MOC: Sergeant Colon & Corporal Nobbs

 Back to the Discworld! Here's two characters that appear in large number of Sir Terry Pratchett's books, the experienced and badly educated watchmen Sergeant Frederick Colon and Corporal Cecil Wormsborough St. John "Nobby" Nobbs. They were part of the "original" Night Watch in the first Watch series books with Captain (later Commander) Sam Vimes and Lance-constable (Later Captain) Carrot.

Nobby is a petty thief, slimy, dirty and smelly, and always has a sad cigarette with him. He's often mistook as a pet monkey or similar, but hold a species certificate signed by Lord Vetinari that states he is an actual human. He's interested in dangerous weaponary and has gone through several identity crises and currently dates a goblin lady.

Colon is old, fat and married; His wife is never seen, as they work on opposite shifts. He is believed to have children, but they are never met, neither. Colon was about to get retired in Feet of Clay but decided to stay in the force. He's a solid jailer, can read the streets and knows all sorts of people, but lacks courage, intelligence and adaptability. He hasn't got real officer material (as seen in The Fifth Elephant where he's temporarily promoted into a captain) but is used to tutor new watchmen, watchwomen, watchdwarves and so on.

With my Discworld characters, building Nobby and Colon would have been obligatory at some point, so I went for them. Nobby was first. I begun with the head, which was quite easy. The torso was harder, as Nobby's a small man and regular techniques couldn't be applied. There's some TECHNIC in there to enable bad posture and thin neck. Notice the stale City Watch badge where metallic copper finish has party worn out.

Nobbs' limbs are also rather different. His arms are thin, as he strongly lacks muscles (pun not intended); old arm joints helped there. The bad posture continues to the legs, where those odd turret pieces I adore are used on the boots. Nobby's footwear are different than on the rest of my Watch builds, as he's described having a pair of big heavy boots useful on kicking helpless victims.

I didn't want to post Nobby without his partner so I built Colon shortly after finishing him. Colon began with his muscular Roman-style chestplate worn over his big stomach. I'm very happy how it turned our. Several of my favorite pieces like boat studs and curved slopes are used here. I'm also happy with the legs. The boot design is similar to Vimes' and Carrot's, but is wider and thicker. Legs on human figures are somehow harder than expected, giving that they usually are just couple of pillars under the torso. But they're not very interesting and therefore not very fun to build.

It took a while to give accessories to these guys. Nobby's halberd was originally on Colon, who was described preferring polearms to keep enemies out of reach. But it felt too war-like to him, so I switched to Nobby who was holding a bell at the time with a baton on his belt; I swapped the bell to the belt and baton to Colon and polearm to Nobby (who loves dangerous objects like Klatchian fire engines, morningstars etc.) and moved bit of the polearm's lenght to the baton to make them look balanced to the characters. I also gave Sarge a doughnut, which felt fitting for the character.

-Eero