MOC: Cohen the Barbarian

Gheng, Gheng, Ghenghiz Cohen! Merry Christmas to everyone. It is the Christmas evening and I'll continue my "tradition " of posting a typical old bearded man MOC. This one isn't very jolly though, and definitely not giving any presents. Actually he'll possibly steal everything he can. He's robbed thousands of temples, burial sites and tabernacles, stealing numerous gems, virgins and other pieces of treasure. In other words, he's a hero, in the old sense; After all, he fight monsters, crazy monks and so on... He's Cohen the Barbarian, aka Ghengiz Cohen, also known as Emperor of Agatea, aged ninety-something, He's Discworld's most (in)famous barbarian hero and leads his Silver Horde.

 Cohen has been important character in three Discworld books, including the second one (Light Fantastic), Interesting times and awesome Discworld fable book The Last Hero illustrated by Paul Kidby; That one I can recommend to anybody. My creation is strongly based on its cover art, as you can see.

Building Cohen had been on my to-do list for some time; I though building old bandy-legged man in little bits of fur and leather would be challenging. Many techniques used on Dwarves and previous Discworld characters wouldn't have worked here, and I leaned lot on Boat Stud On TECHNIC Hole connections; It's one of my favorites. I Bricklinked 100 tan boat studs (one of my favorite parts) and around 20 tan TECHNIC connectors for this.

Building was relatively fast and straight-forward. The body and the limbs didn't offer very big challenges; Even the bandy legs came out nicely, even though it deemed some balancing with the cape and sword.

The head was the most challenging part and the last part I built. This is odd, because my bearded characters almost always start with the beard, then the head and then the body; legs last. Not here! Making Cohen look angry and old, very old, was hard. I pressed hid eyes deep into his skull and made a very powerful brow; Cohen isn't very pretty. The eyepatch was a bit tricky too; I was going to use black rubber band, but almost every one of them had dried and broken during the past years! So I just took one of those cord pieces, plucked the stud end on the eyepatch and stuck the bar end behind the ear. 

Cohen also needed a little base to stand correctly, as the lower legs are pin-connected and can spin freely. I made just some snow, for the season and to be true to the book cover. But in all, Cohen's surprisingly sturdy.

And yes, again, happy Christmas to everyone, or merry, whatever. We got snow! Though it's going to melt again tomorrow, but at least that's something! I threw some snowballs to my sisters head and everything; hooray!

I'll probably be back before 2016!

If not, happy new year!

-Eero