MOC: Mito

 Hello folks and sorry for some inactivity recently. I have been travelling far and wide. My civilian service (alternative for almost-obligatory military service in Finland) ended two weeks ago, and I had a week-long trip with three friends in Th Great Britain (four nights in London, three nights in Scotland (Edinburgh, Glasgow, ROY frigging BRIDGE, BritRail passes, three LEGO stores, six Pratchett books, Jamaican take-away and sitting inna pub). That was great. I bought two big and one small PaB cups, the Steampunk Mixels (they are a jolly lot) and a set of build-your-own minifigures. 

Now I'm idle. No job, no income, no worries. I have still some money from my civil service salaries, so I can cope without problems. I didn't really have a summer holiday, so I'll just concentrate on art project and stuff for a while, and try to get into a university when it's possible. Today included ceramic sculpting, raspberry picking and photographing some MOCs, as you can notice.

Yes, the creation. This is Mito, the sergeant-of-arms (according to Internet; Finnish translation doesn't tell his rank and addresses him only as one of the castle granddads) of the Valley of the Wind on Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaä manga (and the film too, though this is based on the comic, as the rest of my Nausicaä figures). Mito's one of the main supporting characters on the manga, appearing on every issue, usually piloting Valley's destructive and ancient gunship and aiding Nausicaä and Yupa on their missions. He's loyal and down-to-earth type character with a remarkable moustache - all signs of traditional miyazakian supporting character! He also has an eye-patch, which is a cool plus.

This MOC was built in two parts, before and after my trip. The first part (Head and torso, mostly) was rather chaotic, as my godfather/uncle was visiting us and his 5-year-old son (my cousin, that is) was super exited of my bricks, Star Wars and Ninjago especially. That is alright to me, the minifigs are made to be played with and I don't have that much use to my old SW stuff, and I'd loved to had an AFOL cousin when I was at that age.  But of course it's a bit challenging the concentrate on figure building in the middle of all that enthusiasm and hype...

I finished the build after the trip. It didn't took that much time. The gloves were bit challenging, as well as the head's slight tilt. The color scheme wasn't that easy neither. Miyazaki's manga in in black and white, and I didn't want to use the movie as a reference material, as Kushana's color scheme differs vastly between the formats, for example. I tried sand blue and other combinations of greys and browns, and ended with this one. The brown was good for the gloves and the trousers because my inventories, and I didn't want to make the torso dark tan as it would have looked to much like Yupa.

This is the last of Nausicaä figures for some while; I have other stuff to post, though I might return to this subject later. I also bough recently Art of Laputa book from Amazon, so I might be making some other Miyazaki stuff soon. But before that, some group shots:

-Eero