Esmaralda, Aegis of Emeralds

Hey ho, my semester has ended now and everything left is my diploma work, technical equivalent of Pro Gradu, that makes me an architect SAFA in May if everything goes well. Until then, creations; this is Esmaralda, an emerald mage, who was built during several small sessions during this autumn. It's also the first creation to use pieces from this year's LUGBULK: White T-bars and some inverted curved slopes on the back of the head.

Idea behind here was to use beautiful trans-green colour on wild attire with dark tan skin and white details. Dark tan isn't the easiest colour to work with, as it's still somewhat limited colour (especially when it comes to joints), but I wanted to give it a try for sake of challenge. The end result ended up looking something from Mardi Gras carneval. The seed part was 4x4 double wedge plate in trans-green, which I got bunch of cheap from local BL store; in addition to the skirt and hair ornament they form magical shield as seen in some photos. Their transparenty forms quite interesting patterns, and transparent green things - like bottle glass - tends to be beautiful.

The constructions of the torso is quite unique, as it was clearly based on options the parts palette was offering; most of my patent solutions weren't available. I'm glad that I managed to use trans-green 2463 3x3x2 quarter facet brick part from 1992 on the chest; I've had one around for years, and it's not the most versatile part ever! The neck connection offered plenty of challenges; the aforementioned facet brick has solid stud, and as it's not rounded, nothing can be connected behind it as it's on 45 degree angle. My solution uses 1x2 round brick and 1x1 plate with vertical clip and is decently sturdy, if not the most elegant. The headlight brick that connects the shoulder T-bar is connected both with antistud on the back (to macaroni brick) and stud on top; I've noticed that double connection like this is required to make the model plesant to handle, without arms falling off all the time. Hooray for 40-years-old Headlight!

Positioning the skirt was another though bit, as those wedge plates connected with mostly hidden mixel joint plates took plenty of tries to align; also their connection on the back had to be sturdy enough. I'm happy with the infill of the gaps though, and the legs - quite uninteresting basic affair with 1x2 plate with pin hole working as the kneecaps - have satisfactory range of motion. The hair formed itself during a remote lecture; I'm quite happy with it. Ears and earrings seem to add surprisingly lot of character to well, a character.

-Eero.

Work of Ponder

 This was the my contest entry for my LUG Palikkatakomo's late summer contest "favourite hobby". It was in miniland scale with fixed 16x32 area. Maybe due to there requirements, there weren't many entries (less than 10) but the quality was very good. I didn't receive any prizes (I was 4th) but it was fun, unusual build, made during one sunday evening.

It's me, building, or at least thinking about building. I've build myself earlier, on bigger scale, but here I am in miniland scale, but with some additional details like glasses and beard. Well, the head looks bit messy, to be honest; maybe I should have stuck with basic miniland block head. Overall, here's view on my building corner, with walls removed. I've got two tables, with one set of drawers and a printed underneath; some more drawers, one seen here as a cross section, showing trans-clear mass of ziplock bags inside; a tree for our cats, and the cats themeselves: Elsku-Maumau sleeping on the tree, Ukuli hiding in her box with the round hole, and Takku moping on the carpet. 

The most amusing part of this was building the small version of my MOCs and projects. You might recognize few of them including models of Speeder Bike Race on the drawer. But there's also at least three unfinished projects here, and yes, they include the big white building.  I't pretty much in realistic scale, even though I had to omit most of the windows. Overall I'm very happy with the chaotic feel the wealth of elements gives to this scene. It's realistic; my work area tends to look like this, filled with projects and finished builds that don't have room made for them on the shelves yet!

The most "technical" part of this build is the chair, using some droid arms and 1x1 round tiles with bar to make the wheels. A bar runs through it, connecting it to jumper plate on the floor, passing on my weight to the base. The light blue 4x4 round plate depicts knitted... round thing Pinja made for it; our cats have been enthustically destroying the faux leather coating of it! Not visible in the MOC is the window, which is horribly badly insulated, making my hands freeze for example just now.

-Eero. 

Björk

 Hi all. I've been bit quiet during the autumn. No special reason here, I'm doing just fine. The semester is all right, but heavily writing-based; that might be why I've been less eager to write the blog. Is's no problem, I like writing on architecture, I don't miss huge information modeling workloads at all. I've been building on quite usual frequency; there's four unpublished character model and a WIP of large architectural project of 64x96 studs; it's possible in theory to get that one finished before the end of the year, but I won't promise anything. And by the way, I got my LUGBULK week ago, so the possibilities are, again, unlimited.

