Supersonic Soaring Suit

 
This is my first MOC of 2025. It has been finished for two months already. The process here was very similar to Ronin Untasi a couple of years earlier: The torso is pretty old, being directly inspired by the Dots sets with those neon yellow pieces. It has a monster face in it, as some sort of reference to 1980s cartoon designs. However, the wing hat (that had only two wings until this January when I got some more) was part of completely another WIP, the main "seed" of this character: A flying person with open red jacket (referencing to bomber jackets) and white sneakers (that still wait their use). It also had these trans-orange claw piece as sunglasses, I'm very happy with them. The medium azure upper legs were part of this WIP and they continued into bare legs that ended up in the Roller Girl a year ago. The flying hat had originally semi-militaristic colour scheme of dark green and dark grey. This WIP character - full and standing but unfocused - stood or lay on my table in the previous Hervanta apartment for a year or so.

What I did for it after last Christmas was taking the fully separate torso wip and mixing it with the hat and the upper legs of the flying person WIP. The big rocket boots were built in January, as were the new arms. I replaced the dark green pieces with the Dreamzzz cat cycle's printed armour add-on, combining the magenta from the seed WIP to dark blue of the torso tablescrab. I aimed to overall futuristic feel with vibrant, dynamic colours.

The boots were the most major challenge, as the arms are quite simple (the rounded CCBS add-on is an universal solution). I wanted them to be bulky enough to fit both supercharged boosters and the actual legs (as this is not a robot). The silhouette is obviously similar to Dedofiktion Racing Unlimited Warpplasm Turbothrust Rocketsuit which has the same core concept without the wing hat. Here, the layered colour have a larger focus. Those boat hull pieces - from the crocodile car set - form the basic structure, along with the vibrant medium azure wheels from the cat bike. I like these rounded bulky shapes that still have certain aerodynamic vibes, like the engine intakes of jet planes. The round thrusters with their piping add another layer of partly visible mechanisms. This motif appears also in the figure's back. This theme is complimented with the more everyday qualities of the jogging pants with their sporty magenta pattern and the sunglasses akin to those that fast cyclists use.

So, this is the first MOC of 2025, but no worries - I have already three others shot and finished (one of them is 2024 though).

-Eero.

After the Gala

 

I built this for New Elementary's 3x3PO parts festival last December. After that we moved to a brand new apartment, which included some decoration and other kinds of "being busy" - hence no new models so far (I've finished one MOC this year). On the other hand, my building premises are better than ever, so I'll make new stuff before too long - no worries.

 The seed parts are from 75398 C-3PO - you can see all the new and rare parts I photographed via that link. The set has wonderful variety of new pearl gold pieces, and many of them are very fitting for organic builds. My MOC article on New Elementary was solely dedicated to this model, so I won't go to details here. In short, I wanted to make something luxuriously elegant, as suggested by the gold bricks. This meant a flowing golden party dress. And to make it different from my usually standing models, it's built into a relaxed, lounging pose. This enabled me to develop some new stuctural systems. It's quite impossible to build a garment like this that would adapt into sitting poses, so different torso structure is needed. This one has several joints along the spine line. On the other hand, I was able to build the legs shaping-first, as they don't have to support the weight.

The sofa is an old tablescrap, initially built to store masses of Brick Curved 8 x 2 x 2 (41766) after demolishing Grand Hotel Kudelma couple of years ago. I like the combination of pearl gold and dark red, refreshed by the green plants. There are sort of reduxes of 2025 Four Gentlemen botanicals I reviewed for New Elementary sligtly earlier. The goal was to establish atmosphere and to create colour harmonies. Integrating large-scale plants to my character models is certainly something I'll consider more often in the future.

As this MOC was already published a couple of weeks ago in New E, I've already received some feedback and questions, some concerning the hair. The bangs are reddish brown sausages, connected to the the plume holes of 1x1 round plates with bar (coffee filters) by their end pegs, whereas the bun has some ziplines tied into a knot.

-Eero. 

Tontun Lyhty

The name of this work is in Finnish as some things do not translate well. In dominant English-American culture, Santa's little helpers are know as elves, are generally small, cheerful, beardless and wear green. They are ridiculous. Their Finnish (and probably Swedish etc.) counterparts are known as tonttu (tomte), deriving from the folkore creature that keeps watch on saunas, barns, stables and so on. At least in modern descriptions, they are short, bearded, oldish, wear pointed caps and grey, red, brown and green. Some more, erm, traditional descriptions include grey skin and one, huge eye, but somehow those hardly ever make it to Christmas decorations. The word tonttu is closely relates to tontti, aka plot, and this is also obvious in Swedish (tomte and tomt). This is naturally because tonttu was the warden of the estate.

Anyway, I built this for my LUG Palikkatakomo's Christmas Ornament contest. I won the pro category. This was the third time, in a row, which is pleasant but also a liiittle bit embarrasing (I'm the chairman, again.) This took a little more than a day. The idea was clear: melancholy, a tonttu squatting in front of a campfire, small 1990s 9V battery box in the base, a light with those super cute 9V light bulbs. During the process, the campfire turned into a snowball lantern, but otherwise it remained the same. Most technical prowess was put into the beard (where else?) and some (maybe less successfully) into the connection of the shoulder pad hat. The rest was easy.

Christmas is over, but I didn't want to hide this until the next one, so I'm capping 2024 of 26 builds with it. Happy New Year!

-Eero.

