Years of Peace

 

This is my entry for Summer Joust 2026, category: Moments of Happiness. What a great category! I made this during the last days of my summer holidays. After it, returning to work was almost relaxing... Anyway, I sketched this to my sketchbook in a tram on a way for buying some Lundia shelves. The final model follows the sketch quite closely, except that I added the cat and the fruit tray. Using bright light blue wedge slopes as the dress was part of the original plan, though I also played with the idea of using my beloved trans-clear opal 1x1 round tiles there. For once, the figure is intended to be seen from the back, so I put extra effort to the back and the bun. The hair was actually one of the last things I built for this.

This is inspired by several sources. First, my summer trip to Tallinn, which enchanted me with its very well preserved medieval town walls and its towers. The walkway on the wall is directly inspired by Tallinn's battlements which I visited. Secondly, there's more than bit of the view from my own home. My other window displays the Tampere cathedral, and although it is not medieval (it's built 1902-1907) it is inspired by medieval architecture and has a similar combination of grey stone and red tiled roof as the towers here. The other window displays a fantastic, layered and varying selection of low and tall buildings from the 20th century, as well as several trees among them. There's a bit of that here, too.

The cat is inspired by our cat Elsku-Maumau. I'm fond of Mauski and Mauski is fond of me. It this model, the cat looks dissapointed as they tray has only fresh fruits and no cat food at all.

The other buildings on the background are loosely inspired by Tallinn's guild houses, though there is also influences of vernacular Italian houses in there. I've been wanting to use dark green Pridak feet from Karzahni as cypresses for a long time, and this was the perfect opportunity. There's a bit of a closer roof visible in the bottom right, as I wanted to position the balcony above the town; I think the view has some influences from the Prague castle, which has a fantastic view over the endless tiled roofs. Most of the gaps, however, I filled with trees. Their mix of different greens is reflected in the larger leaves framing the upper part of the scene.

I obviously have only one photo of this, but here's a behind-the-scenes video of my set-up, featuring BURPs and LURPs I recently reclaimed from my parent's house. The video is unfortunately sideways as I have some issues with my video editing software (as Microsoft wants to do this in cloud). I might fix it later. Now I only have to find out how to display this at home and, possibly, in some exhibits. 

- Eero. 

 

Heitur Pottur

 Jump in... This is my entry for Summer Joust's Frozen Fantasy category. It's simply the first idea I got almost two months ago. I build the figures and the water before my summer vacation trips in late June and finished the encircling rocks after coming back in late July. Dwarves were a natural fit for the ice fantasy category, and I wanted to make something concretely connected to the temperature. What's the contested resource in icy worlds? Warmth, of course. And where do you find warmth in cold worlds? In summers, of course, but that would have missed the point. Then I remembered Icelandic term "heitur pottur" from my 8th grade Swedish book. Ultimately, turned out that it does not mean hot springs at all, but simply refers to artificial baths. Nevertheless, it felt good fit for three dwarves swimming in hot springs. Tolkien took The Hobbit's dwarf names from the Icelandic Poetic Edda, so dwarves + Icelandic hot springs was good enough.

The first structural idea was to use droid arms as the beard of the middle figure, floating on water. This is based on my own beard experiences. I had those in light bley, so he became the elder of the group. I gave him a pipe to reflect this, and sunk most of him under the water (this meant I only had to build the head, shoulders, and kneecaps; plus tan and dark tan plates sunken under the water tiles). The pipe had a smoke twist originally, but it looked too messy with the snow and the steam so I took it off.

The second dwarf is what you might call your stereotypical fantasy dwarf. He's bold enough to have the mail shirt off, but the iron helmet stays. He's extremely grumpy and has a well-groomed beard. It's based on the design I made for Glóin in my Hobbit Dwarves project back in 2014. (I think the direction had been good). It works so much better with the flat silver 1x1 liftarms than it ever did with the old type of half-bushings! I first though to giving this dwarf a more relaxed posing, leaning the rocks with a tankard in hand. Ultimately, the stiff stature had more character.

The last dwarf has more of him visible as he's wearing nothing at all and only part of his legs is under the surface. Fortunately (?) his impressive facial hair protects the viewer from full frontal nudity. The beard is really tangled and rugged and he's really in need of a hot bath. Initially, he was descending into the pool more carefully, but I ended up with an almost astonished pose instead - the water really is hot!

 Building rocks is generally boring. Here, I utilised similar tricks to those in Vainolaista Vastaan in 2024. However, I made the rocks even more rounded, as if polished by centuries of hot waters. Although I generally prefer lighter grays, dark bley was a good fit here, as the rocks are bound to be somewhat wet due to all the steam, water and melting snow. Furthermore, I positioned the snow in a way that suggest that the hot pool has smelt the snow near by.

