Doreen Inverardi

 About two years ago, after North Sea trip that included visits to official brand stores in London and Glasgow, I built a figure named Zinnia Superfuzz; she was a bass player with rad flower-motif dress and tall heeled boots. She was on display inside our kitchen window for more than a year. Recently we got new windows, the old ones being very leaky, and I haven't yet created new display there. But taking Zinnia out of her glass cage made me finally do some tweaks on her, removing two units of lower leg to make the proportions match better. There are some photos on the end of this post.

Making changes to Zinnia made me think about building the whole band. I've made a band before, of course: a real-life one, Circle from Pori, currently on display at the LEGO house in Billund, where it can be observed by the Danes (or at least the company employees). However, those Circle figs were much smaller. On Zinnia I had deliberately aimed for larger figure, just for a change, and it enabled different piece uses than my usual scale, even though it made the head look tad small. That was obviously balanced with the huge hair.

As this was a fictional band, I could choose the instruments freely. I had a bass, a good base for any band to build upon. Actually, when I began building this, I had no clear idea about the instrument, except it was not going to be drums - she can't sit with that skirt! After finishing I ended up givin her a violin, which looks like a side-build from Friends set. I also managed to use Clickits wrist band as the horse-tail hair of the bow! It was based on a tablescap I made several years ago. I also toyed around a idea of synth with elegant stand made of dinosaur tail parts, but that didn't fly.

The dress tablescrap was the de facto starting point. I had it around on my table for many months, serving as a throne for knitted Krtek Pinja made. Its size was perfect for larger scale figure, as the waist hole was 4x4. Everything on it is angled around 19 degrees from the central axis, which made actual connections pretty much impossible; I ended up just bracing it between parts on 3L bar. The Clickits ring tops this bar. It was frustrating to fiddle with, but ended up being sturdy enough! The flowers refer back to Zinnia's dress. I wanted to make the entirety different from her cool black attire though, being bold with warm colours and vibes. I had wanted to make red heeled shoes for a while, and small coral jacket with sporty stripes felt like a nice challenge. It turned out pretty good with my limited coral collection! Pinja suggested pink so I gave her dark pin shirt underneath it. The black rim circles the bare stomach nicely, reflecting the back parts of the dress, as well as the black fingerless gloves. The sparkling ascot - an Elves cape - was a spontaneous addition, but I think it works very well. I'm always happy to use odd minifig cloths on completely different scale MOCs. 

Then there was the hair. As I mentioned before, scale this big with the usual face design needs large hair to balance things out; otherwise it ends up looking like a tomato on a gravestone. On Zinnia I used mass of Hero Factory ammo belts stuffed with flowers. I went with similar route, using rubber wheels. I ended up being around 4 kg of wheels recently (Mostly interesting ones - Power Puller wheels are heavier than you think!) and had been experimenting with them. With the big balloon ones I made hair that was vaguely 80s feel, with large back lock and front bangs. But it was very heavy. The center of weight ended way too far up, and the figure toppled too easily. So I changed into smaller, more elegant tires. I had never had smooth, thin bike tires before, and they are very convinient! At first I positioned them A-shaped, flowing downwards - but with the jacket and the skirt there was too many A:s on top of each other, and the composition looked downcast. To brighed it up, I braced them upwards. It's a very futuristing hairstyle, something like a pumped-up Princess Leia look. Clam ornament with some heart earrings completed it.

-Eero.