Chandra Nalaar

 I play simple casual tabletop MTG almost daily with Pinja and I've made several characters from Magic universe in the past, beginning with Do-It-Yourself Seraph in 2018. Chandra here is the sixth build of this theme, after Sram, Slimefoot, Nissa and the Wanderer. I had had idea of building Chandra at some point since finishing Nissa two years ago, and she finally materialized early summer.

Chandra has quite iconic look with some alterations. She has a suit of armour consisting of chain mail (sometimes scale mail), metal plates and dark red leather bits; I achieved the chain mail with - surprise - chain pieces, that are connected to the back (the back is far from accurate, but I'm not bothered by it). The metal plates are done with CCBS armour add-ons for smooth texture and stability, and the leather bits are usual rounded dark red pieces, this and that; I couldn't resist using "tongue" windscreen part on the skirt loincloth thing. It's not super accurate, but flows well with the rest. As a curiosity, the bust is built in 45 degree angle.

Chandra has some sort of dieselpunk-ish mechanical bits, with a cool tube going from her chest to her back and then to her arm. The chest tube is made with macaroni piece and a short ribbed hose, fitting the metal panels well. The arm tube is just some pneumatic hose; it's not that pretty, but came in fitting lenght and was flexible enough to allow some posing. The lower arm is an astromech droid torso.

Chandra got also two different heads, as I wanted to build both fire-up hair version and a normal one (I'd always like to see more non-burning Chandra art, but the flame head look gorgeous on a model!). The normal version has a mid-lenght hair built with the surprisingly vast array of dark orange curved slopes, and usual black eyes. The fired-up supercharged version consist of many different flame pieces - Speedorz wings, Chima fire wave flame wings, big flames... and several usual trans-(neon)-orange pieces like headlight bricks and boat studs. It looks very nice on natural light, and transparent hair captures something of the happy polychrome of actual human hair! This version also features orange eyes.

I of course wanted to take pair shots with Nissa - with some embarrasing results. I didn't bother to check their scale, and Nissa was just way too big and tall compared to new Chandra! I first gave Chandra three studs of extra lenght on the legs and took couple of dozen of pictures; they looked ridiculous. You simply can't make a person taller just by stretching the legs! During the shoot, I also got irritated by two-year-old structural solutions of Nissa's upper torso, and ended up reworking quite a bit of her, though most of the changes are not obvious. She's still taller than Chandra, but that's ok, Nissa's a green character. There are pictures of her at the end of the post.

-Eero.

Margibi Imber

 

 This character build was made during a long timespan with several parts reworked again and again. The hat is the oldest part (I like exciting hats!), built probably last autumn. It is somewhat inspired by ancient Egyptian headresses (or popularized images of them), using those delicious tipper end pieces with some macaroni tubes. The model was a bust for a long time, with some black flame parts as the original hair; the net hair was designed originally as an optional hairstyle for Doreen Inverandi, but fitted this figure better. The rest of the original bust was scrapped later on (yesterday) because it was too fragile. It had several joints with a zig-zag construction; ambitious but foolish idea!

I didn't have clear idea for the rest of figure originally. I ended up making a sort of cocktail dress (probably?), a modern attire to create an interesting contrast with the archaic hat. It is built around angled tipper end piece, too - the one I experienced with on this New Elementary article a year ago! I'm very happy how it turned out, especially the medium blue ruffle in the middle. The handbag completed this moden feel, with a classic Adventurers printed tile referring back to ancient themes again.

The arms are somewhat experiential; they are bit too fragile for my liking, but I managed to challenge my lack of reddish brown clips with 2x3 tiles with clips - odd and rarely used pieces; Also the elbow has clip-to-bar connection, which looks odd on some angles, but was interesting to pose with. I'd need some 32828 bar with round plates - and I'm already running out of the black ones too! But sometimes it's better to try new things instead of old tricks, even if they are not perfect. I'm happy with Margibi overall.

Eero.