MOC: The Warrior of the Shogunate

This is the second samurai from The New Shogunate. At the point I had the first version of bridge done I started to ponder the other warrior, representing the "New" side. How would he differ from the bearded stalwart? I wanted him to be masked, but still use the three-stud-wide model with headlight bricks with the eyes. I also though of just making an unmasker face of a younger man, but that didn't seem interesting. Sure, I could have given him bit of a black moustache and a goatee maybe, but I though that those samurai masks were quite cool, so I give it a few tries. I played around with some white designs with red details. The final version uses some food items, sausages on cheeks and a croissant as the jaw; I really like the shape. The kabuto helm has more aggressive crest with some smaller-scale katanas and crowbars.

The colour scheme for the armor became mostly dark green, as I had nice amount of 1x2 cut-out slopes and 1x3 curved slopes around. They can be seen in big shoulder plates, which created a nice profile. They also made it possible to build somewhat-adaptable plate skirt to achieve stepping pose on the base of the bridge. Like armor skirts always - or any skirts with actual legs underneath - this was challenging. Prototype version used very thin upper legs, but it was impossible to perceive the proportions and physics with them. At early version the skirt was made fixedly posed by sticking 1x1 round plates between the cut-out slopes, but I eventually settled with design that is hinged on the waistline. It's not perfect, as the skirt consists of 5 separate sheets instead of one, flowing plating, but at least it is easy and can be posed differently.

The boots, featuring Japanese divided toes design taken from the first-born samurai, were a late addition (and almost copied from the other samurai here - the pose testing version used regular HF boots), as well as the sashimono banner, with the snake detail that runs through the armor. It can also be seen on the katana scabbard, again rather straight but shape-wise fitting for the blade piece.

Next up some Discworld stuff, and then I do not know what - but I have several projects under way.

-Eero.