Undis

This is another model from late Summer, an archer woman inspired by nomad cultures and art of Lyndis character from Fire Emblem Heroes; it seems to be sort of special version of character with all sort of interesting bric-a-brac on her vibrantly coloured costume. Lyn herself is familiar to me as an Assist Trophy character from Super Smash Bros. Brawl, where she delivers one-hit-KO blade swings to unlucky enemies. But the inspiration here was the Heroes sprite with bow - some colours and details are drawn from it, some things are turned more realistic, though the overall historical accuracy might be runny.

I like bright colours in MOCs, and even though is sometimes create something monochrome black of overall greyish, I try usually try to avoid it. LEGO's current colour palette is quite excellent; my well-known favourites are dark red and sand green, former which appears here as a secondary colour, but among others medium azure (check), olive green (check), bright light orange alias keetorange (check) and dark blue (check) are beautiful and inspiring. Especially medium azure feels both modernly snazzy but still fitting for historical garments. Colours and shapes created with them were the main sort of base point of this build, and the process was pleasant.

I began with the upper torso. Female archers use an asymmetrical breast armour as a rule, and the shape of this one, with a wing piece (one of my favourites, as you might have noticed) representing a garment consisting of small, layered metal plates. There is also a single shoulder armour, a pre-made KK2 piece, forming the armour set-up. This detail is taken from the aforementioned Lyndis art.

I'm rather happy with the coat details, dark red lining and a sort belt, with a sword scabbard and a arrow quiver connected naturally with Indiana Jones' whips. Lyndis' coat or dress had a long slit showing the side of the legs, but made the coat closed for realism, protection, warmth and utility. It also saved me from building trousers, which is nice. Embroidered pattern of flowers and sectors circles around the hem; I like details like that, and absence of them in modern men's clothing is sad. The patterns are also seen on the soft belt and boot rims.

There is a plate swivel hinge in the lower torso. It creates a slightly distracting triangular inset, but I think it's worth it in terms of dynamic posing and slight angle of the dark red lining. It also made the structure inside the coat a lot more complicated, but in the end the model turned out to be pleasantly sturdy.

The boots are quite ordinary. Dark bley sockets bug me a bit, but they're better than the light bley ones (the balls on the other ends are hidden behind the curved slopes and tiles); TLG should finally give them in other colours, that'd be good. The toe area is based on styles developed with Radiant-Extert and Grata of Kontrabontempi. The sleeves are asymmetrical, with armour on other. The posing is made possible with bit of "cheating" on the elbow joint: It's ordinary T-bar joint in both, but the right arm uses new-ish 1x1 brick modified with studs on two adjacent sides, while the left arm elbow has older 1x1 brick modified with studs on two opposite sides. Archery poses are challenging, and even with tricks like this the hand doesn't reach a cheek, which would be ideal for taking aim. A pleasant little detail on the arms are the sleeve-ends, 2x2 round petal pieces, which are unfortunately unique in medium azure and which I should get more of because they're splendid.

The head is million-times-used minifig-hands-on-curved-slope-as-eyes variant but it fits if you as me. The first version of hair was more fantasy-esque, with long white ponytail, but it didn't work structurally and didn't feel right aesthetics-wise. So I went with mundane black bun, using an old space wheel, an old trick seen before. A bright light orange 2x2 dish used as a hair band brings a bit of colour to it. Getting the shape right was challenging, especially on the forehead, but in the end it turned out good.

The bow is not completely realistic, as the string can't go straight: It's too long compared to the bow, but the posing of the arms deemed it. Construction itself is simple, dinosaur tails and TECHNIC bits, with ordinary LEGO string tied to ends and adjusted in length by reeling it around the pins. The arrow is a rigid hose with spike on the other end and feathers, connected with a bit of pneumatic hose, on the other.

Next up, a mushroom.

-Eero.      

