Lemmy Kilmister 1945-2015

You know I'm born to lose, and gambling's for fools,
But that's the way I like it baby,
I don't wanna live for ever!

MOC: Cohen the Barbarian

Gheng, Gheng, Ghenghiz Cohen! Merry Christmas to everyone. It is the Christmas evening and I'll continue my "tradition " of posting a typical old bearded man MOC. This one isn't very jolly though, and definitely not giving any presents. Actually he'll possibly steal everything he can. He's robbed thousands of temples, burial sites and tabernacles, stealing numerous gems, virgins and other pieces of treasure. In other words, he's a hero, in the old sense; After all, he fight monsters, crazy monks and so on... He's Cohen the Barbarian, aka Ghengiz Cohen, also known as Emperor of Agatea, aged ninety-something, He's Discworld's most (in)famous barbarian hero and leads his Silver Horde.

 Cohen has been important character in three Discworld books, including the second one (Light Fantastic), Interesting times and awesome Discworld fable book The Last Hero illustrated by Paul Kidby; That one I can recommend to anybody. My creation is strongly based on its cover art, as you can see.

Building Cohen had been on my to-do list for some time; I though building old bandy-legged man in little bits of fur and leather would be challenging. Many techniques used on Dwarves and previous Discworld characters wouldn't have worked here, and I leaned lot on Boat Stud On TECHNIC Hole connections; It's one of my favorites. I Bricklinked 100 tan boat studs (one of my favorite parts) and around 20 tan TECHNIC connectors for this.

Building was relatively fast and straight-forward. The body and the limbs didn't offer very big challenges; Even the bandy legs came out nicely, even though it deemed some balancing with the cape and sword.

The head was the most challenging part and the last part I built. This is odd, because my bearded characters almost always start with the beard, then the head and then the body; legs last. Not here! Making Cohen look angry and old, very old, was hard. I pressed hid eyes deep into his skull and made a very powerful brow; Cohen isn't very pretty. The eyepatch was a bit tricky too; I was going to use black rubber band, but almost every one of them had dried and broken during the past years! So I just took one of those cord pieces, plucked the stud end on the eyepatch and stuck the bar end behind the ear. 

Cohen also needed a little base to stand correctly, as the lower legs are pin-connected and can spin freely. I made just some snow, for the season and to be true to the book cover. But in all, Cohen's surprisingly sturdy.

And yes, again, happy Christmas to everyone, or merry, whatever. We got snow! Though it's going to melt again tomorrow, but at least that's something! I threw some snowballs to my sisters head and everything; hooray!

I'll probably be back before 2016!

If not, happy new year!

-Eero

MOC: Toa Nurukan

Babies and ladies, here's the (likely) last Klaanon creation for 2015 (at least before Christmas). This guy is Toa Nurukan, toa of earth. He is old and wise and has a big moustache on his bulky Kakama. He fought on the Great War of Metru Nui, but his memories have been manipulated: But they include hazy references to weapon organization The Black Hand and high officer ranks... Nurukan was also a close friend of Deleva and Umbra.

Nurukan is in some way a MOC that could be called Toa-mod, but I think I slipped in enough interesting details. The mask is brick-built, as it had to have a friendly muttonchops moustache (copied from Bombur, har har) and regular black Kakama looked too dynamic and light for the character. There's quite lot of SYSTEM overall, in the arms, chest armor (using old satellite solar panels - I like them!) and belt-mounted canteen (based on Finnish or Swedish military ones).

I wanted Nurukan to have military quality on him, but this old chap isn't so much of a warrior any more. He has wrist blades (with surprisingly working mechanism), which are not very logical weapon choice for old trench monster like him, but they probably refer to something in his past (I'm not spoiling you, if you want to read thousand of pages on Finnish Bionicle fanfiction. But good one, mind you.)