Photographing this was a really tricky. I ended up with a weird shot, taken extremely close with a wide lense I borrowed from my university to shoot stairwells. This makes the edges rather distorted - the edged as actually parallel to each other. You can see the distorion extremely clearly by comparing the tankards, which are identical in shape. However, this shot had two major advantages: First, it shows the expression of both the low and the high dwarves (grey and brown hair). Secondly, it feels like you are actually in the pool with the dwarves! Engaging.

I have one more Summer Joust entry, which I'll post next.

- Eero. 

 

Bonfire Party Dress

 This was my second entry for Lego Idea/House 10th anniversary celebration contest, in the category of Dress to Impress. You can see the Ideas entry here and the voting page is here. Furthermore, the voting page for my other entry, Aria & Synth, is here.

 The contest proposal fit my building style very well, so I was able to built this very fast before my summer vacation trips (now done). I made the hair one evening and the rest in one day. The main idea was simply to use orange pieces and especially the orange and reddish orange axe heads from Botanicals pink bouquet. These pieces directed the model into a more free-form direction. I connected them to flex tubes (rigid 3.18 mm) and their curves defined the wind-swept form. I liked it, as it fitted the lofty summer vibes I was pursuing. Thus, I named this Bonfire party dress as bonfires combine summer and fire - and festivities.

The resulting effect was more akin to looser-fitting, probably knitted garments than usual high-end party dresses and night gowns with fine, flowing or skin-tight fabrics. I think it fitted the Lego House celebration nonetheless. I combined the hem with a upper part that is similar in colour but contrasting in pattern, being very simple and focusing on shapes. Using 47755 mudguard pieces (that I analysed in one of my first New Elementary articles back in 2020) as the shoulder straps was one of the initial ideas of this one, and it worked quite nicely. A discreet piece of opan trans-clear jewelry completes the attire.

As intended, the dress is strikingly orange. To contrast this, and to emphasise the party aspect, I completed the model with pale blue shoes and a handbag. They also use the opal pieces to continue the jewelry motif. I'm particularly happy with the bag - its standard, classic chain pieces works surprisingly well as a handle strap. The cloth piece is from Winter Village Carousel of 2013; I have one, and it looked nicely realistic as the flap.

Next up, more Summer Joust!

-Eero. 

Shoggoth Sculptor

 

Now, the real round 1 of Bio-Cup! The theme for this one is Magic and Mysticism, and as it's July, I had to make my model between various away-from-bricks vacation activities. This took 1,5 days but I'm happy with it nonetheless; I could have spent one more day on it, but I didn't have to.

As the name suggests, this is inspired by H. P. Lovecraft. Shoggoths are artificial creatures engineered by the Elder Things. Eventually, the rose to rebellion against their masters. I wanted to capture certain vibe of forbidden magical creation; the model does not strive to faithfully re-create neither the shoggoth nor the Elder Thing. I began with the head and the robe front made of Antroz's wings; the printed Dreamz shell was the first piece I decided to use. Getting Antroz's wings in the right angle was quite difficult; the way they reveal the more detailed inner robe was essential to the composition. In the details, I wanted to make something half-artificial, half-organic. 

The white "skin" contrasts with the darker robe. Instead of legs, I gave him a short pillar of tantacles that spread around. Very long, eerie fingers helped to make the character spooky while matching the weird hind limbs. The smoothness of the white areas extend to the scalp. In contrast, the lower part of the head is more detailed and fragmented. I liked how it reminded both an elongated human skull and the tentacle mouth of great Cthulhu.

To define the character, I added a baby shoggoth-in-progress. Full shoggoths are black masses with eerie green glow, but this is a blue bubble with a dormant maggot-like creature inside. Shoggoth can grow appendages whenever needed, so a similar but inverted approach felt fitting. The creature uses a kraata, matching the krana on the character's robe. 

 -Eero.

 

My Neighbour Keetongu

 

This little build is a trailer for Bio-Cup 2026. This time the contest has no elimination so I can take part in each four rounds. I built the model here for pre-game G1 Gauntlet round with focus on G1 (2001-2010) Bionicle pieces. I made it in about 4-5 hours during a 15-hour period I spent home between cottage trip and a holiday in Estonia. It was a blast to the past because I spend 2007-2010 posting Bionicle MOCs in Brickshelf (there's link named "old works" in the headline bar), and, naturally, CCBS pieces didn't exist back them. 

Unsurprisingly,  I wanted to build a keetongu. This is a young Keetogu at the time he wandered through various islands in the leg. I think he befriended some matorans every now and them, integrating into their society, while slowly growing larger and larger. Here he is portrayed as a fisherman, with a catch of a modified MNOG fish and a small friend who has caught some crabs. I did not find any good options for Keetongu's head shell in this scale (and with G1 pieces) so I gave him a leaf hat. It's a bit weird but maybe that's ok for such a fast model. It is a reference to Totoro's leaf hat, of course, and that realisation gave birth to the overall composition. The matoran has a matching leaf cape. He would have had a Miru Nuva hat, but I only had silver and blue Miru Nuvas around. Maybe next time. I didn't win but it was important to participate.

