Deinocheirus

 

This is my entry to Bio-Cup 2024, semifinals, theme Feeding Strategies - Omnivore. This was the second idea I got for the theme. The first one was literal omnivore, all-eater, a hungry temple-sized demon eating everything, from priests to temple roof to park trees. I even had a punchline: "The sect didn't have enough faith for an omnipotent god, so they had to settle for an omnivorous one." There you go, you can imagine the MOC now. I even built a bit for it, adding some Technic cable holders as teeth to Star Wars Coruscant planet halves for teeth. Then I lost interest. It felt like burdensome task, building the temple and stuff in few days and with focus on Bionicle/Technic pieces. And above all I remembered the golden rule of Bio-Cup: Keep it simple, stupid! No high concept MOCs with million elements in them!

So, I turned back to my childhood. Aged 6 to 12 I was a big dinosaur (and other kinds of prehistorical fauna) enthusiast. One of the dinosaurs that intrigued me the most was Deinocheirus. It was one species of the Late Cretaceous Mongolian area, very rich in incredibly varied fossil finds. In July 1965 Polish paleontologist Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska discovered a pair of over 2-meter-long arms that belonged to a hitherto unknown theropod dinosaur. The genus was given name Deinocheirus, Greek for "Horrible Hand". But the mystery remained. Was it the largest carnivorous dinosaur ever lived? The arms surpassed any known species, yet belonged to a bipedal theropod. Most theropods were known to be meat-eaters.

It took until 2010s when people got more information on Deinocheirus - after an exciting case of fossil robbers and smuggles. Between 1965 and 2012 I was born, got some dinosaur books and was mystified by the case of horrible hands. I drew Deinocheiri (?) and tried to imagine what it would look like. At that time it was suggested that it was an ornithomimosaur, an ostrich-like dinosaur, a hypothesis that still stands today. But such large specied would have needed to eat a lot, and no eating habits was known, for example due to lack of skull. In my books Deinocheirus reached for tree branches with its big arms to eat leaves.

In 2010, more complete skeletons were claimed back from black market to Mongolia. Deinocheirus turned out to be better than I had ever imagined: Big, bulky, with long duck-like bill and tail fan feathers, possibly other feathers too. It looked friendly and was described being a megaomnivore - mostly eating plants but likely some fish and small animals too. Bulky foot toes suggested it was adapted to wetlands, being able to support its weigh on mud. This seems to be logical with the flat, round beak, similar to present day ducks. Actually, many life reconstructions of Deinocheirus look more like ducks than the original duck-billed dinosaurs - the hadrosaurs. There seems to have been a sort of parallel evolution going on.

I missed all of these discoveries as I didn't follow dinosaur discoveries. My interest turned to the history of architecture, I graduated and became making my Ph.D on bank architecture of Tampere. At some point I checked what the scientific community knew of Deinocheirus and was overjoyed. I left Deinocheirus be until I got this Omnivore theme and thought myself into corner with the demon idea. So here we are.

I began with the head as it's the most crucial part on defining a creature. The beak was quite easy (the tongue was the last addition to build though) but the eyes took many tries to get right. They were much larger at first. The colours are partly inspired by a Deinocheirus clip on Prehistoric Planet, narrated by Attenborought himself. I haven't seen the series but now I want to - especially as it features such a perfect duck-like Deinocheirus scratcing itself on a tree (Walking with Dinosaurs was a huge hit when I was a kid, 7 years old I think; I had a big book on it, and the DVD was the first thing we rented when we got a player). I added more bright colours though, as making it all brown wouldn't have been interesting - and there are not that many brown bonko parts...

I used brown on the two parts I built next: The tail with its porcupine-like feathers and the back dome with 14 updated dino tail segments (ironic that I didn't use them on the tail). The tail segments are from my Lugbulk I got last week; the spikes I've collected along the years. Before connecting the tail (and making the limbs) this looked quite a bit like a swimming mallard. The limbs changed it and made it look like a dinosaur. Sleeve feathers are common in many Deinocheirus life restorations and they are known to appear on some theropods, so I added them for colour. Building the stomach gave the creature some needed gravitas, and the tail fan finished the build. I also made a bit of scenery to underline the omnivorous wetland-roaming Deinocheirus hypothesis - and to use the Atlantis crab guy's head and torso and arms on a little, prehistoric crab monster.

We'll see if Deinocheirus allows me to make one Bio-Cup MOC more.

-Eero.

Where the Falling Tears Reach the Sky

 This is my entry for Bio-Cup 2024, round 2, theme Classes - Monk. Now classes here refer to D&D Classes such as rogue, wizard, cleric and so on - not social classes, school classes or anything like that. I liked the theme and I liked monk in particular. Monks are often calm, benevolent and refined, similar to many of my favourite fictional characters.

This round ends tomorrow (in the other side of the globe, so it might be Saturday here already). I was most of this round away from home, so I built this in two days. However, I developed my concept while not able to build, and it changed very little; the only thing I can think of is the more relaxed sitting pose instead of some sort of lotus position. It became quite obvious early on that I was going to build Keetongu; he is my favourite Bionicle character and I've gone with the nick (Pate-)Keetongu in the internet in tha past. In the third Bionicle film Keetongu appears to be some sort of monk, hibernating in a lotus position in a ice pool (?) in a hidden sanctuary known only in legends. I took this idea, the portrait of a mystical beast-man living in a forgotten temple somewhere, waiting patiently the dire hour.