There's also a lot of more HF stuff than actual Bionicle parts. The blocky armor add-ons used on the knees and pauldrons are among my favorite pieces, though the round ones are even better. Bulked up Metru feet are used tho bring on a bit of Bionicle feel. They also create nice boot-like profile with the heavily armored lower legs.

-Eero

MOC: Winter Village Brewery

Yeah, it's this time of the year again! Wait, it is not. Or well, that might be a bit odd statement. But hey, it's several degrees plus outside (with our Celsius system - That's logical, in fact) and misty and rains a lot (water). But it's still almost Christmas (I'm not in the mood due to the weather though), I've watched the new Star Wars and this is my entry for Eurobricks's Expand The Winter Village Contest VI. As humorous side note, I also took part of their first such contest in 2010 with this Cáfe... Look a those glorious quality photographs! Oh boy...

Yeah, the contest. The prizes are quite awesome, so I'm going to be honest and say they motivated me to build this. This is a brewery. Small ale breweries seem to be popular right now. Coincidence? I think so. This is brewery/pub due my recent trip in Britain with few chums which included nice amount of sitting inna pub. Bennets Bar in Edinburgh was particularly pleasant one and one of the high points of our journey.

I know there would be a bar counter with taps, dark red chairs, brewing containers with pipes (which I know nothing about, though), publican's apartment on upstairs, and last but not least, three old geezers outside the pubs with pints. They exist everywhere. I'm sure you'll find them in any of the seventy-three corners of the multiverse. And then there would be the vehicle, because several of Winter Village sets have one, and I like old cars.

I began building with pub's floor. It uses old good "45 degree 1x1 bricks and tiles stuck between them" technique to make an interesting pattern. The colors are white and yellow (beer) that nicely brighten the room. The brewery side followed. Walls ended up being sand green with LUBGULKed masonry bricks; I have quite lot of them, though most of them ended up in this. Some earthly colors (tan, reddish brown, bleys, greys) were used here too make some architectural and promotional details; The sign read "ALE" because it was only beer-related word with thee letters I came up with. It also means sale or discount in Finnish, and I suppose it'll cause confusion on Finnish exhibits.

After a while I realised it had to have a tower. My buildings usually end up with a tower. I like towers. There are not many buildings with towers in Finland, especially in my hometown, which is rather recent one with little or no history; In 1600s there were two occupied houses; A true story.

I think the tower makes sense as it can be used to store malt used in brewing and also makes the pub visible in the village, being sort of a landmark. The roof technique is from Derfeln Cadarn's Medieval village guide.

The pub owners seems to be a solitary man, and his little room upstairs is messy but comfortable. His secret receipt is held in a safe. He's also not a man that decorates the Christmas three very brightly. The tree is based on these with some natural adaption. It's same that I used on Eurobricks Christmas raffle last month. I won on the 1st of December (handful of figs from Marvel's Helicarrier) and my tree was on their calendar page, hooray. So here's a little tribute for that (because it saved me from building furniture to the corner, right enough).

The lorry is loosely based on old Saab lorries, but only loosely. The one-fig cockpit is more set-esque and not very true to actual vehicles, but it fit the overall feel there. I began with the fender and hood and most of time was spent working on them; I build everything first on black and them copied it in bleys and cool medium blue. The barrels on the platform include the products of our brewery.

I also used a handful of figs there. Some of them had been going around my minifig bins or tables for a while, but most were built for this creation. I wanted to achieve 50s or 60s British village feel familiar from numerous popular TV series. In Finland, at least.

-Eero

MOC: Lingeán

Ding and dong and trallallaa! It's the first actually cold day of winter here (though it'll warm up again next week, sadly) and I bring you the third piece of my Four Seasons project and naturally it's Spring, named Lingeán; a bit of a pun here, if you pardon. Lingeán is Gaeilge for Spring, but not in sense of season, but a device (Spiral spring). Oh boy it's funny. But Season-Spring would have been something like "Eaargh" so I went with this.