Albus Dumbledore

Harry Potter or the Magical World seems to be everywhere now, with LEGO's revenant theme and the new collectible minifigure series. This is alright, Harry Potter is cool. I've read the books plenty of times, they're well-written, lively, imaginative and full of good characters. The movies, in other hand, have never been important to me; I've seen them once per film and don't remember most of them, and try to remember the rest for sake of my book visions. I saw the Fantastic Beasts film just couple of months ago, and didn't like it that much; but that's not a big deal, I can always read the books. They're suberbly well translated into Finnish, too.

This is not my first Harry Potter themed build; the first was Arthur Weasley Arrives At His Workplace In Ministry Of Magic Via Floo Network, built for Iron Builder against Jonas Kramm. Arthur is such a great character. And so is Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. He is well-rounded, flawed but spledid, and most dear to me when he's bit mad and whimsical and lovable; talking about having a scar of perfect London underground map in his left knee, offereing citrus mints and liking knitting patterns. This is Dumbledore as I see him, mostly based on description on the very beginning of Philosopher's Stone.

I began with the head, as usual. I had tried to built Dumbledore before, but it turned out to be The Lecturer of Recent Runes, a wizard from Unseen University, Ankh-Morpork, Discworld. On that build, I already tried to make Dumbledore's famous half-moon-spectacles. I used minifig handscuffs and cheese slopes, but they didn't look good; this time I settled with trans-clear 1x2 plates sticking from under the eye headlight bricks with 1x1 tile on top of them. They aren't crescent-shaped, but I like how they cover the lower side of the eyehole, as Dumbledore gives one of his stellar looks over them.

Dumbledore also has his nose, broken on at least two places, at least once by his brother Aberforth (Aberforth is cool). I tried to achieve it by using a tooth piece on the end of it, and I'm happy with the result. Dumbledore has, naturally, his beard, that is long enough for him to stick under the belt. In contrast to Hans Langseth's scruffy beard made of plates, Dumbledore's facial hair consists of curved slopes. The moustche uses two Wedge 3x4 Open with Cutouts and 4 studs pieces. Those are cool parts, as they have the bow shape with both concave and convex side. I've used them as a bodice, knee armour and window frame, to mention a few. As they're rather big pieces, large part of them is hidden behind the beard, in the structure of the neck. The 1x4 bow pieces that form the upper front part of the robe are connected directly to them.

The robe uses different shades of purple. The main part is medium lavender, that fits Dumbledore's character and is quite common colour these days with Friends and Elves (except that Elves got chancelled. What a same, it had so cool parts). The hem, as well as the slightly but pleasantly curved lapels (not sure about this word), are old 90s purple, which is cool and energetic. The little what is visible of the waistcoat is medium blue, nice, mundane colour too, and the trousers are dark purple. I don't like dark purple very much, but I had some 2x2x3 convex slopes in it, and the darked shade works well where it is. The boots are tall and heeled as they should be. The arms are quite boring and almost identical to ones of another Discworld wizard, Chair of Indefinite Studies. White sleeves are something like a bitter compromise, but I had no ideas with my purple-shaded pieces.

Dumbledore has a traditional wizard's pointed hat. I don't know if Rowling descibes Albus's hat but I think hat like that fits any wizard. The brim is purple 8x8 tile/plate, and as it's flat as anything, it just saws the top of the head away. It looks surpsingly natural, to my opinion; as the stud above the eyebrow plate is visible, they look a bit bushier. The cone of the hat is made of what was available in fitting colours.

I also built Dumbledore's phoenix Fawkes, named after famous British terrorist. The most curious part of Fawkes is the head, which is a parrot. This is actually an ancient stoled technique from 2007 or so when I see someone using brown parrot piece as a eagle's head. I though it was Barney Main but I couldn't find the creation on his Brickshelf (prehistoric!) so I'm not sure. I think it's a wee bit funny, a complete bird as a bird head.





As a side update, cats have overtaken my build space. I moved to a new apartment with Pinja and the cats Takku and Elsku-Maumau week ago. My building layout it slightly better than before, and I have more space for the creations too. Things are, in all, good.

-Eero.