Botar

 

Who will survive the coming of Botar? This was part of a collaboration work on re-imagining 2006 Bionicle sets and combiners, including 23 (!) people. Please find the complete list on Flickr.

 The edit was done by N (Brick Brickolson), Ari (Buttloafbuilds) and me.

I chose Borat because he's completely very absurd, tall, human-shaped fellow with very small head with huge teeth and big golden ears, actually quite good colour scheme and idiotic weapons; I ditched the wrist blades as half of fantasy characters in general have them, but I left the axe-blade thing. It was too silly to miss. Botar was also killed in the story just to be replaces with person named "Borat's replacament", to make him bit more weird.

 I first tried to imagine Botar as a big, semi-humanoid rabbit, but his creepy, prolonged look reminded more of a slim, short-hair cat on its hind legs, so I emphasized the cat-ness, still leaving the very long ears. The tail, absent from the original, stresses the cat aspect. It is definitely inspired by filmation of Cats (2019, or 2020 in Finland) - actually the latest film I've seen in theatres! It was in Kotka, a small theatre with weird, angled floor and the film was awesome and horrible and absurd and better than Rise of Skywalker -

I began with Borat's head, and for a short time the was version with eyes with two-studs gap between; but it looked bit too convincing, missing the odd look of having Metru head behind the teeth completely, so I returned to this look. I'm very happy with how the white T-bars light up the eyes. The head is mostly System, but I assure you, the rest is almost completely Bionicle and Technic, first time for many many years (membuja ei tässä lasketa)... Once a part of Bionicle collab, I really wanted to brush up my bonkle parts. It wasn't easy - there's still trickiness in getting the right pins in right places, and having only around five black 3-long ones didn't help! The chest is closest part to the original model, other areas are more freely interpeted. Eight-pack abs in gold fitted the upright cat idea, and naturally continued into chainmain loincloth. The skull spider mask knee pads emphasize the horror feel, and dished behind them mimic mechanical joints - Motif I enjoy in my Bionicles. What I'm not 100% happy with is Botar's colour balance. I would like have done the fingernails in pearl gold and lower legs in black, but didn't have the correct pieces available. I have them, just in some models somewhere else. But that's not too bad.

-Eero.

Tam the Enchanter of Gales

The original idea behind this build is lost in the mists of time (last November and December), but I'm fairly sure it began with using those dark purple quarter round parts as a skirt, flanked by large dark blue cockpit pieces I got cheap. The composion is mostly colour-based, with cold, fresh hues of royal dark blue and different purples, balanced by white. The main inspiration was finding out that I have pretty broad collection of medium lavender; sadly, broad did include about three cheese slopes (two of them 1x2) which meant the hair is bit of compromise. 

I'm happy with the stomach area shaping especially, and layering of fabrics turned out nice. Choice of emitting legs for long, ornamental dress was quite late, and fuelled by lack of parts in right colour for legs. It made the process nicely unique compared to usual figures, but left me wondering if I should have gone bit less baroque with the dress shaping, especially the part with clam shells. The just were, along with medium lavender barrel halves, marbled purple dragon wings and that printed magic portal 4x4 dish, on a mental list of parts I want to use somewhere. The round shapes all around are complemented with trans-pink jewels inside life saver rings, decorations I'm happy with.

Colour scheme seems to fit January's pleasantly cold weather nicely. The name is, of course, reference to Monty Python's Tim the Enchanter. And yes, she's got a third eye too.

-Eero.

 

Senior Wrangler

 Good time of day everyone. Happy new year too, though it feels like same old 2020. I've been sitting home writing my diploma work, and occassionally building. This model is from around November though; yes, it's a Discworld model, after two-year break! He's Senior Wrangler, and not really an important character, but I had built rest of the Senior Faculty of Unseen University already, so he was bound to happen. The wizards are one of my favourite bunches in Sir Terry Pratchett's books, Ridcully being my most beloved character there.

This model evolved around one particular piece use, the Star Wars ultrabuild leg armour as a beard. It curved on top of the round belly quite nicely, and formed pleasant shape with big barbs as the moustache. The beards are probably the strongest element to distinguish these wizards. Otherwise I wanted to emit pearl gold, which is prominent secondary colour in my earlier wizards; silver is used instead, as these has to be something sparkling. The yellow cummerbund hopefully balances it. The pantaloon design is taken from Paul Kidby's art and recycled from Dean. It brings some three-dimensionality to the build.

