MOC: Cielan

Iron Builder has been over for almost a month now and I'm slowly recovering. Well, honestly, I've been rather busy still, with all the Tampere May Day fun (9 hour long board game marathon on local club Telakka, receiving the Teekkari caps, dipping into the ice-cold river - you know), LUG exhibit on Model Expo and last of this year's school work. But these are over now and I'm on holidays.

Jonas Kramm beat me on IB, but it was a fair fight - congratulations to him and thanks for the judges and Chairman Guy. I will return. But for now I'll enjoy freedom of building without the god-forbidden Dublo grass block. This creation here is rather traditional one, and an another good example of idea developing during the process.

Cielan here is a spirit or a goddess of skies; something like the Four Seasons project I had a couple of years ago. The idea began with four elements -based parts I got from Elves sets (which I got from LUG activities). So one of the main objectives behind this creation was to utilize as many cool parts as possible. The final result become diverse, to say the least, but Iäm quite happy with it.

The dress was the first thing I built. It's high fantasy -esque with golden details and armour platings; more serious part of the build. I wanted to have long sleeves with ruffed cuffs; the first version was bulkier and used 3x3x3 cones, but I went with this more elegant version. The hip details survived unchanged from the beginning, but the upper torso was remade few times to achieve more feminine shape. Most of the dress was built before IB.

After IB I returned to the project and it somehow took completely new rails. The legs were a complete mystery to me; I though either bare tan legs or white stockings but they felt a bit dull (and I was short on white boat studs) so I went with something more radical; partly cloudy sky pattern with some seriously high heels. I wanted to use those cool blended wing pieces from Chima Ultrabuild sets and they seemed to fit in, something like old winged sandals but more striking.

I had had those vahki-light rainbows around for couple of years and had never used them on anything, so with this air-themed character it seemed to be around time. They were short wings at first, but as I didn't have any ideas for the hair, they turned into one long flock and with them and the boots the creation became a lot snazzier, almost like glam pop or Eurovision song contest esque. It felt silly, but not in bad way, so I went with it. I also constructed the headdress, again more high fantasy-like, with golden eagle wings bought from Bricks&Pieces; They fit nicely with that golden HF armour add-on part. The headress also helped to hide the ugly intersections of the transparent hair, thus emphasizing the rainbow flocks.

To enhance the sky theme, she balances the sun and a stormcloud on her hands. The sun, which design is stolen from Barney Main, was recycled from IB creation Very Old Friends.

Next up, I don't know what. I have one triumphant creation from Model Expo photographed, but it might be a bit hard to present. I'm also currently in Joensuu, will have an eight-day trip to Central Europe (Vienna, Ljubljana, Prague) from 18th May onwards and then I'll move to a new apartment, but as I'm holiday, I might be able to post something. I'll try.

-Eero.