Doreen Inverardi Revisited

 Some creations are easier than others. I've made some great ones on a few-hour storm of inspiration, clearing challenges from victory to victory. And some are painful, with all too much breaking to pieces and absence of motivation. The original Doreen Inverardi was one of those. I had got that dress tablescrap on my table for months, and awfully wanted finally to use it somewhere. It was a mistake, though not a dramatic one. It was heavy and negated any leg posing; and with that short coral jacket the character was just a combo of sloppy ///\\\ shapes, looking a bit like sad spruce. It had certain nice ecentricity on it, but never met the quality of other builds on this "rock'n'roll" scale of musician figures.

I still had it on display for a year, and even on one exhibit, despite never pleasing me. And in the end it felt silly, pulling this model like a sled full of rocks. The solution was easy. I just picked up the good thing in it and redesigned the rest. It was a pleasant process of two evenings and now I like it a lot!

I had actually redesigned the legs slightly earlier, so I mostly left them as they were. The hige skirt was abandoned altogether. I liked the coral jacket of the original, with its fake Adidas stripes, but its sloppy position was not good; and it had potential for more. I enhanced it, making it bigger - like a tailcoat or a morning coat, but with sport apparel aesthetics! It fitted the feel of the character with its plastron. The shirt underneath was re-designed completely, in black and with heart buttons to fit the weird-classy aesthetics. I wanted to keep the bright light orange of the skirt and used this colour on a new one; the heart trim was the last one built for this character.

I replaced the gloves with simplier white ones that fitted the aesthetics better. I kept the wild hair as it was, only replacing the Technic connectors inside the tyres with some trans-light-blue tubes. This was done mostly because the connectors tended to fall off. I also changed the colours of the violin. It made the whole composition less busy and little more classy; I think this was acceptable, as the coat and the hair are so wild! And so Doreen Inverardi turned into a model I could be proud of, a full member of the imaginary band of character builds!

- Eero.

Bea on the Beach

 This was my third and last MOC for New Elementary's Cloth Festival. It actually bends the theme a bit, as the pieces in limelight are not textiles but "Plastic" according to their Bricklink taxonomy. However, the Plastic category pieces behave similarly to cloth parts, so including them felt appropriate. There is a cloth piece here too, the blanket - but it's not connected to anything.

As Suon Suncaller was clearly a winter-themed character, I wanted to make a very summery person for balance. It called for a beach setting, and the sail parts (the set has only one) from 41317 Sunshine Catamaran were perfect for that. They're used as a beach skirt, and combining two sails in different position results a nice swirly star-like pattern in the middle. The sail parts again defined the colour of the MOC, though I dropped the white in favour of more bright colour: Medium azure, magenta and trans-yellow for the hair.

As the sail parts are large, 23 x 26, the MOC is larger than the two previous Cloth Fest characters; I call this scale rock'n'roll scale. This is the first time I've built bare legs in this scale, and there is an interesting bit of mould variation utilised here. The ankles use 1x2x3 slopes in tan with hollow, open studs, so a bar with small ball joint can go through, making a clean ankle joint with Mixel ball socket. This can be only done with the oldest (and least common) version of this part, but it's relatively stable.

The hair is made of stacked 1x2 plates, a technique I've used many times. I think the transparent plastic with the stud pattern has some tincture and variation akin to real hair. One must be careful with this technique, though - Bea had originally trans-blue earrings, and the gave the hair unpleasant green tint! The hair is topped with a big magenta hat, as hats are cool and they create nice posing options!

 In addition to the clothes, I packed in the MOC some extra beach gear; a box of picnic, a refreshing drick, beach-almost-ball, an ice cream cone (must-have!) and a crab. The crab is a reference to those crab collabs cool people do. The crab befriends Bea in the end.

-Eero.

Rinka Padmavati

 Rinka Padmavati was the second character I built for New Elementary's Cloth Festival. She was based on an Activity Request set 10279 Volkswagen T2 Camper Van which I got the the fest but ended up reviewing, too. The set has a large orange cloth part, made of soft material and used in the pop-up roof of the van. Additionally it was eight curtain pieces, four mirrored pairs; a combination of two totally different cloth part types. I began this character with the little curtains, first composing a skirt but abandoning it in favour of epaulettes. The rest of the build developed a military uniform look, including Belville saddle-topped boots, in regal combination of white, dark red and pearl gold.

I had no idea of the orange cloth use, but I believe the turban was the first thing I had a crack at. the part is soft and folds pleasantly, so it was an empty canvas, tabula rasa. I simply folded it into a turba and, as it didn't have connection points on the right places, sandwiched it with some magnets. The tail is put through some curved slopes in the back. There is a big gold Zamor sphere adorning it, as the connection point of the magned snugly fits into the moulding hole of the sphere! Magic.

I general I'm very happy with the simple shapes of this character, and the colours look so nice against the blue backdrop. 

-Eero.

Suon Suncaller

 This was my first character for New Elementary's Cloth Festival. The fest was a brainchild of Áron Gerencsér, who's currently a set designer (congrats!). He had idea of a series of articles about various cloth parts, from pirate ship sails to KK2 capes. I was of course in and up to make some character with cloth part clothes. The series is two article, first one by Áron about history of cloth parts + his MOCs and my article about cloth part connections and my MOCs. Suon Suncaller was built in last November, I think, for the article; I had got a donation of one classic teepee part some years ago and wanted to use it! It's from controversial Western theme, but the quality of the part is top notch even after all there 25 years.

I aimed for vibes inspired by norther indigenous peoples but I didn't want too anything too close to real-life counterparts. The main idea was thet the clothes should feel warm and convenient, with mundane detailing. The teepee part defined the colours, white, black, and dark red, with bit of red for details. I'm particularly happy with the windscreen collar and plastic tire boot furs.  

Hair is one of the funniest things to built, and a cool way to emphasize the character traits of a build. I've used rubber Bionicle tentacles from 2007 once before as hair, many years ago, but never these black ones despite owning six. I think their free silhouette works well with the simple winter garment. She's also got a sunstaff, symbolising the first sunrise after the long dark dayless winter, and a lantern to guide the ways.

-Eero.