MOC: Reverend Frantic

 

First period of 2018 is now over and it's time to post a brand new build, a spiritual gentleman called Reverend Frantic. He was born in two building sessions, first taking place in early January and latter in mid February, before extremely busy deadline week before this skiing holiday a.k.a test week. But here he is now, man of faith and force. Notice the new backdrop cardboards; it was about time...

This build began with the chest that uses two red bigfig arms as a pectoral. Somehow 17th-16th century styled, albeit heavily fantasied, costume grew around it. It began with the collar thing with cross on it; I wanted to play around some odd Inquisition themes here. It seemed fitting with the red, black and white colours. I wanted the coat have simple, strong lines and dynamical shape. Black Pearl sail felt natural choice for coattails, and snake heads and printed Heroica tile added some occult to the entirety. Don't know if it clashed with Christian theme here but I don't mind, it's supposed to be a bit ridiculous. I mean, that is a circular saw hat; the whole thing began to feel too fashionable, even tasteful, at some point... So I had to add the hat, and funny beard. I always enjoy building a funny beard. This wasn't going to have one at first, as Mr. Frantic was being Mrs. Frantic at first, but then again the chest muscles looked quite manly and I gave him a beard. This sometimes happens. Concepts develop.

As some details, I'd like you to note over-knee boots with interesting, hmm, what ever it is called, profile or something on the upper part, utilizing that odd CCBS shell. Trousers and legs are usually quite hard, as they have to be sturdy, posable and graceful at the same time. They use boat stud joints, and even the toe parts have some shaping involving those fantastic pieces. They are surprisingly mobile legs, but long black coattails hide almost all of them for they are black too. A bit shame, but at least it makes the white area of trousers pop up nicely. These pictures seem to show only one upper leg at a time, though.

Reverend Frantic also has a book. I felt he needed some accessory, but blessing-of-god shotgun or giant cross-shaped hammers seemed somewhat dull. So many character builds have weapons, and it get bit uninteresting. Okay, circular saw hat, but hey, it's a fancy headgear. I like headgear. So he has a book, maybe it's the Bible or Vampire Hunting For Dummies* or something. It was put together in two minutes before photographing after four-hour-long presenting session of small public building, forest nature center, around sunset in late February. More of that later, maybe. But the pictures turned out quite good.

The name is contortion on former Finnish doom metal band Reverend Bizarre, by the way. Got one 12' split single of their, with excellent Rättö&Lehtisalo track on side B.

-Eero. 

 

*You know what happens to a vampire with a stake stuck through its heart? Same than to anything else.

MOC: Victorious Tiyan

 This character build was a comission work. She is Tiyan Jolkai, a spirited Saayequtai girl from Laura Luotola's book Suoja - Kaupungit ja paluu (The Sphere - The Cities and Return). The creation is based mostly on the book description, with some inspiration from Päivi Hakanen's cover art. Tiyan is here in her rizikesh battle match gear, with the truncheons and light but practical clothes, with muted colours suitable for lower and lesser city-level Kándu.

I began the build with the head, which is somewhat unusual. The character was described having a long, outwards-pointing nose, brown spots on the face and green hair. Inserting the hinge piece nose into the "stylized mark three female" head deemed lot of pedantic SNOT to every direction, but turned out pretty good. The hair took pretty much every kind of small dark green pieces I had around, but I think the angled bangs on the forehead give it the needed elegance. The hair was shorter at first, but I later realized that the ponytail disappearing behind the back gave the creation some depth.

Torso and upper legs came out pleasantly streamlined without losing the mobility. I've always found trousers challenging, and this was not an exception, but inverted 4x6 wedge slopes worked surprisingly well with 2x2 brick modified with ball sockets, and the four-stud-wide hip joint made the connection almost seamless. The almost organic feel of the textiles, a scarf tied over the breasts, is captured with very excessive use of curved slopes; I like them very much, it's good to have plenty of them around. Some of them are angled with plate hinges, again covering some of the shoulder joint without devastating the mobility. The curved slopes continue to the sides and the back. I'm very happy with the little detail of Tiyan's scarf being tuck under the belt and continuing over the trousers.

The arms are based on ideas used on Kuohu, but with ball sockets on the shoulder; good mobility seemed natural to martial arts -using character. Tiyan has also leather wrist bands, which helped to hide some construction bits. Again, curved slopes are used to achieve look of muscles on the upper arms. Hands are basic design, while the batons are slightly modified from those I've been using from City Watch characters from Discworld books. Plain lower legs are again adapted from design used on Lingeán, but with 1x1 1/4 circle tiles bringing some elegance. The boots are short not to slow down the user with their weight, and rather thin-soled to retain agility. The joints are sturdy enough to support one-leg poses.

-Eero