There were, again, some key ideas behind this. First and foremost I wanted her to be bare-footed, with tons of flowers sprouting behind her footsteps. Using those hot air balloon parts as flower-like dress was another. I won that set, (my first Friends set - Don't like them minidolls but nice hairpieces) on LUG event on "Build scene of marriage crisis in the kitchen with parts of 40107 Winter Skating Scene in ten (?) minutes". They worked nicely with Karzahni's beautiful marbled armor plates. I have used them in similar fashion before.
With bare feet I wanted to make bare legs too, a thing I had never tried in tan before. What a challenge! I think they look alright, the shaped could be a bit stronger, but it works. But it's very fragile and hard to balance, and impossible to pose otherwise. I think I should change the ankle joints into ratcheted ones for the sake of stability.

The upper torso consist mostly of rather ordinary green pieces bought mostly from LEGO stores in Britain and LUGBULK. Rahksi heads used as shoulder pads make the total number of Bionicle parts used here four. That's quite bit less than on the previous ones, Forfhuarú and Fómhar. The lower arms are white; Partly due to make a difference, and also to save me from using precious tan 1x1 tiles with clips. I don't have many and couple of them are partly broken.

The hair's the best part here in my opinion. It took a while. Actually, this final design come together in matter of minutes; But it took hours to get there. I started with reddish brown bows used on this final version, but tried to built sort of curled hair tied behind the back; But the curves were too big. I battled with it for some time and ditched the idea, end went with some radical colors, including glorious medium azure. The previous MOCs in this series had white and orange hair, neither of which look completely natural but are nor super strage. But the azure didn't work, and I didn't have enough right pieces. So I picked up the bows again, and made them turn sideways in an extremely wind-swept way. It looked great! Some curved slopes in the end made it look natural, and even one of those odd hollow spike pieces in reddish brown finally found its use.

In all, this is not very radical figure; Neither was Fómhar, the autumn girl. But Forfhuarú (Winter which I still don't remember how to spell) had those huge cold wings and the icicle crown, so I think the summer one's got to have something special and more fantasy-esque. But I do not know what, so time will tell. See you.

-Eero

Brickfilm + MOCs: Murmeli - Groundhog

 I woke up this morning

And so forth

Groundhog day

Slowly turns into night

 I face the pillow

ponder things a bit

what is this all about

journey from light to darkness

Groundhog morning!

Groundhog day!

Groundhog evening!

Groundhog night!

Groundhog week!

Groundhog month!

Groundhog year!

Groundhog ETERNITY!

Yes, you are right: New brickfilm from Vuhvelituotanto (E. Karvinen & E. Okkonen)! This is a Tekrafilm, which means it is a film with Tekramusic on it. This is our second tekrafilm; The first was Märkä Saippua (Wet Soap) and somehow I missed to blog about it, despite it being artistic and groundbreaking music movie. 

This song, Mumeli, is tragic story about rodents and everyday life written and composed by J. Hyrkäs (The translation here was done by me to make thing clearer to ones not familiar with our outstanding Finnish language). The newest tekra-album had 12 tracks and we chosed the shortest one (or one of two 1:14 songs) as we don't have all day (except that I do - for a while). Filming took something like two hours. Building the set pieces took significantly longer. I have no idea about the post-production, it's not my concern.

This film had two set ideas. Another one was this Groundhog's bedroom. It is rather advanced brickfilm set, being almost studless and far bigger than minifig scale (let's call it Groundhog scale). LUGBULKed sand green bricks and brick bricks created nice wall profile; with the tan floor it remind me of my building room. There had to be a bed too, as it is indeed bedroom. Actually there was two different beds, this one used on set piece pictures, and another so called "effect-bed" used in the film, with internal "groundhog hinge" and slot for our anxious animal. You might spot the difference!

Other furniture and set dressing was added; bedside table, reading lamp, potted plant, some books, alarm clock and a glass of water. These turned out useful during the filming, as most of the exciting script was improvised. 

