Heroes of Newerth

The very first MOBA I ever played was Heroes of Newerth (HoN). I played more hours than I care to admit. I also used to blog about it and offer guides to follow, but with work it was hard to keep up with the meta changes. Regardless, since I was so absorbed with the game I obviously wanted to crochet my favorite Heroes of Newerth characters!

I primarily played support. One of my favorites was Empath. Not only did she heal, but she was able to conjure walls that you could trap enemy players in for their death or trap them out to allow your teammates to escape. It was just fun. On top of that, her ultimate allowed her to join with another player which allowed my lazy butt to just sit there and heal without worrying about my positioning. God I love those types of characters. So of course, she was one of the first dolls that I made so many years ago. I created her while in my my Sackboy phase, which is why she has the little zipper up her belly! Haha.

Empath

Forgive the quality of photos! I had just moved back to Utah and I was content in hiding in my tiny little office closed off from sunlight and the world. Haha. So while I do credit World of Warcraft for pushing me to explore different shapes I would be doing a disservice to Heroes of Newerth if I didn’t mention the people that commissioned me to crochet so many HoN characters. Not only did I learn different shapes and sizes, I experimented with buttons, wires and velcro and removable weapons. Some of which I never did again. I think I used fabric glue, but I have no idea about how it held up long term. Terrible decisions. But, look at my boy Draconis!

I remember finishing his head and saying “Holy shit, it’s perfect!” I didn’t have anything to start off from and I was just experimenting with increases and decreases, molding the shape as I was going. And I nailed it first try. I was so happy.

Have you ever loved, yet hated a project you did? Haha. Thunderbringer was one of those dolls for me. Now I absolutely love how he turned out. I mean look at him! He’s amazing! You really can’t tell the shape due to all of his fur, but he’s hunched over. I was really proud of how I was able to get his shape to stand up on his own with the help of his staff. Now the entire reason I hate him… was his fur. I probably didn’t have to do his fur this way, but that perfectionist self I told you about knew this was the most accurate to his character.

I appreciate the developers behind Heroes of Newerth so much. I shared my first dolls on their public forums and I received so much love from the community and from the devs. A lot of them commissioned me for dolls of their heroes. It was crazy! I felt so honored. It really was a confidence booster. I loved the game so much and to be in contact with developers that were creating it was amazing. Even more amazing was that every so often when they did community update videos I could spot one of my dolls in the background. I STILL smile thinking about it. Every so often I feel a pull to go back to HoN. I just feel like I never have the time.

I was commissioned to create a larger version of Kongor for their office. Being as inexperienced as I was, grappling with actual size of my pieces was a challenge. Kongor was the largest doll I ever created to this day. I don’t think I will ever do anything of that size again especially with the hook size I was using. It was crazy. I even frogged it all at one point because the shape just wasn’t right. I don’t remember how long it took me to create, but I feel like it was at least a month if not more. So, I wanted to show you guys the progress photos of this guy.