MOC: Kurotowa

 Yeah yeah, on the last post I said Mito would be the last Nausicaä figure for a while, well nope. I was asked to build Kurotowa, and I'm building Charuka/Chikuku as a one MOC, so suspect them to be finished before other stuff being posted. But don't worry, I have two finalized and photographed MOCs waiting.

Kurotowa is an old soldier obsessed with ambition, according to his own words. He's not a bad man by any means, and usually tried to adapt to the current situation. He was sent to look after Kushana by her father, King Wu, but Kurotowa concluded that his final reward would be death in any case, so he ends up just playing along. On the film he's something like traditional Disney minor villain, but the manga naturally boosts the character and makes him a bit more likable. Very human man, Kurotowa, in some way. Also a very good aircraft pilot, having flown those crappy Torukmenian corvettes for years.

The main challenges here were the colors. In the film he has a blue cloak and a green suit. I really didn't look for the same colors, but ended up something similar, mostly due to the parts I had available by the time. He ended up having a purple cape and dark green suit, something a bit grandiose as he came from the Royal War School. The green suit had also nice military feel on it. The hair and facial hair became dark tan, to fit with Kushana. The gloves and the trousers (using old smooth car tyres) are black purely due to inventorial reasons.

The torso is five-stud-wide with some added wedge slopes. The odd width was challenging to work with, especially with dark green being a bit rarer color, but 6 studs would have looked too muscular and 4 way too puny. Kuorotwa had to be a bit slimmer than Yupa or Mito, but still more masculine than Kushana or Nausicaä. I also made him a little bit shorter than Kushana (tallest figure on the series). One more tyres on the trousers were a last-second mod before photographing to balance the heights. Yeah, I took some shots with Kushana, but they didn't turn out that good. Didn't manage to find a horizontal bit of our yard (which is rather angled - I take photos outside for better lighting) and Kushana needs some heavy balancing due her heavy cape and dynamic posing. She didn't manage to stand up very much...

But anyway, this was Kurotowa. Glad I picked up those 1x2 dark purple tiles on a LEGO store somewhere in Britain, despite not liking the color that much.

-Eero