It must be so nice to have a plush companion of your fursona. Theres actually a service that makes them online that I'll have to try someday. Still, it's nice that a close friend made it, which makes it far more valuable.

I think I've heard of this service. They don't seem very expensive either as my friend, Polaris, got his fursona made for under $100!

You're right in how things made by friends and loved ones have so much more meaning. You not only get something very special that makes you happy but have extra fond memories brought on by being near the item that was made. I know I'll never forget the joy in Saphy's voice when she handed me the Yosh plush. Knowing I had a snuggle buddy at the convention made me so happy! Knowing how much effort she put into it was very flattering, too. :)

Would you have Leon made into a plush? Or perhaps another character of yours?

Oh, I'm definitely going to get one of Leon/ Parker in the future.

Any thoughts on how you'd like Leon done? Would you want him able to be a snuggle buddy? Or perhaps more of a display dragon?

Probably a snuggly buddy. Hopefully with a nice soft diaper too.

You'd definitely want to make Leon from a soft fabric and his diaper out of minky. Minky is so wonderful to the touch. Super soft and just all around soothing.

Or you could have Leon made from Minky and designed so you could buy a baby diaper to put on him? Good plushes can be padded with baby diapers. Hardest part is cutting a hole in the back for the tail but it's not super tricky and always worth it. (When I could I'd have some Luvs or Pampers in size "N" or "1" to fit on my Yoshi plush)

This reminds me of how back in sixth grade I had a sewing class and we each got to make a pillow with a choice of a few different animal shapes. I picked a penguin and it's primary color was green. I still have it, actually.

How awesome! I'm glad you have a cute penguin pillow that you made all by yourself. It always feels great knowing something you made can be such a treasure.

I made a bag in Home Economics. It didn't come out all that well but it was usable for awhile.

Now that you are making your own game you can certainly say that wonderful creativity from 6th grade is living on in yet another form.

Were you doing models by the time you were in 6th grade? Or did making awesome models of various characters and their worlds come after the great green penguin?

Models came about four years later. But I was doing Lego stuff at that time. I always kind of am. I would most certainly call Lego sets "model kits".
Lego sets are weird for me because I know that I'd have a great collection of sets if it wasn't for the fact that most of them got destroyed over the years. Mostly by cats or friends. I'm actually amazed at how many must have been destroyed. Ah, but I still have some good Lego sets still around. And it doesn't really bother me that most are lost. I still have this giant box of scattered Lego pieces. They're of course, from a good amount of those.

Have you been able to apply any of your LEGOs towards the creation of your model sets? Perhaps to add an extra pillar, step, or other feature that might otherwise prove hard to do without the flexibility of LEGOs?

My son has been the proverbial 'Master Builder' for years. He loves making neat designs, buildings, and robots with them.

Did you ever complete a Star Wars set? Are you familiar with LEGO's monster themed set? I think there is a Ghost Train involved that looked pretty cool.

Ah yes, I had several Star Wars sets. My favorite, which I built but lost to time was the hospital where Darth Vader is given his mechanical parts after he got burned up at the end of Revenge of the Sith. As for the Ghost Train, that was from the Monster Hunter series. I didn't have that Monster Hunter set but I had a lot of the other ones. Vampire Castle was the huge one I had. How I wish my cats hadn't trashed it. I also had three smaller sets, The Werewolf that came with a tree, the Swamp Monster who totally wasn't supposed be The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and the Mummy had a disappointingly small chariot. Last Christmas my sister got a much better mummy set that was tied to Scooby Doo. It even amazingly has a sticker that says "1922", the year King Tut's tomb was discovered. Then I also had an Indiana Jones Egyptian set, also lost. It included the Easter Egg from the movie where Luke, R2, and C-3PO were carved in Hieroglyphics.

Uh, but anyways, the vampire castle set came with two figures of Batman's villain "Man-Bat" and they didn't even try to hide it, that's what they call them on the box too. I don't know why. I guess just because they work with the set. Only difference is that they had some color differences and I don't think they had pants like Batman's villain does. The Monster Hunter sets all had this kind of connecting story, or whatever, so the Vampire Castle was like the main set. It had all these magic stones that were also included in the other sets. But they forgot the zombie stone from some reason. Well they fit inside this contraption so maybe they just realized they didn't have enough space so they had to cut one. But it still had the ghost stone from the ghost train.

