.

And here’s a picture of Dean’s autograph! With mine below…

Posted in Art, Odd Thomas Series | 2 Comments

Felt Cookies

Posted on April 29, 2012 by Queenie Chan

This week I finished toning chapter 4 of Small Shen, so the book is officially two-thirds done! I’m taking a few days off, before I get to work on the last third of the book. In other news, a few weeks ago, I did an interview with IGotSuperpowers.com at Adelaide Comic-Con, and it’s now up online, thanks to Nathan.

This week I get to show you… felted cookie magnets. It’s from a kit I bought from a Japanese shopping site, and there’s 4 separate kits in the series. I bought them all, but can’t say there’s a lot of variation between the different cookies. They’re magnets though, so if you’re looking for stuff to stick to your fridge…

Step 1: The boxes. Aren't they cute? Great packaging!

Step 2: Open everything up, and check that it's there. Usually it is.

Step 3: None of these are particularly complicated to sew, but here they all are, all at once!

Here’s the final 12 cookie-magnets:

Posted in Hobbies-and-Crafts | Leave a comment

Extreme Photoshopping – Yunyu’s “Dorothy” picture

Posted on April 21, 2012 by Queenie Chan

This week I was interviewed by Eastyn from PanelBound.com – thanks to Eastyn, an the interview is here. I’m also toning Small Shen at the speed of light, and it looks to be that chapters 3-4 will be done by the end of April *pumps first*. Meanwhile, I get to show you some Xtreme Photoshopping I did a while ago, for my musician friend Yunyu, who released a single called Dorothy which I did some art for. Chief among the art was a picture of her I photoshopped. Here, I get to show you how I did it, and what the original looked like.

The original: This was a studio-taken picture Yunyu, which is fantastically done and needs no retouching. The backgorund was a picture of the nightsky a friend took, slapped together in a composite picture.

Step 2: One of the problems with the original pic is that the picture isn't composed well. Yunyu is too small, and while the background is meant to emphasise the milky way, Yunyu is standing directly infront of it. So I cropped the picture properly, to show the foreground and background elements properly

Step 3: The milkyway looks kinda plain, so I flipped the picture around, and added a bunch of glow effects of it to make it pop out more. I also changed the hue to a bluish glow, to even out the diffferences in colour. A nightsky should be bluish...

Step 4: With the milky way now so bright, obviously I need to get the lighting references right. It doesn't make sense to be standing to the left of the lightsource when you can clearly see that Yunyu's lit from the left, so I swapped the picture element around so the light-source makes sense.

Final Step: Since the blue and the red contrast is so strong, I changed the hue of Yunyu's skin and hair to match the bluish glow. I left the red jacket mostly untouched, so that the red will pop out, whereas her skin tone will match the blue glow. And Viola! Click on the picture to see a larger version.

Posted in Art, Music, Twisted Tales | 2 Comments

Graphic Prose – We Are The Pickwicks

Posted on April 6, 2012 by Queenie Chan

Last week, House of Odd was #7 on the New York Times Bestseller List! Many thanks to Landry Walker (writer) and Dean Koontz (original creator)! I should also thank everyone who bought the book as well – I hope you all enjoyed it!

Other news this week will be my new 10-page short story, We Are The Pickwicks. This was done as part of a “Peter Pan”-themed anthology with the folks at BentoComics.com, and this time I chose to do things a little differently. I decided to mix comics and prose together, in a hybrid form I call Graphic Prose.

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Click here to read the next page –>

What is Graphic Prose?
It’s a story-telling medium that combines both prose and comics. This is not like a picture book, where there is usually a block of text, accompanied by illustrations that may or may not have anything to do with the text. Instead, this looks to integrate the comics into the prose, to make a single, coherent narrative. Reading both the comics and the prose is necessary.

Now, I’m not the first person to combine prose and comics, but the difference here is that most attempts of this kind I’ve seen have pages of comics, followed by pages of text. This can make for an unbalanced reading experience. In comparison, I did mine with comics and prose integrated on EACH page, which means there’s no prolonged chunks of prose or comics alone. I feel it makes a more immersive reading experience.

