MOC: Steamnarium of Mr. Edward Higgs

 Above the barren and obscure wastelands near the Imperial London rises an odd and huge figure. But it is not one of the giants of the old age. It is a machine and it is a house, in fact it is the homely home of Mr. Edward Higgs, eccentric inventor and gentleman who definitely respects peace and desolation.

Higgs's home is a typical home of an bachelor (at least on some aspects). There isn't that clean as there's no one to nag about things. As Higgs's inventing projects take some room (one of the three floors) and the machinery of the house isn't that small neither (it is an old steam sawmill tower) he has his bedroom, toilet and the old boiler room all in the same space. Isn't that handy? He doesn't have room for chairs around his table, but fortunately he can sit on the stairs while eating. The sewer system is also very compact and helps Higgs to avoid the sewage costs.

As it would be troublesome and time-consuming to climb all the 32 ladders when coming home, Higgs has built a fold-out ramp for his helipack on the first floor. There is also a big steamp-powered hoister above the ramp to make it easy to lift heavy objects into the house. Another of Higgs's homely inventions is the big propeller on the wall of the first floor. It is not an air conditioning system, but a wind tunnel propeller that helps Higgs to make his airs vessels as aerodynamic as possible.

This MOC is an entry for Eurobricks' Home Sweet Home Sci-Fi contest. When the contest began, a mention of a steampunk entries woke my interest, but I had too many projects to work with back then. But on Sunday I though that heck, now I have time and three days left before the deadline. Well, I began making a few sketches; I'm trying to get into an architecture line on an university and that was also kind of a training for the entrance examinations. I finally ended up with a idea of a house on four tall supports, which was based on painting a did five or six years ago, inspired by this sawmill memoriam in my hometown. The painting is actually hanging above my screen right now. I made the MOC a bit more homely than the painting, which had a couple of sand green cottages on the lower part (an idea which I used on The Twisted Victorian) and was pretty much machine-like on the other parts.

I'm very happy that I managed to build and photograph this thing in only two days. That was really a hectic build. Luckily my schoolwork for this year is done and I'm basically on my summer vacation now - I have a summer job but it begins in July, so there's still couple of months to go. Good times.

-Pate-keetongu

Galactic Congressmen & Their Bodyguards

 Here's a barf on sci-fi figs from another universe, three galactic congressmen of various factions and their bodyguards, though only one of the congressmen is male and and one a human being... But that's the terminology.

 Washiva Chandeliereve is the leader of rare race of Anthaenolygenia. Their civilization is ancient and advanced in both cultural and technical settings, but usually not trusted by other civilizations, as they usually use their mind-reading powers in diplomatic counsels.

Washiva's personal guard consist of Whisper-4 robot warriors that are superior over living being with their extremely sharp reflexes, unnatural speed and skill with electro-shock rifles.

Blaina Candeles is the chief of human colony on the volcanic planet Catamalania. Fire is the life-deeming factor on the planet and usually visible on the formal costumes. The colony is ruled by matriarchs and the main export is thermal energy. The colon has got a lot of fortune from energy dealing which can be seen on Candeles's armor.

Adele Harvene is a member of Candeles's personal Red Guard. It's quite ironic that the guard's armor looks actually lighter than their leader's, but it is designed to be fitting on real combat situations whereas Candeles's armor is purely an emblem of authority. The Red Guard's rifles might look ancient and clumsy, but they are packed with modern technology and firepower without forgetting the authenticity.











Manfred P. Dertit is a chieftain of algebra-based bank union
civilization of Hellepermanni System. Among his people bribery is seen as a moral way to increase politician's motivation. The other races don't usually share this point of view, but often a bundle of money can solve that problem surprisingly easily.













Kabanoss is Manfed's personal assistant, consigliere and personal bodyguard. In battle he amounts an army and can turn a town into ruins in a matter of minutes. Kabanoss is very loyal as long as he gets his daily sausages.

Old MOC mod: Keetongu

 This is my self-MOC, Keetongu or Tongu in Klaanon, one of the last Saffron Giants and the leading engineer in Bio-Klaani's steam-powered Air Fleet. The same name to canon's Keetongu is a pure coincidence. They are members of the same near-extinct Rahi species, but have likely never met each other. This Tongu is a peaceful guy, enjoying building stuff with Matoran friends and flying airships, but he's got enough muscle to defend his friends in battle if needed.

The previous version, if that is the correct term - the last two ones were the same MOC with some fixes and added mass - has been my most popular Klaanon MOC on Flickr. This version fixes the most problems noted there, but I didn't add musctache and top hat; there are those on Klaanon though, not on Tongu but hats are definitely a thing and Matoran living in the northern part of the island of Bio-Klaani often have facial hair... or maskial hair, kanohian hair, you know the stuff. Tongu has no head, or at least it is pretty much between his shoulders, so a hat wouldn't stay on very well.

Modding Tongu started when I got a Chima set as a prize on a building contest, more of than on the previous post. The set had some great keetorange/bright light orange/something flamish yellow SYSTEM parts and they seemed good for adding some beef on this guy. These parts included some of by favourites, cheese slopes and curved slopes, and they worked well with some smooth HF/Bionicle pieces used in this MOC - the HF shells on shoulders and the Bohrok headplates. The lower legs were the first parts to get a twist. I had added the Roborider block long ago, and now I made the feet more stompy and added tiles on Metru feet; now the lower legs felt like a small fortresses on their own!

The other mods are about beefing up too. There's some curved sloping in the arms, and the hands are completely reworked; they don't look that much different but the design is a lot sturdier.I wanted to make the knee joints a lot better, and add a mecha-style dished on their sides. That was a lot harder that expected, but I finally managed to do that with some clips and 2x2 dishes. They rattle a bit, but don't limit movement much.

