MOC: Guechex

 Guechex is a character from Klaanon. It has been a while since the last Klaanon post on this blog. Actually, this MOC has been built for a while, but I didn't manage to post it until now.

Guechex is one of the Zyglaks of the Island of Bio-Klaani, though they don't naturally call it that; They think it was their island that the Matorans invaded. Guechex is a freedom fighter, huntsman and a field leader; but in Matoran perspective, he's probably a terrorist. You might notice where his name derives from.

Zyglak was originally a decent combiner model of three Barraki sets, Takadox, Kalmah and Pridak. I naturally took some parts of the official form, but made up a lot too. From descriptions and discussions with the creator of the character I got few things; He's bulky, red-black, sky-blue-eyed, had probably some tribal decoration and somewhat lumpy "nose". The rest I made up. The shapes are more practical and life-like than in the combiner model.

I began with the head that I actually completed few months ago. I wanted to use several feather- or scale-like pieces to create an aerodynamic and scavenger-like head; The nose is very bald and the lower jaw is full of odd teeth. Marabou stork was a source is inspiration here. The eyes were white viking horns at first, but were changed to medium azure 1x2 tile to maintain correct colouring. Guechex also has an important black sideburns.

I also tried some printed pattern here. I'm very happy with the uses of 4x4 wedge slopes with Crab Crusher prints; Fire Lord's lava-printed HF shells are probably not as succesfull, but I like the color they bring to the MOC.

Interesting bit in building a Zyglak character was the balance between dinosaur-like monster and a humanoid. My first version was too reptile-like, and I ended up adding mass to the upper body and broadening the shoulders. The necklace hopefully emphasizes the sapient feel here; There's some bones and fish skins constructed of bar-clips.

Photographing this wasn't easy, as it was hard to fit into the studion, but I managed to pull some cool poses. The light was another problem; The red bits that look alright in real life tended to overexpose, and I had to done them down with my antique photoshop CS2 quite a bit. But it should look OK now.

Next up dwarf stuff or hell, probably even a Brickfilm!

-Eero