How Did This Come About?
In 2010, I was approached by author Kylie Chan, who showed me her (yet unpublished) book Small Shen. It was the prequel to her best-selling White Tiger Fantasy series, and she asked me do something “graphic novel-related” with it. I took this to mean some kind of adaptation. Now, anyone who has ever done an adaptation knows how hard they can be. Generally, it involves taking a hacksaw to the original script and eliminating entire side-plots, so the story can fit under a certain number of comic pages. This has to be done due to time and money constraints, and like film adaptations, there’s little that can help the chopping and cutting.

I’ve always wished things were different, so when I started adapting Small Shen, I tried to preserve Kylie’s “voice” as much as possible, while still bringing engaging art to the story. Prose authors who are unfamiliar with comics can often find adaptations of their work a brutal process – comics can give the impression that it’s 50% writing, and 50% art, but that’s not really true. The real split is closer to 30% writing and 70% art. The reason for this split is because even though you can have the world’s greatest script, an incompetent artist can ruin it with bad story-telling, inexpressive art and panelling that’s hard to follow. Conversely, if you have a good artist, you can elevate an average script into a good story. This difference is even more pronounced when it comes to adaptations – the original author often finds their “voice” reduced to just tinkering with the dialogue, while the artist gives shape and form to everything else. For prose authors, who are used to being masters of their own universes, it can be deeply unsettling.

Small Shen had a lot of un-cuttable conversations, so instead of pages of talking heads in comics, I decided to just leave it in prose. This then led to leaving entire paragraphs in prose, only adding panels and pages when called for, and when I was done adapting Small Shen to script form, I had something that I found quite special. This gave me the confidence to write a short story, entirely from scratch, in such a prose-comics hybrid form. That story was We are the Pickwicks.

Click here to read more of my thoughts on Graphic Prose –>

Posted in Bestseller, Manga-Comics | 5 Comments

Sketches: Adelaide Comic-Con

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Queenie Chan

So, Adelaide Comic-Con has come and gone, and I spent the whole two days sitting at my booth and talking to people. Thanks to all the people who came by to talk to me, and especially a big thanks to people who brought books for me to sign. I managed to sign more than a few copies of each of my books, so that was really nice. Apart from that, I just mostly sat and did sketches I then sold, in-between talking to people (since I don’t go to conventions much, nor really sell art prints or anything there). This was the first convention where I’ve had a table to myself (previously I shared all my tables), so it’s also the first time I sketched much of anything in such an environment.

I took pictures of some of the art I did, thanks to the new iPhone I have. Since the convention went on for 2 days and was pretty tiring, you can kinda see the quality of the art (and the photography) dribble down through the sketches. Conventions are strange places to be drawing in… some people seem to do well in those kind of environments, whereas I found it overwhelming. There’s alwas people coming and going to talk to you, and generally it’s quite loud and noisy. Either way, I decided that drawing characters from The Legend of Zelda will make it easier for me, and so it was. Drawing Link always calms me down.

Doodled this pic of Link on the back of one of those hotel writing pads...

Zelda was also doodled on the back of a hotel pad... random pieces of paper, teehee.

A fan of "The Dreaming" asked me to draw Mary Spector! Now that was someone I haven't drawn for years!

I was asked to draw two pokemon eating a mountain of food. Pokenmon experts should know who the stars of this picture is...

People bought Link so I had to draw another Link.

Zelda was bought up too, so I drew another Zelda.

A french-themed Pikachu for someone's sketchbook

Let me just say that Link was uber-popular... I had to finish this one quick because someone wanted it when they saw me drawing it.

I think one of these guys is called the "Blue Beetle"? This was something about April Fool's Day?

I drew this pic of a cute little blonde boy. I was so tired by then I could barely photograph this one properly.

Posted in Art | 11 Comments

Pokeball

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Queenie Chan

I’ve finally finished chapter 3 inks, and will be starting chapter 4 inks soon. Don’t forget that I’ll be going to Adelaide Comic-Con this weekend, and that House of Odd came out last Tuesday!