Savoia S-21

 I've got no doubt that Hayao Miyazaki's Porco Rosso (1992) is my favourite film. I've built the signature seaplane four times; the first one (cirka 2008) was not documented, but my Brickshelf has a version from December 2009 that can't be much younger. I had the third version from 2015 intact until this summer and even had it in some retrospective exhibits last year. However, I had long realised that its proportions were severely off; I liked its wings, engine and tail, but the fuselage had the bulk of a bomber and I quite never achieved the desired shape of pontoons.

The idea of reshaping this is not new. I'm not sure what it took to finally actualise it after all this year. Nevertheless, I finished this already in July and displayed it in Pii Poo Helsinki event; then it just took some months to photograph it.

This time I took a very close look to the proportions of the actual plane. Savoia is a real manufacturer, and despite it weird looks, the plane is not that far-fetched. As well-know, the closest real-world paragon is Macchi M.33 (two of which were ever built). Monoplane flying boat fighters were very rare, as were ones where the cockpit was situated behind the wing and the engine. Porco's plane (which is a prototype barn-find, too dangerous to fly due to the take-off issues) takes this typology even further with having the wing elevanted above the fuselage; M.33 had the wing connected to the fuselage.

However, no physical Savoia S-21 has ever existed. Ghibli animators drew different proportions for different shots as there was no physical model to reference to; even "official" drawings partly visible in Art of Porco Rosso book feature clearly different measures of the fuselage ratios on the front and back of the wing. The position of the cockpit in relation to the stepped underside varies considerably. This is not an issue when watching the film, but when making a replica, I had to choose the best-looking (and the most common) alternative.

The first part of the design revolved around the so-called Porsche Bow (Wedge 10x2x2) that had been introduced recently in red. Ultimately Markus Rollbünder whom I asked for opinion was right - it was too big and long a piece, I had no hope of embedding the shooting slots with them on the nose. The finished design uses smaller pieces but benefits from other new wedges, which are most prominent in the wing tips. The back of the fuselage was the most challenging part of the whole model and took several re-designs. In addition to being elegant, I wanted to whole model to be sturdy enough for swooshing. This omitted to most free-form techniques, as there had to be continuous skeleton running though the tail. Despite this, the lowest red layer is angled with old finger joints. I'm particularly happy with the obscure Technic steering connector that connects the tail wing; it's very sturdy, and the crowbars are only a cosmetic elements.

I was happy with the old engine, but this enabled some new developing of skill. Porco's engine has these two blob things, likely hiding the V12 pistons, that are rounded on the front and gently sloping and narrowing in the back. I liked their profile in the old engine, but they didn't narrow. Both of the essential parts here, 2x2 corner curved slope did not exist at all in 2015 and the Constraction claw with axle appeared in red only in 2020. Integrating them into the structure took some effort and the result is not entirely gapless, but it flows and has some new aerodynamics. The propellor spins freely.

Again, the pontoons were a challenge, something that I left for the last moment. They still have some "polygons" - the shape is very difficult, especially with the curving border between the red and the yellow. The underside uses the same Constrastion claw, and oh boy it flows beautifully. I think it's more essential, as the top is mostly hidden under the wing. The wings itself are recycled from the 2015 version, though I redesigned the inner structure to house the new connections, and the wing tip is rebuilt with newer pieces.

The previous version has a small Porco in the cockpit and I was not going to skip it here; I wanted to position the plane in mid-air (with a new, more marine base) and having it flying unoccupied would have had catastrophic consequences. While the cape scarf has been recycled from the previous one, the recoloured tan binoculars make sure that Porco Rosso looks better than ever.

-Eero.

The Shadow General

The year rolls towards its end but the models just keep rolling. They have to. This was built for a Secret Santa collab and dedicated to DanielBrickSon, inspired by models Kumamoto Castle Samurai, Wake up Samurai and the general abundance of Japanese culture elements in his creations. Merry Christmas Daniel!

I had a tight schelude for this build, as I wanted to finish it before leaving for Christmas at my parents' home. Thus, I built this in one day, December 20th. I have built many samurais in the past, which was a great asset. Furthermore, I (finally) watched two Kurosawa samurai films this year, and this was partly inspired by Kagemusha. While not portraying anything from the movie per se, the title is a direct reference.

I began the process by tablescrapping the mask, which is inspired by Daniel's life-size one. Embedding robot hand into the headlight brick made it possible to have quite small teeth in addition to the larger fangs. The nose handlebar is not officially connected, but stays finely between the other parts. A small area of skin - two tan headlight bricks - reveal that this is indeed a human in suit. Usage of the large horn pieces as the helmet sides was the very first thing assembled here, and the pearl gold crest is borrowed directly from Daniel's Kumamoto Castle Samurai.

I wanted to keep the armour realistic while still playing with some new parts of this year. Thin mudguards pieces from rose bouquet set are used in the limbs, and the shoulder pads are from the same source. The golden ornament on the neck guard is from the not-yet-released bamboo set. The torso armour is a simple cylinder of 1x2 round plates, with 1x1 round plates and flowers in-between for colour. The skirt flaps are connected directly to the cylinder, which enables their variying angles. Unusually, all the joints save the wrists use ball joints. This enabled sturdy limbs, fitting for an armoured warrior, and references to the constraction community this Secret Santa circle is based on. I must confess I really like those large Star Wars upper legs shells; they save time and look natural, perfect for spots were the legs are mostly hidden and thus don't require extra effort to look interesting.

-Eero.