Hemogoblin

This is Hemogoblin, hauling oxygen from Lugn Town via Aorta Highway. He has a motorcycle, he is helpful and he lives inside you and me.

The theme for the third round of Bio-Cup 2022 was Blood, Sweat and Tears. I was on the blood bracket. The theme called for violence but I wanted to avoid it, as usual. My first idea was a blood feast of well-dressed vampires, but I felt that would have been very hard with Bionicle parts, so I rethought and ended up bouncing ideas around the old pune or a play of words of hemogoblin, the personification of hemoglobin (red blood cells transporting oxygen). Goblins are, in general, always great, and the idea felt original enough, so I went with it. The goblin would be of course red and he needed something to transport the oxygen, so he got a motorbike. A bike felt goblin-y while not being too complex idea; and I had plenty of good motorcycle wheels around.

I began with the goblin's head as it would define the character. My starting point was lovely MTG card Brash Taunter, with its mad pink goblin; it had been on my short list for builds quite a while. I did not aim to copy the Taunter, but it influenced the eyes, nose and ears of the hemogoblin. The rest of him is based with some Mad Max inspiration, with one shoulder pad, very short jacket, big belt buckle and riveted shorts. I think that those bare red CCBS bones in the lower arms have appropriate pattern for a hemogoblin. 

The motorbike was lot more challenging - mostly because I don't know much anything about motorbikes. I've built two big ones in the past, but they were strongly futuristic and "out there". Hemogoblin's bike is closer to real-life adventure-oriented bikes, but gets it own layer of oddness from the coating of Bionicle/CCBS parts and themes and the vague "vein-like" shapes made with dragon neck pieces. Connecting the oxygen cells with these veins felt fitting. There are no real-life counterparts for this bike, my main sources of reference were the numerous Technic motorbikes released along the years. The look of the bike was largely defined by the parts I had available in the chosen colour (Dark Pearl Grey). I'm particularly happy with the combination of parts in the front, and the minifig hockey game stands connecting the front wheel. The colour contrast between the trans-orange wheels and trans-light-blue oxygen cells is pleasant too. 

I also changed my display in the local Hervanta library (Thanks Pinja for help <3) with, among others, the previous Bio-Cup builds and some New Elementary cloth fest characters not published here yet. Some photos of it after all the Hemogoblin photographs.