"...grab your friends..."

Quotation above is from the theme song to Adventure Time..."Adventure time, come grab your friends, we'll go to very distant lands..."

One of the things I made over my break was Beemo, who is a character on that show. Beemo is kind of an animate version of a GameBoy - or at least, Fin and Jake play video games using him. Actually, it's unclear how "animate" Beemo is...he seems to have intelligence and free will, but at one point he talks (as part of a daydream) about being a "real boy" and he even pretends to be one...pretending to brush his teeth and even sitting on the toilet and pouring a cup of water into it, and delightedly saying "PEEING!" (you get an idea of the level of humor on the show. And yet, it cracked me up.)

There's just something kind of cute about Beemo. Part of it is his voice....he has a high pitched voice and what I hear as a slight accent (Korean, maybe? That's what it kind of sounds like to me)

So, here's Beemo, done in yarn and felt.



I used the TV Guy pattern from Anna Hrachovec's Mochimochiland Knitting book for him. I just changed the colors and the proportions. The arms and legs are small-diameter tubes (I think I used nine stitches for each). The feet are done kind of the way you do socks, with a short flap and a turned heel to shape the foot.

Here's a side view:



I like being able to get all the detail right, like the little "speaker" (that's what those dots are).

I think it's interesting how some of the cartoon writers/developers now seem more "cool" with the fan art and fan-created stuff than some bigger, larger cartoon "corporations" traditionally have. The Adventure Time blog (which I haven't looked at in ages, and I'm not sure if it still exists), which at least had nominal input from the cartoon's developer, used to post photos of fan-made stuff. And of course, My Little Ponies: Friendship is Magic is famous for this...allowing the fan community to do what it will, more or less, without too much interference, and even with occasional nods to the fanbase in its episodes.

I suppose they've figured that either there's not much merchandise (all I've ever seen for Adventure Time has been t-shirts), and so it's not like the fan-made stuff is sucking away money that might be spent on The Ice King's Ice Palace Adventure Playset or stuffed Lady Rainicorns. Or, in the case of MLP, there IS a fair amount of merchandise, but it seems that Hasbro and the show's developers have realized that either it's a different fanbase that draws their own four-panel cartoons than the fanbase that would buy MLP storybooks...or rather, more likely, the realization that they are probably selling MORE official merchandise than they would if they seriously alienated the adult fans by, for example, shutting down all the DeviantArt cartooning or sending cease-and-desist letters to people offering pony-related items online.

(I will say there are some pony-related items I'd rather not be aware of the existence of, or at least if I'm interpreting the commentary/rumors on some sites about a fan-made Lyra plush toy that was offered on, I think, eBay? While I am aware of the supposed existence of Rule 34, I want it nowhere near my Ponies. Or nowhere near any of the cartoons I watch, for that reason....I watch them as an escape from adulthood, thank you very much.)