Kami of the Five Elements

This is built for Bio-Cup 2022, second (third if you cound the preliminary) round with theme "five". Now I again didn't have the whole 12 days available, so I started working on this very soon; I also think I opened the round! Five is not really easy number; for example, three is very common element in stories, and six is integral to Bionicle. Led Zeppelin stopped their number-albums on (unnamed) four! However, Japanese Buddhist tradition has five elements - earth, water, fire, wind and void. This turned out interesting base point; I haven't been a stranger to Japanese themes in my builds before.

The main idea was to have a person conforting these elements in some way. The first sketch had simple the figure, with some small element incarnations howering around them, on a transparent cable. I began with the figure, starting the the feet, with two-toe sock design, and moving gradually upwards. I'm very happy with the armour skirt, based on a net piece; and the chest plate using Technic grapples. The character is very Bionicle- and Technic-heavy in sake of the Bio-Cup - I hope this is visible to the judges. Technically it differs a lot from my other Samurai builds of the recent years. It was mostly a pleasant, refreshing experience to build in this way. Many of the details are connected with ball joints.

 

 

Eventually I realised that the cable would not support them; at this point the cherry tree jumped in. I had plenty of black CCBS shelle and bones, and wanted to make an organic, flowing tree with them. The elements were originally growing on the trees (with earth on a root sticking from the ground). I made a somewhat finished tree with this idea, but decided to abandon it. There were two reasons. First, there was too much weight on the tree, and it bent down very often, wrecking everything. Secondly, it looked silly. The tree didn't flow with the lower brances. 

At that point, I had already built the Gorintō stone monument (cube for earth; sphere for water; pyramid for fire; half-sphere for wind; and onion for void) and decided to built a similar sole manifestation of these elements, a kami hovering under the tree, being found by the samurai. I consructed it mostly by putting together and blending the individual manifestation of the "christmas tree ornament" version. And bugger those old flame chains are pain to work with! No wonder the updated the mold about 13 years ago...

-Eero.