I've built keetongues in the past. Many of them go back to 2007 when I started posting MOCs in Brickshelf. There is an alt-built Keetongu, black keetongu, skinny Keetongu, flying Keetongu, small Keetongu, smaller Keetongu, the first proper Keetongu, the second proper Keetongu, the refurbished second proper Keetongu (already on this blog) and minifigure Keetongu. I picked up the proper Keetongu from my childhood home last week and took it apart for this; but fret not, the third proper Keetongu (different from this one) is already in progress. It shall be out soon on the next lion-themed review article.

Unlike most of my older keetongues this is definitely the Keetongu of Metru Nui (they used the say same on Makuta). I also wanted to take a wilder, more robotic and probably more Bionicle take on Keetongu; my proper ones have tended to be mushroom-shaped and muscular. A week before the round theme was revealed a friend had sent me a Discord gif with the official Keetongu set render among rabbits saying Good Morning or something (true story). I stared it for a while, wondering that the official Keetongu looks pretty weird with it long eye stalk and everything, but cool nonetheless. It inspired me to make this model that tooks the keetongu essence to very different direction from my previous models. Look, I even ditched the hat! I instead wanted to embrace weird piece, feeling more like Neo Shifters of all things. The Skopio dude (Telluris) mask I had managed to find in a Pii Poo event a year ago helped there. What an unusual piece. Elves dragon lower jaw made a nice counterpart to it.

I also made my own version of Keetongu's weird whirligig weapon, turning it into a more ceremonial staff. It uses a piece from my this year's Lugbulk order I got on Monday, the black Potter goggle rim. I ditched the sword, because who the hell cares about it? Miramax certainly didn't.  

However, Keetongu itself was not clear enough for the theme "monk" so I designed my own version of the forgotten shrine he inhabits. Miramax version isn't very interesting and the weird pool would have been difficult to built, so I turned to more classical Mata Nui Online Game aesthetics and bound this to my Bionicle-themed builds of the previous Cup, Harvest Merchants and The Forbidden Ceremony. There's something serious, solemn and mysterious in those Tohunga headpieces, and they helped to form the bionicle-religious atmosphere. Ten candles, recycling the flying buttresses of the Notre-Dame cathedral, complete the scene.

-Eero.

Anonymous Person in Red Power Armour

This model was built for my New Elementary article on Botanical Collection (or Icons? Who knows?) Bouquet of Roses set. When writing the article, I forgot to name the MOC. Somehow, the completely opaque face plate of the helmet feels fitting for the anonymity, so I kept it. 

This was a surprisingly fast and flowing build in the middle of Bio-Cup builds; I wanted to get the article out to be able to use some of the parts on the later Cup rounds, in case I don't drop early on. Many of the key parts in the set are very fitting for more constraction- (Bionicle-) heavy models of the Cup. To avoid using up all my Bionicle potential and ideas on this non-Cup build I focused more heavily on a System construction coated with the beautiful, round armour plates used as the petals of the differently-aged roses. 

The interesting pieces here are the shoulder armours with open-ended bar on one end, used on the shoulder pads, chest amour and knee sides; the Iron Man face-plate armour, used on the helmet, waist, chest and butt; Ninjago EVO armour shell, used on the shoe tips; and the thin sausage-ish mudguard, used on the shoe rims, below the knee joints and on the chest armour as well. The first mentioned armor shell was the most inspiring, as the placement of the connection point enables many elegant shapes: no connecting structures as needed inside the shape. I wrote quite lenghtly about the piece uses and connections on the New Elementary text, so I won't go deeply in them here. The article includes also some breakdown photos on the techniques used.

Instead I'll write about the subject and the concept. My initial ideas were more samurai-esque, but I ended up making more synthetic and futuristic design to reflect better the monochromatic red colour scheme. However, some of the samurai vibe remained on the shoulder armour, for example. My other references were more sci-fi. I wanted to make something esque to Killjoy, a Klaanon character, and some related art of by a person named Howi3; I also though of the Praetorian guards of the Last Jedi and their monochrome red armours. However, I did not spend much time looking at any reference material - I let the parts speak for themeselves.

I knew from the beginning that this was going to be a human character. I find building humans more interesting than robots, mechs and such. The rounded petal pieces felt fitting for feminine shapes, so this turned out to be a genderswap Killjoy sort of thing. Along with the pieces from the set I used a red tongue-shapes windshield as an upper leg armour - one armour, as I was shocked to find that I owned only one in red (I have maybe 20 in dark red). It was only available in one set, an impressive Technic motorcycle, and I didn't have interest (nor time) in to Bricklink another one. Aesthetically, it was spot on, so I kept the one and made a sort of holster on the other leg. It hold some sort of simple machinery; I didn't want to include a weapon, as I don't like them and the design didn't require any.

This model includes both a helmet and a head. I wanted the head to be relatively mundane, with a mass of blonde hair but without any sci-fi details such as cybernetic parts or similar. She ain't Samus as Samus has a ponytail, of course. Having the head and helmet separate allowed some heroic helmet-holding photos that felt new and unique in my repertoire. 

-Eero.