The torso has some more armors, and the stomach piece doesn't fall apart any more. The sides have also some more meat (kidneys?). There's some other small tweaks but I can't remember all of them. Give mercy!

-Pate-keetongu

MOC: The Twisted Victorian

Model Expo, the biggest scale model exhibit in Northern Europe was on the last weekend and the Finnish LUG Palikkatakomo had a show there (report may or may not follow). We had a big modular town/castle diorama, and there was, among other things, a house fair contest. The idea was to build a house on 32x32 or 32x64 area and then people (the visitors, not LUG members) voted the best house. There were 16 entries and my house, The Twisted Victorian, got 50 votes and was third alongside with Legorides's (Markku Jääskeläinen) house with awesome Scots pine tree. Awis's (Ismo Aavaharju) Finnish-style house was got the most votes and Janne Kortelainen's house with motorized things was the second. I got 70134 Lavertus Outland Base for prize, and while the set design isn't that impressive, it had brilliant pieces and you will definitely see them on my creations soon.

This house definitely isn't very modern. It is time traveller's house - You can see Aikapoika, my time-travelling  alter-ego on the stairs. I think the whole house was transported to the fair from an another decade. I couldn't have built an ordinary house. No offense, there were some definitely cool ordinary houses in the fair, but it just isn't my thing; steampunk is. Finland doesn't have many houses like this, most of them are gray or white and use blocky shapes and minimum detail. This is of course different: Round yellow tower, black ornamented arches, funny somewhat tudor-style shacks on the side (probably inspired by Howl's Moving Castle, which despite being Miyazaki's worst movie has some awesome details) and big cone roof with a flag. And then the full thing is funnily angled, as there had to be 2 studs free space on every side.

I chose yellow to be the main color as it is bright enough to look really good with black and I had enough yellow bricks left. I had ideas for more shacks on different, special colors like light yellow and medium blue but the ideas didn't fly as there weren't enough room and I didn't have enough bricks on those colors. But sand green and dark orange were good choices to my eye, and the rounded balcony with the stairs looked better than expected and give a nice spot for the figure.

The tower is rather similar to the one in the Prime Minister's apartment in Brassport. It looked nice and I wanted to try the idea with different color and greebling. As it would have been terribly hard to make all-round tower to burst through the roof, the backside on it is funnily shaped with an arched window and some hexagonal pipe pieces. They are interesting parts but rarely used nowadays, and I wanted to make a difference there!

-Pate-keetongu

MOC: Retribuiton of Coote C. Lucknahan

 To be honest, I'm not quite sure what's happening here. But I'm sure there have been a crime - Dirty money, stepping on the poor, forged contracts and so on. The police department might be corrupted with these ignoble gentlemen around, so the situation has escalated into the point where Miss Evelin Sharley has to grasp her rapier and climb up to the highest floor of the office skyscraper...

Actually, I build this vignette mostly to use some techniques and create a bit of scenery to my steampunk universe. Miss Sharkley can be familiar to some of you from of minifig barfs. I liked the minifig, and wanted put her to action. I had some ideas for classical but gloomy office, and so the idea was born.

I didn't want to build an office that looks extremely comfortable, as the bad guy here, Coote C. Lucknahan, probably loves only money, not its benefits. The stone floor is likely cold and hard. I have those light bley headlights from LUGBULK, and it was a pleasure to make proper a stone wall with them and dark bley tiles; I always wanted to build things like that when I was younger, but didn't have enough pieces - greys and black were always under the stone (If there is such a phrase in English; there is Finnish).

The big windows use red fences that are likely my father's old from seventies. I like how they work with the classy dark red curtains. Mister Lucknaham has also an Indian-style rug on the wall, it's probably an imperialistic gift from colonies. The furniture also includes a heavy buro. There's a contract, some drinks and oh boy the money - all messed up in horror, when the reddened eyes of the malefactor meet the rock-hard gaze of the vigilante in red. And her long dress and hair are never on the way.

-Pate-keetongu

MOC: Cynthia Quegan Muskell

 Ladies and gentlemen, here's the last steampunk figure for (some) while. This gal is Cynthia Quegan Muskell, professional engineer and airship pilot. She wears warm and protective longcoat, heavy boots and aviator goggles. A strong woman for sure.

This was actually going to be a male character, a police constable probably, but the 4x4 wedges (still one of my favourite parts) looked so curvy that it was better as a female character. The torso is bit similar than Gail's (see last post) and I got the idea of this when building her. This one is a bit less sci-fi, but I believe the boots and hairstyle have enough punk and steam to be classified as steampunk.

Cynthia doesn't have any new ball sockets, and the arms use twin clips as sockets, but don't worry, I bricklinked 24 of both socket pieces and they should arrive soon, so there will be more figures like this. The hands don't use the same design as the two last figures, but Cynthia is a bit smaller model and I wanted to give her wrist angle for posing.

The torso came up pleasingly well; Surprisingly I didn't start with the legs. I'm especially pleased with the inverted curved slopes on the back of the coat, as I didn't have those before I bought the eagle beast. They help creating the feminine curve there. Binoculars as the belt buckle was there from the beginning, as it reminds me of the buckle on my coat.

The head uses the same basic stylised idea than the two previous MOCs, though here I could built the whole head inverted as the neck connection is the bottom of a headlight brick. The hairstyle is a bit Wyldstyle-esque, with goggles on a rubber band, trick from the BCth. The boots were the last part I built, and I like the heavy heels there. I wanted to give her a boots that are faithful to the style but not too impractical when messing with boilers, fireboxes and pipes. The winky-wonky "gungan angle lightsabers" are the key part there. The binocular motif can be seem on the boots too. 

-Pate-keetongu