2012-03-21

Late-night blogging: Natalie Breznikova (Revamp)

I'm being overrun by a terrible exam-week. My head is filled (and overheated) with the thermodynamics and a nasty headache right now so this blog post might became quite uninspiring.

But anyway, here's revamp of 6227 Breez I threw together few days ago. I used the round shoulder armours on Qwena, but I liked this this set and didn't want to demolish it yet. The weapons and propotions of the original set were nice, so I kept them and added custom shoulder plates, backpack and tigh armours.

The blogger,
Pate-Keetongu


2012-03-18

A Humppa-trip: Classic alcohol-hiding scene from autobahn

 Finnish masters of Humppa, Eläkeläiset (The Pensioners), are hiding some liquid treasures for oncoming use near autobahn during a gig trip somewhere in Germany. I built this MOC
Humppa in Legoland: Petteri Halonen, Kristian Voutilainen,
Lassi Kinnunen, Martti Varis, Onni Varis
 somehow inspired by my friend Humppakeksi's Humppa-park project when we got a change to show these thing to actual band. More of this later.

I wanted to build the iconic Volkswagen Kleinbus which the band used on their gig trips on their earlier pension days. The bus in extremely irrationally built and uses all sorts of SNOT and offset techniques. The base and the widows are forward-SNOT, sides of the chassis are side-SNOT and the back and the front are combination of all of them. The base is six studs and one plate wide. The bus, however, is suprisingly sturdy and has decent amount of space inside (an electric organ and a crate of beer bottles there amused the band members quite a lot). I'm quite happy how the from came out, though I'd like to have some 1x2 modifiled tiles with handle in white to make the front windows in right color.
The real monsters of Humppa: Kristian Voutilainen, Martti Varis,
Lassi Kinnunen, Petteri Halonen, Onni Varis.

We were able to show our humppa-creations to their paragons when the band had an album-releasing gig (The newest album, Humppasheikkailu, was released 14.3.2012) in our hometown. We weren't old enough to partake in the gig, but we listened  some sound-checks few hours before it and had some chat with the band members. They liked our MOCs quite a lot (especially the drummer Kristian Voutilainen's additional stomach caused hilarity among them) and put the pics of them on their facebook pages.

The blogger,
Pate-keetongu

2012-03-17

A closer look on a MOC: Qwena

 It's time to put this blog on it's real use!

Building this MOC took about two weeks, though I had mostly time only in weekends. The MOC started with the shoes. They are based on Japanese builder TAN's desing, but I modifiled them with those incredibly useful HF Y-joints. The Rahkshi leg worked suprisingly well with its Piraka counterpart. I was satisfied with the boot desing so I decided to continue building. That happens to me quite often with MOCing.

The legs are longest that I have ever built (And so is the MOC anyway). I still wanted to use the Rahkshi back piece in the thighs as I have done in nearly every female MOC I've built. That piece is just so wonderfully shaped. One of my favourite pieces of ABS ever made.

The inner parts of the thighs use quite a lot SYSTEM parts. Especially the curved slopes are useful to make more organic shapes. They are also easy to connect with basic friction pins or 1 1/3 pins (the parts you never have enough). I could say that about 30% of this MOC is SYSTEM (like the upper arms and the head) if not counting the base.


 There are some HF parts, mostly the shortest Y-joints (as stated above), a couple of Drilldozer joints (to make the middle torso bendable), a Waspix joint in the hips (It gave a lot more movement to legs than old Vahki/Metru hips), small armour shells on the elbows and the lime shoulder pads (Another awesome piece).

The head was the most interesting part to desing and build. I wanted to make it human-like instead of using a Kanohi mask or something like that. I've used simple "faceless" desing in a couple of MOCs to express human face, but it looks a quite creepy. I'm very happy with the batarang-eye-desing. I luckily picked up one on BrickLink few years ago!

I'm quite satisfied with the hair. I'd like to make it in more interesting color than black, but I didn't have pieces for that. I added red earrings and a hair clip to add some contrast.




The shoulder joint is quite special. It uses "TECHNIC, steering arm with two pins" as a ball joint. Its is not as tight as normal ball joint, but does its job in a display. It also connects with the 3x3 cone perfectly. The old ball joint connected only with a small bar and the stud of 3x3 dish isn't the sturdiest desing ever neither, but then again the aesthetics are more important than the sturdiness or playability in this sort of model.



The convertible accessories were part of the MOC's original idea. Karzahni's lime-green armour shells worked perfectly with the shapes of the hips. She's also carrying a dish with some fresh fruits. They are delicious and healthy.

I planning to make other accesories for this MOC. I have an idea of long evening dress or something like that, but it's not going to be easy!

I made the stand with basic tan bricks to make photographing and handling easier. The MOC can stand without it.

Make sure to check the Brickshelf Gallery (when moderated) and the Flickr entry.

Thanks for reading,
Pate-keetongu

2012-03-14

Here goes!

The Mustache Man is in charge here.
Hello, dear reader!

First of all, I'm glad that you are reading my very own blog. I have never had such a thing before, but I have been on other online LEGO communities (Eurobricks, Flickr, Finnish LUG Palikkatakomo) for quite a while and decided to start a blog about MOCing and LEGO in general to say more about my hobby and experiences.

Some of you hopefully remember me from My Flickr Photostream or Brickshelf Gallery. I'm not buying Flickr pro for now, so I thought that I could show more of my creations on this blog. I use Brickshelf to store my photos online.

What will I blog about? First of all, as stated on above, my own creations, WIPs, techniques, LEGO projects and LUG shows. Propably also other peoples' creations if I find then interesting enough. Un-LEGO-post might be possible. The future will show.

And, last but not least, one more thing. English is not my mother tongue, so there might be typing or grammar errors on my post. I would be pleased if you reported about those.

The blogger, Pate-Keetongu