Old MOC Revamp: Samus Aran

Good morning and good May Day/First of May/Walpurgis night (morning)! Today is time for another post on the "old MOC revamp" series, this time on a bit bigger magnitude. 

I built Metroid heroine Samus Aran in her Zero Suit back on Christmas 2013. So it was built on a shelf or a desk for 16 months, gradually evolving, as most of my MOCs do. It's (her? Anyway..) first exhibit was Leiki LEGOilla 2014 on Imatra. The MOC was stored in a glass vitrine, and it had to lean on a wall with the taser gun to stay up. The upper torso was terribly designed on the inside, and the head was so loose that it kept exploding all the time; I gathered its pieces from the floor dozens of times. The upper arms were painful too, having extra joint below the shoulder due to use of HF shells. At least the legs and the lower torso were quite good.

I began with reworking the upper arms using 3x3x3 cones (wonderful pieces, ideal shape), though it took some time to get two in dark blue (now I have four five or six) and blue steering pseudo-ball joints, which were tricky to get too. The same design was used with rather good results on original Qwena and later on Alina and Kira. The shoulder friction isn't the best possible, but it looks so much better than Y.joints with black tyres, trust me. Boat studs (another lovely piece) give it some shape and sturdiness. 

The second thing to got under construction was, after a few months, the upper torso. The old version with HF chest plate and tyres around Bohrok sausage legs was not good. It was loose, connected to the lower torso wia half a friction pin (yep...) and was a bit of a mix of colors; Too much black, mostly. I reworked the whole section, making the neck connestion with a SYSTEM bricks and giving the shoulders some shape without odd colors connecting those Rahkshi heads with (gasp!) hidden rubber bands nudged between them and a 1x2 liftarm inside; Super sturdy. The back also had now better connection points for those pink power emblems and the shaping looked way more natural and flowing. I also recall building the base at that time to allow better and more importantly stabler posing. That version went to Leiki LEGOilla 2015 on February, but I don't have any photo evidence as the MOC was behind a glass and hard to photograph.Well, alright, it can be seen on a background here - That's me (left) presenting the dwarves to Matti Kortelainen.

So, back on February, I pondered whether I should photograph this one and post it revamped online. But I didn't. Probably because it it damn dark in Finland on February; and mostly because I still didn't like the head.

Then, on last Wednesday, I was at work, at the Police Department's garage's furniture storeroom, where I read/think/listen to music/doodle around the half of my working time, and I though that heck, I'd like build an another female character; Probably with a similar head than on Kira, as it's eyes turned out well. I doodled a bit and though that I could try to make eyebrows using black T-bars (which I have none so far, but a lot ordered from LUGBULK). Back at home I started building, but ended up using brown minifig hands as a eyebrows instead (T-bars were too big and robust). And then a though occured in my mind - the head would look perfect on Samus, with bright green eyes and all. I also managed to squeeze it from 11 plates to 10,5 plates in width; The small but critical difference that allowed me to give Samus 1 stud wide lips using dark red 1x1 round brick with hole; I knew those would be a good buy from Bricks&Pieces. The expression is a bit surprised due to the distance between the eyesbrows and the eyelashes; But if somebody thinks the batarang was better, I have to disagree.

I broke the original head by accidentally dropping it to the floor. It exploded.

The ponytail is pretty much the same, but the rest of the head is around 250% sturdier than the old one, the hair flows more naturally and the bananas made a lot better fringe than the random yellow bits used on the old one. The neck connection is also more trustworthy and doesn't have the odd dark bley bracket. On the whole, it turned out rather nice.

There are more photos at the end of this post. They turned out quite light (medium!) blue, because I took them against the setting sun; It was either rain on sunlight yesterday. But they don't look bad as Zero suit is lighter on shade than TLG's regular blue. I might take another set later with different light, but here's a pretty good mix of angles and poses too. None of them are supported by anything - the base allows some neat one-leg action posing.

-Eero