 Tomorrow, my round 1 entry!

-Eero. 

Aria & Synth

 

 This is one of those models with a complicated background. Simply put, I first built the figure on the right (Synth) and wondered if it was interesting enough; it needed something. I decided what it needed was a mate, and thus I built the figure on the left (Aria). And noticed that there was this Party contest on Lego Ideas with two categories: Dressed to Impress, very fitting for me, but maybe not for this model; Perfect Gifts, a bit less interesting category honestly; and general party category, with an example of a snapshot from the dance floor, perfect for this MOC -

[At this point the author reads the category description a second time, and bit more closely. It's called Home of the Ultimate Celebration and they clearly want you to build a building, a venue, or at least some kind of location; I have a feeling that a chair, table and microphone stand are not quite enough. Back to the building table then; I'll post my Primordial Giant Quagsire before this but will be back the next week as there are 10 days left in the LEGO Ideas/House contest.] 

 Oh yes here I am again. Here's the link for the Ideas contest page. I had this wall thing with three tall windows and four joints and some nice creeper vines with pretty flowers; I had built it for another use (where it was slightly medicore) and had not published it in any way, so it worked well enough. It was the right scale, too. I then made a floor - dark bley was one of the colours that I had enough. I mixed some log bricks in to create a slightly unkept feel of a worn concrete floor. The neutral hue of the grey was good, as it did not reflect any colour to the white walls or compete for attention with the characters. The floor also helped me to make the model a bit sturdier, as I was able to fix the table on its place and connect the microphone stand while keeping the dynamic posing. 

But of course, the figures - sorry for an extremely jumpy text here. Synth. This model is recycled from a WIP that ended up being Supersonic Soaring Suit some 1.5 years ago.  The initial model included a red jacket with those Ace of Spades stickered wedge slopes. I alway though they were from some Harley Quinn set, but they're from a forgotten 2008 Racers set appropriately named 8493 Red Ace. I had acquired two from bulk parts bins. The hanging lightning ornaments are from that WIP, too, as are most of the sleeves. The rest was redesigned to meet the 2026 standards instead of the 2022 ones. I furnished the rest of the figure with certain underground culture vibes: black chocker, slightly torn stockings, swept short turquoise hair and badges. Initially, the composition culminated in Titanic Liverpool curved slope over the sand green shirt (from PaB), but I had to censor it off as LEGO Ideas staff told me that it was licenced. I was aware that the entries should not refer to licensed material, but I was fully unaware that a 122 old boat would be under copyright or someone's intellectual propertly. Well, the published entry uses only regular black slope.

(Originally, the laptop had "Boy, do I hate being right all the time - Ian Malcolm" tile, but I realised soon enough that it would cause issues.) 

And so, I decided that Synth needed a mate so I built Aria, who was to have a totally different look - simple, elegant, a bit fantasy-esque: fittin for summer and inspired by the bright green recolours from the Botanicals tulip bouquet, combined with the magenta axe heads from another flower set. I had reviewed Creator Beautiful Horse some months ago fro New Elementary, and medium nougat boat stud had appeared in January and made its way into PaB; therefore, I could finally build good, sturdy medium nougat legs. The arms are not as sturdy (note the stud-only connection above the elbow) but look decent. And I had got some cheap white macaroni tiles from BL to the hair. These made up Aria and she was a very straightforward to build. 

 At that point, I knew they were heading for the party and were perforning musicians. The set-up was inspired by a discussion with a friends who noted that the most boring set-up in electronic music is a dude with a laptop. I took that as a starting point but had zero inspiration to build a table; it would have hidden the lower part of the figure, killing the dynamicity of the model. I took a break with some other projects and suddenly came up with this idea of a transparent acrylic furniture. Its certain retro-futuristic air fitted the idea of Aria & Synth very well, and, importantly, the transparent table would not obscure the figures. The final table is 5-shaped and made of big panels from 1993 Dacta set 9701 - with the age of 33 years they are retro enough. Later, I supplemented the table with a matching chair that uses Toa Inika weapon prisms as its legs...

Having completed the table, I returned to the instuments. I added a black analog synthetiser and a very small yellow drum machine to give Synth some knobs to adjust. Aria was fine with a microphone. The set-up is, of course, inspired by the current, wonderful live assembly of Rättö & Lehtisalo. They have a mostly acoustic drummer, but otherwise the show is a combination of vocals (Rättö) and electronic laser sounds (Lehtisalo). And a lot of dance. I recommend it.

Next up, I do not know what. I though there would be fan voting but apparently there's sort of review board, too. They might remove my MOC as it's too difficult to display without me assembling it (though it's not that difficult really), I don't know. But next up here, I have another Ideas contest model, and then we're back to Bio-Cup, Summer Joust and who knows what. Cheers!

-Eero. 

Here are the original photos! Please note that these pictures are strictly NON-CANON as they include the Titanic curved slope that is licenced and can't (and won't) appear in the model in case it ends up in the LEGO House.