MOC: Gambrodon

 It's nice to see that the big LEGO Communities and sites like The Brothers Brick and Eurobricks have paid more attention on action figure themes. Eurobricks has now an Action Figure month, and this is my entry to "Brain Attack Before and after-contest.

 Gambrodon lizards are herbivorous critter from their native planet Runksukka. They are also very popular pets in Makuhero City because of their cute appearance, playfulness of a puppy and curiosity of a five-year-old. The idea behind this lizard was to use very similar head than the mutated one's but with huge, cute eyes and blunt teeth and a lizard-like low body build. The tail is rather similar to the big one. I looked HF Brain Attack screenshots to see how the official characters mutated with the slugs: The body build altered but the head was pretty much the same.

And so, when a vicious brain slug attack and attaches itself to Gambrodon's head, it launches a very fast and nasty evolution...

 ...And turns the cute critter into terrible dinosaur.

I haven't built that much animal creatures with Bionicle/HF parts so this was an pleasant challenge. It started with the head. I had had a similar head tablescrap around for few months, and I took it and gave it more evil-looking eyes, some more teeth and built that red brain-slug. It was easier to integrate a brick-built slug into the head and I don't even have any of those official ones.

This was also a surprisingly fast build, probably around five or six hours of intensive summer day-off building. After the head I build the neck, then the legs, which needed couple of tries to get then right. I'm especially glad of those tubings, which add both robot-like feel and natural muscle-like curves. The dinosaur arm pieces on the torso are another "motif" I wanted to use to add texture.

The tail was interesting. I needed a tail heavy enough to balance the MOC, but stiff enough to keep the pose. Those two-toe feet pieces worked surprisingly well. They are connected to basic HF joint pieces with one ball on the middle. The tail can be posed, but is held together firmly enough to keep it stiff. The spikes on the tip on the tail create a connection with the shape of the head, and the red pattern on Skrall sword adds a color splash to associate with the red slug.

-Pate-keetongu

Steampunk airship crew

 Here's the last steampunk minifigure barf for this time, a crew straight from the world of airships.

  Gladys Barns, a proletarian from the boiler and fire box rooms. The depths of huge airships are her kingdoms, and she doesn't take custodial high-level bosses' wailing easy.

 Homblom Promethean Ongu, brother of the ginger-bearded smuggler cyclops, is a Governor of the Eastern parts of the Empire.  He uses an upmarket gold armour and a fez as the signs of his dominance when he travels around his realms.

 Grand Admiral Everard Hanks Dennison III von Matribrillian is one of the leading officers in the Queen's Air Navy. With praxis from thousands of battles, he can commande the airship forces with a razor-sharp exactness and rhino-like strength.

 Captain Wilfred Flan Kirkensbrand is a wealthy captain of his own ship SS Pickle. Kirkensbrand is a boy that never gets too old and is always curiously amused by most of the things he faces, despite he's on his early 80s.

Sophia Goodwyn Goldenplover is a scholar and explorer who travels around the world on various airships studying things from ornithology to geography and astronomy.

Steampunk Citizens

 The Age of Steam had also other folk than wild adventurers. These five persons are an example of the rich life of steampunk cities.

 Godalming Jarvis is an infamous goon and scroundel. He escaped his old fellow mafia-men from Italy, arrived on London with a stolen airship and became the personification of London's Steam Mafia. Jarvis has a whole set of nasty tools and apparatus to help him on the broad road of crime.

 Mr. Chruston "Babyface" Windmill, the Prime Minister of Steam Empire, is well known for his thick cigars and big belly. But in fact he's really talented politician and speaker. He has consulted a big regions to be part of the Empire and is currently making plans to solve the suspended monorail pirate issue. Some folk even rumor that his "belly" is actually a undercovered piece of communication apparatus so he is always in touch with his counsellors and the Queen.

 Mrs. Margaret Windmill is a beloved wife of the Prime Minister. His spectacular cooking talent is the reason behind his husband's body shape. Margaret is very keen of the hottest style and famous of her very big hair accessories. 

