MOC: Kira

 This weekend starts nicely with (another?) character MOC combining SYSTEM and Bionicle parts. Actually I was quite surprised when I noticed that this does not have any HF (or well, CCBBSS or whatever it is called). Well, this (her? Who uses personal pronouns on plastic models? Does it matter? I just build.) didn't seem to need any.

This woman, Kira I call her, is based on Ninjago fig Nya's torso/leg print, which is very detailed with different layers of armor material and looked very inspiring. I made a fig using those parts, the hair from creepy girl, head with some sort of a gas mask and a compound bow. I did a concept art drawing of the character (below) and then, two or three months later (one and a half weeks ago) began working on the actual MOC.

I began with the upper torso, oddly enough, because MOCs like these nearly always start with the legs. However, the upper torso came around quite well, with always-so-handy rahkshi head shoulder armor. The challenges began with the middle torso, the part with 4x4 dark red curved slope and pearl gold claw pieces. I'm very happy with the shape, but it was very time-consuming to get together. I had to tear the armor off from the armpits to allow upper arm movement, and that left nasty-looking plate bit there, but the 3x3x3 cone cover it in most angles. Unfortunately, the steering ball joint does not have enough friction for cool archery poses, but other ball joint opinions didn't work. I wondered if Mixel joint would have worked, but it would have deemed completely different upper torso structure.

The apron overall was quite a challenging. As the lower part of it is very stiff, I had to make the legs a bit flat; I was going to use rahkshi backs, but they extended too much forward, and I ended up making a similar upper legs than on Alina, though there are a bit shorter and have a back armor. The boots are quite simple, with thick soles to go naturally with the height of the character.

The arms include some archery equipment, bracers and partial gloves. I didn't check any reference material. I took an archery course a couple of years ago and tried to remember the equipment from back there.

The bow was very fun to build. I was going to use insectoid legs from the very beginning, and the black SW cannons worked very well with them. The long antennae were a late addition, and they were very loosely connected at beginning, but I altered the design and gave them a slight curve. The string is just well... a LEGO string that is knotted at the ends. It can also shoot, though the bow breaks if it is pulled too far. The quiver is quite simple and was swapped to the right shoulder for practical reasons.

The head was quite damn hard. I'm very glad with they eyes though, and in my opinion these have been getting slowly better from the simple faces of Qwena and Brenda. This design was a bit narrower at the beginning, and it led to very nasty mathematical problems with 1/4 plate measurements. The gas mask helped as I didn't have to shape the nose or the mouth, and the forelocks helped to cover the upper part of the face. The long side bangs used tentacle pieces at first, but those odd wedge piece with old plate hinges worked a lot better.

One thing is still a mystery; Who is this Kira? I don't really know, at least this in not steampunk. A friend of my suggested it might be sort of a cyberpunk Mongolian warrioress, and I quite like that description. To me she is a raven-haired compound archer based on a minifigure print.

-Pate-keetongu