This MOC is bit of a special occassion. It takes us back to Spring 2019. It is a comission work, design of model and instructions of it, depicting Icelandic musician Björk who you're probably familiar with. I like Björk (we have few CDs bought mostly from record fairs (and Björk CDs are around the most interesting things to be found in record fairs, well, them and Mieskuoro Huutajat CD)) so the comission was a pleasant one. It was to be a gift, so I didn't post it immendiately, not to spoil the secret accidently. So the model might be a bit outdated; I've used some tricks of it on MOCs published earlier. 

What we've got here is Björk in her swan dress, seen on the red carpet of Academy Awards in 2001. The dress, designed by Macedonian designer Marjan Pejoski, resembles some usual ballet tutu on first glance, but actually has the swan's neck working as the shoulder strap, and the head, sporting black and orange bill, rests on the right breast. The dress also included an egg It's weird an whimsical design. I like it.

The fluff of ruffs on the hem was done with number of 2x2 round plates and leaf pieces, angled with several joints. The stomach piece is made with wedge plates layered with cheese slopes, while the neck is angled with round 1x2 plates. The swan's head was one of the first times I used 1x1 brackets, now more common. Discreet piece going round the back is made with dark tan to make it visible against the tan skin; I'm very happy with this contrast. The limbs are quite usual, though it's always a bit challenging to make then monocrome; but as far as compromises go, this doesn't look too bad. Again, ideas used here have been recycled and cultivated on newer models. The hair looks a bit messy, but to be honest, it's quite true to the source material. Worth mentioning are the heels, made of Technic figure flippers. Their connection is wonderfully strong, and the side profile nicely thin. They look funny on the front and back views, as the flipper is (obviously) wide. That isn't purely negative, though, as they make balancing the model lot easier! Looking back it now, I feel I should have made it simpler, but that wouldn't have captured the essence of the original.

That's it for now. I've been trying to photograph some finished models for couple of days, but November is just too dark. Better luck tomorrow. I've got one shot model too, made for a contest month of two ago; I'll try to get it out next week.  There's two weeks to go until Christmas holiday; after it, the diploma work and graduation.

-Eero.

Jörn

 I'm back again. Posting the Speeder Bike Contest builds was bit exhausting in such intensive phase so I had a break on writing this blog. I've been building though, making mostly big new modular, but there's some unpublished character builds too: This is Jörn, built during the summer. He's my character in Dungeons and Dragons campaign Auronia I've been participating with some friends since April probably, remotely naturally. We're currently on scenario 12, I think. 

Jörn is loxodon ("Norsulainen") ranger. Loxodons, humanoid elephants, originate from Magic the Gathering (rather familiar to me) but are an official DnD race; in Magic multiverse, they live in Mirrodin, Ravnica and Tarkir. Jörn in obviously inspired by Tarkir's mammoth-like Temur loxodons, particularly Woolly Loxodon and Avalanche Tusker. It fitted well with ranger class, which I felt easy to relate with, being lived most of my life in middle of a forest and still occassionally hiking, picking berries and so on. As such Jörn is easy character to play with. The name derives from Swedish-speaking Finnish politician and cultural multi-tasker Jörn Donner; Jörn felt onomatopoeically fitting for a mammoth man, while the skandinavian origin (as opposed to fenno-ugrian) helped to form sort of "popular nordic" imaginaries. 

Jörn would be bulky, a bit huncbacked and very very hairy. I had made some drawings (in the end of this post) before making the build. On the model I began with basically ordinary mammoth's head, where the most complicate bits were the position of the tusks. The eyes are deep under heavy brown and/or hair, ephasizing the attitude of the character. The head is connected with a ball joint. The only bit of clothing is the cape, essential to any ranger (ranger comes with scale or leather mail, but loxodon's thick skin had better armour class, so Jörn sold it). Dark green was the best option, working nicely with warm tones of the hair. Old dragon wings are used to form the tightened cape over the chest, other parts if it are made with usual wedges and cockpits. 

 The hairy bulk of Jörn is made with proudly studded, somewhat randomized dark orange and redddish brown plates. The hairs on the stomach hang especially free, making the almost naked (natural) mammoth man quite decent for urban adventures. The hip joint hides behind the hairs, while the arm ball joints are bit more visible for required range of motion. The fingers use modified plates for hairy appearance; they're nothing like mammoth toes, but I wanted them to be big and long, almost alien. The feet are essentially stompy mammoth feet, using half-barrels. 

As a ranger, Jörn is bit of a pack horse; carrying weights is no problem for him. He's armed with unnamed and usual spear, mace and longbow. The two latter ones can be stored on the back with quiver full of arrows, dark red bedroll and sand red backpack. I think these complemented the colours beautifully, with flower pattern of the bedroll adding bit of traditional handicrafts on Jörn's practical and rugged appearance. It also made is possible to use the 2x4x4 round panel in sand red - beautiful colour but bit tricky piece!

-Eero