There was also this another, even more progressive set piece, that I'll call "Groundhog Eternity". You have probably seen some cool gradient backdrops on vignettes and such, but we have moving gradient times-of-day backdrop n our film! This is rather tall MOC, probably my tallest, being over 60 cm (two feet) tall. It's mostly build using basic bricks but has some special bits too. The sun design (hands on a plate) is stolen from some ancient Barney Main's vignette.

So, we placed the simple "outdoors" set at the edge of a table, made a tall pile of science magazines next to it placed our "Groundhog Eternity" on the pile. Then we removed the magazined two or three at the time, setting the sun, lowering the moon and bringing the night. On his post-production duties Esko made it faster, inverted it and used other data tricks to make it works. Odd stuff! I actually also tried to build a rising/lowering mechanism tha used some TECHNIC tyres to roll the backdrop, but it was just too heavy to work. Sometimes simpler is better.

MOC: Moon Mayhem

 Now this MOC is a bit stranger one. It was built for Finnish LUG Palikkatakomo's Space contest in couple of days. I was not alarmed for it, as I thought the entries have to take part in Exhibit we'll have at Helsinki Observatory for three months. Now I don't have anything against putting my MOCs on display for three months; I think that would be excellent, as I never seem to have enough display space for my builds. But Helsinki is 500 kilometers away and that would mean two trips, so it would have been a bit tricky.

So I went and built this scene (Our hero must save Moon Baron's daughter from Plutonian mining robot warrior) in supercharged battle-build-mode while struggling with some other (even stranger) projects (coming soon). I had no sense what I was doing with this; At the beginning it was going to be something somewhat serious, some öögämöögä alien dude in cool space suit. I built a head from him. It used Jar Jar Binks head and mixel eyes and a homemaker cap, and I might do something with it. Or not. Likely it'll sail around my tables for nine months and then be disassembled for parts.

Somehow it turned out to be battle robot straight from old B-movie. Actually I was inspired by Fordibben Planet film poster a friend of mine bought from London, though I hadn't seen it for three months and in my memories the robot in it looked more like this. Oh well. This came out very toy-like, which encanhed the B-movie feel; Black and red works always. I also tried to use as much odd pieces as possible; there is a dice as the head, old train cargo pieces as pauldrons, egg dome from Agents set Robo Attck and one of my three Rock Riders drills (a late addition; I polished it and everything). But I'm most proud of the leg armor, which uses couple of old town crib pieces bought from a convention. The work rather nicely with CBBS armor.

The minifigs... I wanted to damsel in distress (this is from old B-movie, after all) have enough odd bling. The princess head from series something was rather nice. The hero was more armored and serious at the beginning, but I wanted to go completely pulp and make him as odd as possible. He has astronaut torso from series one, moustache piece, vampire/Wolverine hair, Vitruvius's cape, TRANSPARENT ORANGE CHAINSAW and trans-medium-blue shield. Do not mess with him. He's ridiculous.

-Eero

MOC: King Dedede

Yes... Another Super Smash Bros. creation! This very fat penguin in King Dedede, Kirby's arch enemy. He definitely one of the coolest Smash characters. I've mostly played him on Brawl, where he wields a hammer but uses his head and feet in the most destructive strikes. Of the irony! Dedede can also eat his enemies and throw minions kick enemies around while loafing around happily. What a guy!

Dedede is big and round and therefore not so easy to build using mostly blocky bricks. I began with the belly, which was quite challenging due to zig-zag triangular patterns. I made them less steep, as I wanted to make them somehow, and ended up using old good Cheese SNOT. The belt is sunk into Lowell-sphere-esque belly with bright basic yellow and red hues. I like bright colors. MOCs don't always have to be grey and black!

