MOC: Lord Yupa

Here's another Bricks of Character with a facial hair of huge magnitude, but this is not from The Hobbit films. This manly man is Lord Yupa from Hayao Miyazaki's over thousand-page long Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind comic (or manga, if you like, and also in the film adaption, but I prefer the manga for it's a lot more powerful). He's the mightiest swordman of Fukai, the Sea of Corruption, protagonist Nausicaä's mentor and overall very very cool man who either kicks ass or (more often) prevents others from kicking each other's ass.

Yupa was a rather easy build. I had already built another Nausicaä character (coming soon) and I had to make Yupa on the same scale (something between miniland and dwarves). The head ended up two studs and two plates wide with the hood. I was going with a plank face but added a cheese slope nose as it looked perfect. The moustache is as huge as it should be (though it seems to transform froma moustache to a full beard during the comic; compare book 1, page 17, 10th panel (original right-to-left print) and book 7, page 68, panel 4. Well, there's 12 years between drawing these panels) and covers most of the head. Yupa also has his brimmed hat. I first tried to build it using dark orange 6x6 dish, but it was too small. The barrel was a last-minute mod and I'm very happy with it. It's slightly angled. The dark flesh band adds some color to the MOC.

The torso is very basic stuff, similar to the dwarves. The binoculars represent the bullet pockets. I decided to cover the arms with the cape to achieve a dramatic effect; that's how Yupa usually appears, after all. This made building a lot easier. The trousers use a neat technique combining 2x4 curved slopes with Travis bricks. Boots are pretty basic stuff, with a little trick of using a very old car tyres that look almost dark tan. They have a nice old beat-up feel on them, which works rather nicely on this character. I also made a little base with some toxic spores of Fukai.

Also as I said, I have built an another Nausicaä character and I'm possibly (likely, definitely?) doing more. Stay tuned.

-Eero