Wario

I chose Wario as the second fighter for my Super Smash Bros. creation and contest entry after finishing Palutena, and the scale was determined by it; Wario's nose would be in level with Palutena's stomach but he would be much wider! Actually my Wario is slightly too small, but hopefully not too much to look wrong. He's quite large character build actually, measuring 15 and 3/5 studs/modules/units wide. I began the building with the lower section of his torso, utilising plenty of SNOT with magenta colour that has became pleasantly common. 3x3x2 quarter-domes helped to capture Wario's round shapes. The legs are fixed things to support the weight; they were connected with magenta 2x2 jumpers at first, the stud into a Technic hole, but I replaced them with red 2x2 tiles with pin for more stability; the red doesn't seem to jump out too much.

Up from these the things got more compicated. Ironically, I had lot less yellow than magenta to work with. I also had to make Wario's thick arms' shoulder joints belivable and wihtout any major gaps - never an easy feat! The solution, that uses yellow cylinder pieces, is not perfect, but at least it something different from what I usually do... there is a ball joint hidden behind it, enabling limited array of movement. The joint is a bit too visible on the back (where the joint looks unfinished anyway, gorrammit); I wish they made the piece, which got updates recently, in more colours.

The neck joint was another bugger. Head tilts in general give plenty of character, so Wario has a double neck joint using Mixel cup-ball limb piece. It doesn't have obviously enough friction for the heavy head, so it had to be supported by the yellow shirt... which leads into some chaotic balancing issues! It's all matter of luck in the end, but I think the posture is fine on these pics. Lot of anger and tears was put into it, I tell you.

The head was... interesting. I haven't build many "caricature" characters with exaggerative facial features. A punk I built for Parts Festival springs into mind, but that was 5 years ago. It was fun though - I got to angle macaroi eyebrows and build eyeballs and teeeeth... The final result is not horribly sturdy, but it's more stable than it looks. I'm particularly happy with the 'stache, made of robot hands, and the boat stud tongue in the dark red canopy mouth.

-Eero.