The Milky Way / Speed of Light

This MOC was inspired by 21333 Vincent van Gogh - The Starry Night set and built for an article about it on New Elementary. As you can read in it, is lovely set, likely my favourite ever - yes, even passing the nostalgia factor of childhood memories. I kept it build for a couple of months and then took it apart to build a MOC; I like to include a MOC on my New Elementary articles. For the first time ever I was solemn to do so. Maybe some day when I have a bigger home I'll rebuild it and hang it into a wall. It has a connector for that.

This MOC combines the 3D painting aspect with my usual character building. The colours are vital here, as the original set is an beautiful example of premium colour use on a model. This build uses mostly the same array of colours. I balanced the blues and yellows differently by adding the reflection of the moon to the water; the original Starry Night doesn't have any water in the landscape, but I think it fitted well, turning the village into a lakeside town. There's also the last (or first) shine of the daylight behind the fells on the background. In general, I think the scenery was inspired by some town in Northern Finland, with fells and a lake near by (there is always a lake). It was not deliberate to move the scene from The Netherlands to Finland, but then again, why not.

Most of the Starry Night set is plates, and I wanted to utilise there blue-hued plates to build an usually constructed figure in a dress. It is inspired by geysirs, the huge blasts of water rising from the ground due to geothermal activity. This made the figure relative simple, though there is plenty of SNOT inside! The figure is connected to the "painting" with two mixel ball joints, as those allow easy but very stable 90 degree grid changes, and are easy to include in a plate construction. I'm rather happy with the figure's hair.

There is also another human figure, also build mostly of plates, but mostly in two dimensions - a sort of link between the dress figure and the painting. She is the Milky Way, though I think the Finnish term Linnunrata  - The Route of Bird - captures the essence better. This figure also breaks the rectangular shape of the backdrop (which is mostly recycled from the set), creating a tension between the human-sized, town-sized and the galaxy-sized.

-Eero.

AI Admiral

This is another collab model. The idea was to give an AI Looking Glass V1.4. some pictures and MOCs to generate an " average MOC designed by X" and then actually build it according to the image. I used similar photos of similar character builds to make coherent images, then picked the most interesting one. Here are some examples on the Looking Glass images:

Trust me, I didn't add here the most disturbing ones. I picked the one that was dubbed as The Admiral by Djok. It seemed to have a coherent consept, simple colour scheme and a pose with attitude:

As I perceived it, the character had a sort of half-trench coat, with tight trouser and sort of armour on another leg. There was definitely a high hat to compleate the uniform, some epaulettes and a red sleeve muff to warm the hands on windy decks. The color scheme was nice, lot of dark blue with some red and pearl gold. I began with the shoes, using a Hero Factory foot as a frame. The armour uses CCBS; the Chima pawn club attachs nicely to the CCBS shell! 

The next part was the coat, shaping the coattail and the bust with the insignia. The arms were the hardest part, as the angle had to be tigher than 90 degrees to be natural. The first version used the smallest CCBS shells with ball joints, but had too muech gaps. I solved it with SYSTEM. I finished the coat with a high collar to make the uniform look warm yet regal.

I added a sheathed sword, as it fitted the navy theme. The long straight object by the coattail leg on the AI image could be perceived as such. The hat was hard. I wanted to use those Chima Ultrabuild axe blades, but thei connection - merely an axle - is hard to connect on a free angle. I used a pull-out pin, which made the hat quite long; I wish they made axle hole/pin parts two-module long. I think it looks fine in the end. The earmuffs use stickered gear mechanism 2x2 round plates from Ninjago, which I fortunately had two of. They fit the dieselpunk aesthetics decently.