The wizards tend to have tall staffs, but I wanted something that stresses their personality better, so I went with some light refreshments - a gin tonic (as referred in Soul Music), some biscuits and a fat piece of strawberry cake (setting of food was also displayed with Chair of Indefinite Studies). Building them was also rather more interesting and composing another staff with knob on end.

More to say about Senior Wrangler I have not. It's quite simple, humble, traditional character build. It also might be that my recent excursions in world of academic writing have made my output more compact. Well, not for bad, that. - I also updated the old (2014-2015?) portrait here, and made a Instagram account, which so far features old builds in exciting new compositions. Enjoy!

 -Eero.

Esmaralda, Aegis of Emeralds

Hey ho, my semester has ended now and everything left is my diploma work, technical equivalent of Pro Gradu, that makes me an architect SAFA in May if everything goes well. Until then, creations; this is Esmaralda, an emerald mage, who was built during several small sessions during this autumn. It's also the first creation to use pieces from this year's LUGBULK: White T-bars and some inverted curved slopes on the back of the head.

Idea behind here was to use beautiful trans-green colour on wild attire with dark tan skin and white details. Dark tan isn't the easiest colour to work with, as it's still somewhat limited colour (especially when it comes to joints), but I wanted to give it a try for sake of challenge. The end result ended up looking something from Mardi Gras carneval. The seed part was 4x4 double wedge plate in trans-green, which I got bunch of cheap from local BL store; in addition to the skirt and hair ornament they form magical shield as seen in some photos. Their transparenty forms quite interesting patterns, and transparent green things - like bottle glass - tends to be beautiful.

The constructions of the torso is quite unique, as it was clearly based on options the parts palette was offering; most of my patent solutions weren't available. I'm glad that I managed to use trans-green 2463 3x3x2 quarter facet brick part from 1992 on the chest; I've had one around for years, and it's not the most versatile part ever! The neck connection offered plenty of challenges; the aforementioned facet brick has solid stud, and as it's not rounded, nothing can be connected behind it as it's on 45 degree angle. My solution uses 1x2 round brick and 1x1 plate with vertical clip and is decently sturdy, if not the most elegant. The headlight brick that connects the shoulder T-bar is connected both with antistud on the back (to macaroni brick) and stud on top; I've noticed that double connection like this is required to make the model plesant to handle, without arms falling off all the time. Hooray for 40-years-old Headlight!

Positioning the skirt was another though bit, as those wedge plates connected with mostly hidden mixel joint plates took plenty of tries to align; also their connection on the back had to be sturdy enough. I'm happy with the infill of the gaps though, and the legs - quite uninteresting basic affair with 1x2 plate with pin hole working as the kneecaps - have satisfactory range of motion. The hair formed itself during a remote lecture; I'm quite happy with it. Ears and earrings seem to add surprisingly lot of character to well, a character.

-Eero.

Work of Ponder

 This was the my contest entry for my LUG Palikkatakomo's late summer contest "favourite hobby". It was in miniland scale with fixed 16x32 area. Maybe due to there requirements, there weren't many entries (less than 10) but the quality was very good. I didn't receive any prizes (I was 4th) but it was fun, unusual build, made during one sunday evening.

It's me, building, or at least thinking about building. I've build myself earlier, on bigger scale, but here I am in miniland scale, but with some additional details like glasses and beard. Well, the head looks bit messy, to be honest; maybe I should have stuck with basic miniland block head. Overall, here's view on my building corner, with walls removed. I've got two tables, with one set of drawers and a printed underneath; some more drawers, one seen here as a cross section, showing trans-clear mass of ziplock bags inside; a tree for our cats, and the cats themeselves: Elsku-Maumau sleeping on the tree, Ukuli hiding in her box with the round hole, and Takku moping on the carpet. 

The most amusing part of this was building the small version of my MOCs and projects. You might recognize few of them including models of Speeder Bike Race on the drawer. But there's also at least three unfinished projects here, and yes, they include the big white building.  I't pretty much in realistic scale, even though I had to omit most of the windows. Overall I'm very happy with the chaotic feel the wealth of elements gives to this scene. It's realistic; my work area tends to look like this, filled with projects and finished builds that don't have room made for them on the shelves yet!

The most "technical" part of this build is the chair, using some droid arms and 1x1 round tiles with bar to make the wheels. A bar runs through it, connecting it to jumper plate on the floor, passing on my weight to the base. The light blue 4x4 round plate depicts knitted... round thing Pinja made for it; our cats have been enthustically destroying the faux leather coating of it! Not visible in the MOC is the window, which is horribly badly insulated, making my hands freeze for example just now.

-Eero.