 Rudolph Adolph Harland Jr. is an inventor of the amazing picture-capturing device. With a turn of a lever and sudden bolt of light he can capture the moment on a paper. He's also one of the country's funniest men with his plushy frog friend he uses to amuse his customers while taking the photo. 

Victor G. Gononde, a private investigator and vigilante, has sworn to catch his arc enemy Godalming Jarvis. He has been on the streets for centuries, what can be seen on his gray hair (still on ponytail) and incredibly strong moustache. He's man who keeps his enemies far and friends ever further.

-Pate-keetongu

PS. This is the 100. post of this blog! Help yourselves and take some coffee and cake!

Steampunk adventurers

 It's always good time for steampunk! Here's some restless adventurers, stay tuned for more.

Cecily M. Holster, a suspended monorail pirate. Smart fellow with a sense of moral like a flaky plaster.  Has a lot of experience on the gondola pillaging ground and sure knows the rail network.

 Edwin Pillingshot McBlaine is a smuggler and an old goon. With his home-build stolen armour and elegant friendly mutton chops he's ready to face any danger from airship-attacking kraken to feisty Armada of the Kingdom's army.

 Pantelomeus T. Ongu is a cyclops from Northern Highlands and old smuggling partner of McBlaine. Ongu has probably ever more handsome muttonchops than his human friend, and he's used to facing the dangers topless and with only a leather overalls. But then again cyclops skin is far thicker than human skin.

 Alinen Flora Boing is a young and skilled treasure hunter with hyper-modern Stingray Raygun capable of blasting rocks to rubble and crop to flour. She's flashy and snazzy and pizzazzy and pretty much everything with Z:s and energy.

Aikapoika, a time traveller from Victorian Era. The friendly muttonchopped  hero of the time is armed with the Chrono Cannon, weapon that was once just a mere gun but was inducted with the electromagnetic tachyon quark flows and turned into very unforeseeable rod. This time he only has a time-traveling monocle on his left eye instead of the normal goggles, but sometimes even a time travelers change their style.

-Pate-keetongu

MOC: Same

 Summer is a great season for MOCing. Here's a new guy from Bionicle frontier. Same, codenamed "The Naked Bat", is a Selakhian (Pridak's pre-mutation species) moderator of Bio-Klaani from Klaanon project.

 Same is a brother-in-arms with Bladis despite their very different battle styles. When Bladis, ironically, enjoys blasting his enemies in pieces from other side of the desert with a big gun with a beautiful long-teeth female on his side, Same wants to watch his enemy from eye to eye while slicing their "important bits" with his scythe or one of his many knives.

The main idea behind Same was to build a long, slender figure with a hue of bat or shark motif. The rib bone armor was a result of that, giving a spice of horror and shark-tooth elements to the character. I also like the pattern it gives against the pitch-black torso, while the other white parts are drawn far from the body to mask end the ends of the limbs.

The utility straps were the other thing. They are reference to Snake's accessories from Metal Gear series, as Same's character is somewhat based on him. There is the green moderator stone and six knives hanging from them, plus two tucked on the sides of his boots. I wanted to put the leg straps on different heights to make them look as a individual accessories and not parts of the armor. 
 
-Pate-keetongu
 

MOC: Steampunk Qwena: The new outfit

Sometimes an idea to a MOC (or, as in this case, mod) appears in a dream. I don't remember in what kind of dream the idea of using Queen Anne's Revenge's sails as a dress came into my brain, but I think it had pretty much nothing to do with the rest of that dream.

Before buying those sails from Bricklink I looked up their sizes and proportions and made a paper copies of them so I could plan the MOC beforehand. Later I realized that the copies were a bit too small, but well, MOCing and life are full of surprises...

I ordered the sails along ofter stuff from Bricklink shop De lütte Steene Deel which seems to get closed right now. It's a very well working store and excellent package, I would recommend this seller to anyone when the store opens again.

