MOC: Toa Ruki

Toa Ruki is a semi-important Klaanon character, but she hasn't appeared in the story lately, because she got imprisoned on the Nazorak Empire's battleship SS Ironwing in 2011 or something and has been in captive even since. She is a Toa of Water with little or no battle experience, as she has trained to use her elemental powers for healing purposes; A classic fantasy class healer clerk chick here. She used to work as the reception of Bio-Klaani before the roaches but her behind the bars. Now you know that.

I've build Ruki before, in 2011. The MOC wasn't perfect, of course, but it was quite good back then. The upper leg design used here have been in continual use ever since, last used in Mace-Bearer. The old Ruki remained built for years and outlived most my creations, until I got tired of it few months ago. The shaping was just outdated and odd. So started to mod and build an entirely new torso using LUGBULKed Space Kitty tails to create wave-like shapes similar to movie version of Hahli.

The torso came out pretty nicely, and I left the rest of the MOC unchanged, photographed it and show it to some other Klaanon writers. I got some honest and essential feedback: The old legs were way too thick for the new torso, making the proportions very odd, and I myself highly disliked the old arms. I left Ruki standing (lying) on my WIP table until today. I worked the whole morning/midday on this, remaking the limbs entirely and redoing most of the already reworked torso. I also gave Ruki a little writing pad as she's the reception worked who likes well-done paperwork.

Technical details? The shoe design is altered from Japanese builder TAN, used on several of my creations. The lower legs are purely SYSTEM now (except for ball joints) as the old design was too thick. The Kiina armor skirt was always there, but I buffed it up with two more pieces (bricklinked a few, I like those a lot). The black battle droid fingers are not the best option, but I still haven't got any dark blue or blue ones and black skeletons arms are still quite rare. That's it, pretty much.

-Eero

  

MOC: Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson

 Yeah, back in the Discworld again! Now it's time for an Anhk-Morpork City Watch character, Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson, a man raised by dwarves and the first voluntary recruit in the Night Watch. Carrot is six-feet-six-inch tall and his dwarvish name is Kzad-bhat, The Head-banger. He's honest, good-natured and honourable, despite the city's best effort.

Building Carrot began shortly after a LUG event taking place in Imatra three weeks ago. I got some flat silver 1x4 double curved slopes, which were perfect for Carrot's chestplate; He always keeps it shiny and clean, that decent he is. Commander Vimes's armor was dark bluish grey, as he prefect a bit old and beaten uniform, so flat silver on Carrot achieved a nice contrast between the two characters.

I also gave Carrot a dark red cape to make him look brighter and more heroic (mind you, Vimes can be pretty heroic too). Other reason might be that I had already used all my reddish brown 12x4 wedges.

Carrot doesn't have sleeves, as the visibility of his muscular arms is often mentioned in the books. He is also described wearing sandals (whereas Vimes wears second-hand boots) but I settled with the open-toe boots established by artist Paul Kidby. They are similar to Vimes's, if a bit richer in color. The leather skirt is almost the same, if a bit longer.

Carrot's head isn't the most interesting one I've build as he's clearly clean-shaven. But he needed an encouraging smile, so I had to meddle with some SNOT. I've used 1x3 arch as a smiling mouth before in Bofur, but back then I could hide the connections behind the moustache. This one was a bit trickier but worked out alright.

Carrot also has his "kingly" sword, that is only a plain and very sharp piece of metal; It's ultimately non-magical, which is odd, because the magical background radiation in the Discworld makes almost everything at least somewhat magical.

-Eero

MOC: Mace-bearer

Sorry for inactivity during these couple of months. I've been working, but don't get that wrong - I've also built a lot! I have been working on modular buildings for our LUG show at Model Expo 2016 in April. I have five buildings to do, three of them are mosty done, and then there's an additinal stand-alone house for a contest. It's somewhat refreshing to work on minifig scale, but don't worry, I've had time for some character builds too... Here's the first, though there's another, completely different one coming soon.

Who is this? No idea! But the idea was to build a muscular warrior with a spiked mace, using dark green with those glorious speckle-black copper KK2 armor pieces. I think this is a female character, being of the same "theme" than builds like Cyira the Paladin and Annya. But I though that hell, no need to underscore the gender this time: Let's make this somewhat realistic costume to wear when swingin around a spiked mace. This decision was done when I plugged those armor pieces to lower legs. Otherwise the legs are my (boring) old type 1 female legs back from 2011 or something like that. Of course there's the long hair, but men can be have long hair too (Hippes, for example, and heavy-guvs. And cavemen). The hair's almost like a mane here, but it adds nice dynamics to the build, right?

The head overall was the challenging part. I liked the use that awesome KK2 mask part (Was is Karzon? Or was Karzon the yellow dragon fellow? Don't remember them KK2 guvs). The first version has also one of those shoulder/knee armor parts as a helmet (I have five) but it didn't fly... It was hard to connect properly and didn't really look good. It also had more samurai-like horns that weren't that good neither. These parts feel off eventually. For long this version had the bat-cross thing stolen from Moko's ancient minifigs on the forehead, but it was moved into the dramatic-looking brazier; sometimes simpler's the better.

This was a fast build. I made the legs in tomorrow morning and 90 per cent of the rest in couple of hours the same evening. This was finished today, though it was much slower progress than on yesterday. But around six hours, I'd say, on a model that is based on nothing. Pretty good.

-Eero