The angles of Dedede's cloak offered some additional challenged. I wanted to use those long bow pieces, as they create beautiful shapes and three-dimensional feel. They are angled, which means they are only connected via one studs; However, they are quite sturdy. that can't be side about the angled 2x3 slopes near them that are connected to each other via plate hinges. They tend to fall off.

The legs are only odd slabs under the penguin's fat belly, as they should be; But still remember to beware Dedede's kicks (back aerial!). This arms are pretty poseable, though. The sleeve-ends were tricky, I tried to make them using mudguards are first, but they were too big and I ended up with curved slopes instead (good pieces, good pieces). Dedede also has his big wooden hammer; The middle parts is a bit boring, I know, could remake it sometime if I get a better idea. It also lacks a knob in the end that it sometimes seem to have. But most pictures of Dedede found online have his hammer posed in a way that hides the end, so I didn't bother with the knob at all...

The head was fun. I took some liberties to make it look funny and a bit silly. I flattened it a bit. I tried several different eyes. 2x2 round tiles could have been good, but I didn't have any (except those with half-shut eyelids). Minifig head eyes with classic-space helmets looked quite nice, but a bit too evil (Dedede doesn't feel very evil, you know?). 2x2 dishes with 1x1 round tile eyes looked like Dedede had been hit with Ness's PK Flash or something - This was the best alternative.

-Eero 

MOC: Nori - Regal Armour

Yep, a dwarf. Nori in his Erebor regal armor, in fact. This was built as a fast relaxing little MOC between some modular buildings I got stuck with (One of them, an old light-yellow one, is almost completed though). When nothing seems to work, make a dwarf. So it goes.

This was of course inspired by Weta Workshop's last Hobbit Chronicles book, Art of War, with nice photos of dwarf armour (though sadly not dwarves wearing the armour...) that never got enough screen time on the film (and that had odd CGI lighting too that ruined the colors.) It's unfortunate as these suits are magnificent, and Nori's beautiful brown one has especially cool pauldrons built using overlapping panels. I started the MOC with them, and added on lots of black chain mail bought from LUGBULK. It has nice, shiny quality on it - very regal indeed.

Otherwise this is random mix of basic stuff and odd techniques. Robot arm pieces can be found through the MOC. I had plenty of them in reddish brown, so they ended up in chest plate, helmet and (naturally) gloves. Another interesting pattern is done used reddish brown flower plates on the skirt - LUGBULK stuff again. Even some cheese SNOT mosaic made it way to the armor.

The spear was a challenging one. Nori also has a magnificent star-shaped mace in the film, but he's not really seen with it wearing this armour, but had a spear on the ramparts scene instead. I tried to build the mace, but the eight blades were hard to make work on this scale, so I went with the spear. That wasn't easy neither, as sharp, straight angles are hard to achieve. This design is a bit too stubby and stout, but I think it's good enough and stays together surprisingly well. I sat in the sauna thinking how to built it a finally came up with this solution using 1x4 slopes and odd 90 degree lightsaber handle piece.

-Eero

MOC: Rincewind & The Luggage

Return to Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld, and to the very beginning of it! Here's Rincewind, the first main charater on Discworld books, with his sapient pearwood monster chest The Luggage. Rincewind books are usually not among my favourites (except The Last Hero which is simpy awesome), but I quite like these characters. Rincewind's cynical realism has a nice contrast to everyday fantasy books heroes. And these being among the most iconic Discworld characters building them would be obligatory sooner or later, so here they are.

The Luggage was actually build a month ago or so. It began with a simple SNOT frame using some brackets, headlight and log Bricks, but eventually evolved into something a bit more complex. I had spectacular luck with the parts there: I randomly picked just the right pink parts on PaB walls in Britain in August, and as I mentioned in the previous post, I got some of those cool dark red windscreens from a convention last month; they are perfect for tongues, as seen on the magic box here. The teeth are 1x1 tiles stuck into the undersides of 2x4 plates, a bit odd technique that enables nice gaps between them.