This week I show you one of the first things I crocheted, since it was so easy. It’s a pokeball, and I got the free pattern from Wolfdreamer’s blog. This particular pattern makes a rather large ball (the size of your first) at 42 stitches, so for my version I decided to shrink it down to 30 stitches. I found that 30 stitches maximum produced a pokeball that is more like the size it’s supposed to be (ie. fits into the cup of your hands).

Step 1: Crochet the top half of the pokeball. I stopped at 30 stitches though, since I felt that was the "normal" size for a pokeball.

Step 2: Add the black parts then the white parts. You do this much in the same you chance colours during crocheting.

Step 3: Crochet the little black and white buttons in the middle of the pokeball, then sew them onto the ball.

And here we have two pokeballs, one 42 stitches wide, and one 30 stitches wide. You can see the size difference.

Posted in Hobbies-and-Crafts | Leave a comment

House of Odd

Posted on March 17, 2012 by Queenie Chan

This week I started on inks for chapters 3-4 of Small Shen, and also finished my short story for our Bento Comics Peter Pan anthology (which I’ll talk about in a few weeks). I’m also going to Adelaide Comic-Con as a guest om the 30th March – 1st April, but this post is entirely dedicated to what’s happening next week, which is…

This is the third Odd Thomas book I’ve done, titled “House of Odd” and it’s coming out next Tuesday on the 20th March, 2012 (I posted some art from this a while back). This book was drawn in 2011, and like the other two books, In Odd We Trust and the #1 New York Times seller Odd Is On Our Side, it focuses on the adventures of psychic fry-cook Odd Thomas, star of Dean Koontz‘s best-selling prose novel series of the same name. This book is adapted from a script by Dean and Landry Q. Walker, and I thank the both of them for their fine work!

NB.I also got to thank Lala of Review Carnival, and Allen of Jazma Online for their interviews of me! Lala’s is a general interview, whereas Allen’s deals specifically with House of Odd!

For North American Readers: You can buy it here off Amazon.com
For International Readers: You can buy it here off BookDepository.com, which has free international shipping.

What’s the Story?
The story of House of Odd once again has Odd and Stormy trying to solve a supernatural disturbance, but this time it’s a disturbance with a difference! It occurs at the site of a supposedly haunted house, which has just been bought and renovated by Nedra Nolan, a friend of Ozzie Boone. Ozzie recommended Odd to Nedra as the resident ghost-busters of Pico Mundo, but Nedra isn’t impressed – she’s an ex-Hollywood producer who instead hires her own (and therefore competing) band of ghostbusters to figure the house out. However, neither Odd nor the ghostbusters are prepared for what will actually happen in the house…

Odd Thomas is a psychic fry-cook who can see dead people, who lives in the Californian town of Pico Mundo. Accompanied by his ass-kicking, gun-toting girlfriend Stormy, he often tries to help the forlorn spirits he encounters by finding their murderers. This involves getting into a fair bit of danger. Luckily, Odd has many (living) friends, many of them quite odd themselves, who help him in his quest. It’s a rather charming, off-beat take on the supernatural, with moments of action and suspense, as Odd finds himslf the target of some truly nasty people as he tries to uncover their nefarious deeds.

Here I Show Off Some…
I’ve got to end this with a picture of something Dean sent me for my work… signed, numbered, first-edition copies of the first 4 Odd Thomas prose novels!! It was so kind of Dean to make this generous gesture, so in return I sent him back some original pages from House of Odd. Mind you, I’ve never owned any first edition books before, and had no idea that they were so big. They’re beautifully-printed, leather-bound and the size of a Britannica volume. Here’s some pictures to share with the Internet. No doubt this is worth a lot!!

The red book is "Brother Odd". It has the prettiest cover design!!

The lightening bolt one is "Odd Hours". The green one is "Odd Thomas", the silver "Forever Odd", and the other red one is "Brother Odd".

The inside covers of these first-edition books are beautifully illustrated, as are the chapter openings. In "Brother Odd", all the text on the pages were in the shape of a church window. I thought it was a real nice touch!

There's only 300 of each of these in th world!! (Well, 500 of "Odd Thomas", 300 of the rest)

This was actually sent to me in December 2011, but I thought I'd save it until "House of Odd" came out to show the world. So here it is!!

Posted in Manga-Comics, Odd Thomas Series | 6 Comments

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