I really wish there was a Phantom of the Opera or Hunchback of Notre Dame Lego set. I've seen people make some Phantom things with Legos and even one person submit the idea to Lego. But I don't know if it'll ever happen. The real shame about all the really cool Lego sets is how ridiculously expensive they are. Seriously, they should all be super cheap. They way Legos are made they've always been meant to be a super cheap way to make toys. So why the insane expensiveness? As with most people I've always wanted the Lego Death Star set. They still make that set just because of how popular it is. They updated the mini figures in it but it's still the same.

Oh, how I agree. Lots of the Star Wars sets are super expensive. The Death Star, at last I knew, was $300! Like any kid is going to pay $300 for a Death Star when they can get a whole video game console for the same price?

I had no idea there was an Easter Egg / Star Wars reference in an Indiana Jones movie. Was that "raiders of the Lost Arc"?

I really enjoy hearing all the ways people use LEGOs to create amazing things. My first moment of witnessing LEGO awesomeness was outside a LEGO store in Colorado that had a life-sized Hagrid from "Harry Potter" made out of LEGOs. It was astounding!

I know people have proposed MLP sets to LEGO but they opted against it. I think K^NEX may have gotten to it, though.

The only thing I believe makes certain LEGO sets so much is having to pay for Licensing from the owners. If not for that you could likely sell a lot of special sets for 50% of the price. $150 Death star wouldn't be that bad.

Yeah, that was from Raiders. I never knew it was actually in the movie back when I had the set, though.
Another set I always wanted was the temple Indy escapes from in the beginning of raiders. With the rolling giant boulder.

There's a few times I've ran into things at conventions or whatever of really amazing Lego creations people have done.

Another big thing was that back when I was little I got a Lego set that had an important piece that was missing. So I got my parents to write Lego about it and not only did we get the important piece but I got a free subscription to the Lego magazine that lasted for quite some several years.

I did not know they had a LEGO magazine. My son sometimes gets a product book but a genuine magazine dedicated to LEGO creations would be totally awesome!

This reminds me of all the fun I had while there was a Neopets magazine. It had awesome stories in it along with fun descriptions about each species that made them seem more real than just pixels on a screen.

Were you ever a fan of the "Castlevania" series of games?

Yes, some years ago I played through the first 6 Castlevania games.
That was during a time when I was really into exploring video games of the late eighties and early nineties.
One thing that struck me as bothersome was how werewolves didn't get enough of their due. They were absent from 1, 3, and 4.

I also really loved the credits at the end of the first game and how they made puns on the names of so many classic actors, directors, and even the man who painted the box art for the Aurora models. Though, the puns themselves aren't the fun part. The fun part is just seeing how well they knew of these people. I actually made a list of everybody in it, using their real names and giving a brief description of them. Figured I might as well share it here.

Directed by Terrence Fisher (director of several classic Hammer films)
Screenplay by Bram Stoker (author of the original novel Dracula)
Music by James Bama (painter who did box art for monster model kits in the 60's)
Christopher Lee as Dracula (played him in the Hammer series)
Bela Lugosi as Death (the actor who defined Dracula in the original Universal movie)
Boris Karloff as Frankenstein (the actor who defined the monster in the first three Universal movies)
Lon Chaney Junior as The Mummy (actor who played the mummy three times in the later Universal movies)
Barbara Shelly as Medusa (actress who played a woman possessed by Medusa's sister in Hammer's The Gorgon)
Max Shrek as Vampire Bat (actor who played Count Orlock in Nosferatu)
Lon Chaney as Hunchback (legendary silent film actor who played The Hunchback of Notre Dame)
Glenn Strange as Fishman (actor who played Frankenstein's monster in the last three Universal picture and was originally going to play The Creature from the Black Lagoon, as well)
Oliver Reed as Armor (actor who played the werewolf in Hammer's Curse of the Werewolf and was in other Hammer Horror films)
André Morell as Skeleton (actor who starred in several Hammer films)
John Carradine as Zombie (great Shakespearean actor also famous for being in B horror movies and playing Dracula)

Now that certainly sounds like an interesting movie. Especially since it would be impossible to make.