Rincewind was a pretty straighforward character build, mostly using techniques developed on previous creations. SNOT cheese is used here to achieve his anxious expressions: They were also used -inverted-  to create The Dean's angry face. Rincewind's shaggy and miserable beard is done using grille tiles; overall the look is based on Paul Kidby's visual, which PTerry has said to be spot-on. Particulary this image found on aforesaid The Last hero was used as a reference; Hopefully that can be seen on the posture and the clothing details.

Here's also a group shot with the wizards so far; I achieved a nice compact layot with maximal optical zoom and long distance between the camera and the creations (to make them all fit in front of the backdrop, to be honest).

-Eero

MOC: Fómhar

 Ideas for creations come from many different sources. Dave Foreman suggested me to make personifications of four seasons (well done, that man) after I posted Forfhuarú on Flickr. I began working on Autumn girl almost immediately and here she is now, after being completed for a week or so (weathers have been bad - This is not autumn like this any more, no warm hues and beautiful leaves, just mist, sleet and darkness). The name is Gaelic again, meaning simply Autumn, to continue the name motif.

The main idea was the dress made using dark red and dark orange leaves. I have plenty of them from 2014 and 2013 LUGBULKs. The skirt was done using everybody's favorite leaf weaving technique. Connecting it was a bit tricky, but I succeeded with inverted TECHNIC tyre, which had both good shape and needed friction. The upper torso is connected to it with couple of TECHNIC axles like in Forfhuarú. It has a simple tank top design, with some added bulk on shoulders that use Bellville saddles (Great pieces, cause confusion) as some sort of fur collar etc. I think it creates a nice silhouette.

The arms were tricky. The lower arms are same design as seen on Forfhuarú, but I wanted to extend the bare arm a bit upwards. Tan boat studs are used here a lot, they are definitely one of the key parts on character building. It's one of my favorite parts in general, and being widely available in tan is something like a gift from the gods. There's bit of a black sleeve here, using yet another 2015 LUGBULK goods - Pin hole/Pin connectors and black T-bars, to be precise. The movement is not perfect as ball joints are not used and the saddles limit it, but I can cope with it. There's plenty on poses at the end of this post.

I'm very happy with the head. The face is similar to Forfhuarú, and I wanted to make the hair bright and effective. Kalmah's tentacles were a shot in the dark, but the worked rather well and I had four of them. The bright orange looks neat with the more earthy warm shades. Hat was another thing I just had to make. I really like cool hats (I own quite a few myself - My everyday fur felt trilby, black Borsalino Homburg for festive uses, Australian outback fedora for adventures, old and wiry badgeless police cap for woodcutting, Swiss Railway Station Master cap bargained for flea market and so on) and have build those to several character on the past, including Sheelika's Femme Fatale hat and Alina's cap. This one uses couple of dishes, leaves, flowers and one of those odd tongue-like windscreen pieces. I love them! They have been on my BL wanted list for years, and I never managed to get any, but finally I got three on a convention. I know they are not rare, but I never stumbled into them before... Anyway, I think the hat adds lot of character here.

The legs are pretty basic stuff, mostly seen before. Grey parts on upper legs are not perfect, cut I had ran out of black ones and they're mostly hidden anyway. The heels are a bit thicker than usually, making a nice contrast to Forfhuarú's killer heels and fat soles.

The base was originally a wall of LUGBULKed olive green bricks and leaves on top of it, but it never worked properly, so I just removed the bricks. I think it looks nice. The MOC doesn't really need it to stand, but it makes a nice continuity with Forfhuarú's snowdrift.

I've already built stuff for Spring and Summer girls, but I think I have to Bricklink a bit before completing them... Anyway, Spring's mostly SYSTEM, and has a bare feet and lower legs - Something I've never done before on this scale (expect on Bilbo, but that barely counts).

Next up some Discworld stuff - See you later.

-Eero