There are also some other changes done in Qwena on this update. I made the hat a bit taller with cool stickered TECHNIC hub which worked well with the golden goggles. I also altered the boots a bit, adding a lot more golden buttons connected to tracks. I kept the hip-bag of the old version, but added a rohirrim shield hanging on a golden chain as a pocked watch, which are often seen hanging on a belt on steampunk costumes.

I also completely rebuilt the neck/upper chest area. To be honest, the simple black HF-joint of the old version looked terrible and was a very lazy choice, as some of you noted to me on Flickr (as you can see, your critic was taken seriously; congratulate yourselves, or take a donut). But making it better wasn't easy either. Actually, it was among the hardest things I have ever built, especially because I first used old-style ball joint and had to take the full thing apart to switch it into 2008-style to get more friction. The section is pretty much SYSTEM, and there are also pieces that are connected only via friction (Okay, pretty much all LEGO pieces are connected via friction, but I guess you know what I mean). But I'm happy with it, even when It's not as stable as the old version. But it stays together on display.

This MOC was also quite painful to photograph. No, I'm not talking about the white-on-white issue, I dealt with it quite well on Gimp. I'm talking about the wind. It fell down two times on the porch and I had to pick up the pieces and built some areas again. A herd of mosquitoes didn't help at all, as this is still the gorram summer of Finland. So, I took most of the photos inside, with a bit worse lighting. You can see them on Brickshelf gallery.

-Pate-keetongu

MOC: Dori

 Suddenly, a dwarf out of nowhere! I was about to post a WIP picture of this guy earlier today, but though damn, I'll finish him now and post the whole MOC.

Dori, an elder brother of Nori and Ori, portrayed by talented Kiwi actor Mark Hadlow, is a fuzzy guy who is very keen oh his style.

I built the head a few weeks ago when waiting a BL order which came two days ago. The ornamental beard and hair was fun to build with all those greebles. I tried many different jaw options but chose the design which uses that strange but very useful pin hole piece and couple of minifig arms. It's not the stablest one, but stays together on display, and is easily the best looking.

 I couldn't achieve the reddish-salmon-lavender color scheme f the apparel but went with the beautiful dark red bricks as LEGO did with their minifigure. I still managed to add some salmon on the camisole with three 4x4 plates I picked up from Chaos Pick-a-brick few years ago. There is also a twisted cord near the neck, but it's unfortunately mostly covered by the beard case.  On the torso, I'm especially happy with the shoulder area. I picked the shoulder pieces for this mere use and the 3x3x3 cones worked surprisingly well as a upper arms.

 Dori also has the most poseable arms of my dwarf crew so far. They have three 360 degree joints and three hinge joints, not counting the fingers. That allows surprisingly dynamic poses on a SYSTEM-build figure without any ball joints. 

Dori also has his weapon array of a strong shortsword and bolas, a South American native hunting weapon. Both hand on his belt, but I also built a hand-held equivalents (see the last photo). I'm glad of the natural feel that the freely hanging chains give to this MOC. I also quite like the scabbard of the sword. The broad design was easy to achieve with LEGO bricks.

With six finished dwarfs and Bombur-in-progress (Still waiting the LUGBULK order to get 1x2 olive green plates) I'm now on the middle of dwarf project. But I have already a strong plans on Bofur, and I believe you can wait for a couple of others during the summer. Smaug be prepared! Hopefully on the form that includes fr actioning the dragon into small pieces.

 -Pate-keetongu

A couple of Suits

Summer is here which means a pleasing increase in LEGO time. Here's a couple of suits I threw together (was supposed to clean my room, but the classic thing happened).

On left one I tried to achieve somewhat Megaman-like leg design with those helmets. I'm not completely happy with it, as the angle is quite odd, but I still like the shape of the helmet part . The upper torso is rather basic stuff with the always-so-useful 1x1 SNOT brick with five studs.

The right one is basic Zeessi-style suit. It is somewhat based on my old Dieselpunk Suit's frame. The main idea was to use that windscreen dish as a shield.  As the Boba Fett helmet/jetpack (only Boba part I own) came in, I added some green to mach. I think the color scheme has quite a good forest camouflage pattern.

-Pate-keetongu