Wow! I had no idea they did that in the original NES "Castlevania". That's totally awesome!

I remember beating that game when I was between 8 and 10 years old. It was really, really hard. It is certainly one of my greatest accomplishments.

The Netflix series is really good but definitely graphic. Netflix makes all its shows and movies with 'Descriptive Audio' and they certainly went hard core in illustrating Dracula's feelings about his wife, Lisa, being burned at the stake. There are only 4 episodes so far and it ends at the part in Castlevania 3 where Trevor meets Alucard.

Yes, I've been considering watching that.
If it's really only four episodes then I definitely could have the time to watch it. See, I usually don't want to get involved in so many TV shows that it screws up me being able to see them all, you know the drill. But I definitely might check it out then.

But yeah, when I played through all those Castlevania games I used emulators and with that I also sometimes used save-states for when it got too difficult. I had a lot of different games I played with those emulators, not just Castlevania. I played through the three NES Mario games and the original Zelda, too. Plus I played some of a bunch of different games on there.

I loved emulators. Still do. There are so many games that you can only access if you get an emulator and the ROM file to play the title. Such a shame that game developers haven't just realized people want access to all the games in all possible libraries. They could make an easy $5, or more, per title by just creating a master game list for their systems that continuously grows. Oh, well.

There are a few games I emulated to play through. Mostly for the GBA. These would be "Castlevania: Circle of the Moon", "Mario Kart: Grand Prix", and "Super Mario Advance" and "Yu-Gi-Oh! The Eternal Duelist Soul". Great times.

Yup! Only four episodes in Castlevania so far. It was released this year and, therefore, gives me hope they will make more episodes. However it is just four eps at 23 minutes each. Though a lot of ground gets covered in them.

Aww what a sweet and thoughtful gift. :)

Hey, Lucca! I'm so happy you think it is a cute plush. I know Saphy worked very hard on it.

She actually had it all ready two months before the convention and was trying not to spoil the surprise. Along with Doodle Noodle's surprise badge I was certainly a happy quacker.

I do hope all is going well for you over there. I know you've been still getting a steady stream of commissions which are definitely well deserved for your beautiful art style. I still love all you've done for me. Especially helping to give Yosh more of a feathered look along with that ultra cute pic of Spike in pajamas. :)

awesome.
I bet you squacked with joy ^^

Oh, I most definitely squacked with joy! It was so super nice and uber cuddly. Just like a big pillow full of quacktacular cuteness. :)

Now I just need a proper place to display him. Don't have much space here where I live but will certainly find a happy place for him so a snuggle is only an arm's reach away.

really cool plushie

Thank you, my friend. It's one of the very few I feel genuinely comfortable snuggling with. He's so soft and squishy that hugs are perfect for him. Just like real Yosh! :)

hehe yup

oh and i almost for got i send you a note last night with a link to the new Chapter of my Fallout Equestria story and a link to the new East corp pod cast i did

Ooh! I shall look forward to checking out both as soon as I can. Thanks so much for sharing.

(Sorry I've been a tad slow. Still trying to get a routine going now that my son is back to school that works best in keeping up with friends while caring for dog and apartment along with seeking employment)

cool i hope you like it, my friend

(that's okay my friend you go at your own pace, )

Thank you so much for your kindness and patience. *Snugs*

I just found out I have a job interview tomorrow! (Got called about it today and told only way to get the interview was if I could do it tomorrow morning) So I'll be getting a bit quackers about it until I know all of what is going on. It's working with the Social Security Administration if I succeed in landing the position.

ohhhhh cool my friend good luck with the interview i will be rooting for you

*hugs and nuzzles* anytime my friend i always treat my friends like family oh and i may or may not be going to my first pony con next year in Las Vegas called High Roller Pony Con

Ooh! That sounds like a fantastic opportunity! Do you have any friends going with you? Or perhaps you may get to meet some friends there in real life for the first time?

yeah i may get to meet Sky Bolt and Needle Stich from the East Corp pod cast's I have been in we was talking about it after the pod cast was done so I'm really jazzed