Introduction
I live in Europe, so only a few weeks ago, did I had a chance to play Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Nintendo's latest hit in the Smash-series. In this game, where you participate in an epic fight between Nintendo, and also a few non-Nintendo characters, you will get a chance to play as one of your favorite game-heroes.
While mine isn't Kirby, it is perhaps the most unique and funny character because it can eat enemies and change his appearance and powers to his "snack". Because Kirby has been the topic for many photomanipulation-topics, I will teach you how to create your own Kirby instead of using a licensed render.

The Body
Kirby doesn't really have a body. It's more of a head with hands and feet. But since it's such an easy to do shape, all you need is the Circular Marquee-Tool and while holding SHIFT, drag a perfect circle on your canvas. Grab your Gradient-Tool and set the foreground-color to #FEBECF and the background-color to #B37D8D. Then, create a new layer and click and drag the Gradient-Tool from the bottom of the selection, to the top.

Create a new layer, and again with the Circular Marquee-Tool, draw a circle, but this time make it a little bit more oval. Fill this selection with white. Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and set it to 10-20 and make sure it's nice and blurry. Then press CTRL+T and rotate it a little to the right (Clockwise) and place it a little to the top-left. Finally, lower the opacity to 50%

The Feet
On a new layer, use the Circular Marquee-Tool to draw an even more oval shape than the last one. Make sure it looks like a long egg. Fill this selection with #E45032.
Press CTRL+J to duplicate the layer and place both shapes underneath the body. Then, using CTRL+T, place his left foot a little to the left and rotate it a little. Place his other feet a little more to his side then his bottom.

Create a new layer above the first foot and use the Pen-Tool to draw a shadow-shape and fill this with black. To mask this with the foot-layer, press CTRL+SHIFT+G.
Then add a very soft Blur using Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and set it to 3-8. Then lower the opacity to 10-20.

Now do the same as last step, but this time, draw the shadow on the side of the foot near the floor.
Also continue doing this for the other foot, but remember that the first shadow is the shadow of the body and the second is the shadow of the feet. Also remember to be consistent in your shading. If the light comes from a certain direction, it's impossible to have shadow on places where light hits the area.
As you can see below, the shadow on both feet is directed to the middle and bottom.

The Hands and Shadow
On a new layer, using the Circular Marquee-Tool, create an egg-like shape for the hands. Before we continue on the hands, we will first add the drop-shadow, because that annoys me! You gotta have good shadow in order to make it realistic.
Using the same tool we've used all this tutorial now, create a VERY thing and long shape and fill this with Black on a new layer. Then place this layer at the bottom of the layer-stack above the background.

Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and add a soft 3-6 blur. Then press CTRL+J to duplicate the layer and use CTRL+T to make the duplicate a little smaller and place it in the middle.
Then duplicate that layer again using CTRL+J and place this underneath the foot that's closests to the floor.

Select the hand-layer and press CTRL+J and position them next to the head in the opposite direction of the feet, both like Kirby's cheering.

Using the same shading-technique as we used for the feet, draw black shapes on the bottom of the hands and mask them with the hands using CTRL+SHIFT+G.
But instead of creating another shadow-layer, we are gonna add some highlights. Using long oval shapes place over the hands filled with white, perform the same blurring-actions on these layers as you did with the black shadow.

The Face
On a new layer, use the Circular Marquee-Tool again to draw a flat oval shape on it's side. Fill this layer with pink. Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and add a soft blur of 2-5 pixels and stretch it a little using CTRL+T.
Then, press CTRL+J to duplicate the layer and place both gloss' on either side of the face.

Then, using the same tool, draw a long oval shape and fill this with black on a new layer. Press CTRL+J to duplicate the layer and press CTRL+U. Check the box COLORISE and lower the darkness and play around with the top slider to achieve a nice marine-blue.
Then press CTRL+T and while holding SHIFT+ALT, draw one of the cornerpoints a little to the center. This will make the blue oval smaller than the black one.

Grab your 300px soft brush Eraser and erase the top part of the blue away. Then add a nice small oval shape filled with White on a new layer and place it in the top of the black oval.
Add a very small inner stroke in lightblue by going to Layer>Layer Style>Stroke and setting the stroke to INNER and 2px and choose a nice light blue as color.

Select all the eye-layers and merge them together using CTRL+E. Then press CTRL+J to duplicate the eye and place another one right beside it. Now select both eyes and the gloss' and merge them as well. Press CTRL+T and rotate the eyes a little Counterclockwise to the left. Also make them a bit smaller.

Using a deep, almost maron-like, red, draw a nice mouth that actually looks like a small wok or a mountain upside down.
Grab a pink color and use the Circular Marquee-Tool to draw a nice round shape and fill it with this pink. Press CTRL+SHIFT+G to mask it with the mouth and give the pink orb a black OVERLAY inner glow by going to Layer>Layer Style>Inner Glow.

Conclusion
And there you have it! Kirby. He's completely yours. Obviously in a figure of speech, because Kirby still is a copyrighted trademark of Nintendo. But now that you're learned how to draw Kirby, you can place him in all kinds of different poses. Also note that the Circular Marquee-Tool was today's most-used-tool. It's amazing what you can do with it and since Kirby is the perfect example of an organic being, the Circular Marquee-Tool is one tool you cannot miss when making Kirby.

Post some of your own Kirby creations in the comments by uploading it somewhere and the coolest ones, I will feature in this tutorial!