MOC: Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully

 Last Thursday, 12th of March 2015, world lost one of its greatest writers, Sir Terry Pratchett.

I made a little tribute when I heard the sad news. I was, after all, having a week of Discworld figbarfs. I didn't find any word back then, and I did feel the picture told enough. There were many other tributes on Flickr LEGO Community. I'm not surprised; Sir Terry had a huge impact on popular culture.

As Going Postal notes, man is not dead as long as his name is spoken. Pratchett still lives in the million of his books sold (I, for example, bought three from antique bookshop on Friday) and then there's the TV adaption of City Watch coming. The turtle moves.

Building this MOC, a big-scale creation of my favourite Discworld character Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully (The Brown), had been on my mind for some time, and I sort of felt the right time was now. This is the result of two days of very intensive building. I began with the head, like with the Hobbit Project; There are of course some similarities with those dwarves and Gandalf.

The whole thing is loosely based of Paul Kidby's art, from the beard style to clothing. Ridcully has his famous hat with lockers and equipments, and I wanted to make it red. I had a bit of a problem there, because the only big dish available in red is that X-Pod lid and their prices have gone through the roof on Bricklink after Arvo Brothers released the instructions for their Akira Bike. Fortunately I was able to buy one from the random bricks selling table on Leiki Legoilla 2015 for cheap (in a 1/2 litre bulk bag for 8€). The hat is generally similar to one I made for Gandalf, though this one uses 70s tyre as a belt and has some locker knobs. I was not able to add every described accessories to it (it should turn into a tent!) but it looks cool enough.

Ridcully doesn't use the traditional robes, but has a simple overcoat, red vest and brown boots instead. The coat was quite a simple build, but I'm happy with the shapes of the collar. The vest uses some parts I got from a parts draft. The legs were quite challenging. I have never built basic trouser legs on this scale. The dwarves had quite a long coats and cloaks, leaving little more than the boots visible (well, except Bombur), and Gandalf's legs were completely covered. The boots were the last part to build (as with the dwarves, again) and I had to build a Technic pin hinge to make the stance look more natural.

The arms were very simple and fast, as they are very similar to ones I have built before. I had to borrow the hands from Annya because I ran out of fingers again.

Ridcully also has his crossbow. I pondered should I give him it or his oak staff, but I though the crowwbow was more suitable, interesting and more fun to build. I had some problems with the string, as I didn't have long enough around and the bow looked too wee. I cheated a bit with the bow to make it extend further than the string's studs, and it didn't look too bad. Elephant trunk pieces work rather well here creating an original silhouette.

-Eero