Princess Sapphire

 This is one of those pleasant models that started with playful fiddling of parts and ended up being a neat, original character. Okay, these are some issues, and more of them later, but generally I think it ended up nice. I began with the upper legs, combining the trans-purple vase-dome thi(n)gs with a ice crystal tech dreamed up earlier by Panuvara somewhere. The strongy settled the aesthetics onto something like futuristic fantasy with synthetic, vibrant materials and sparkling style.

I wanted the body shape to be muscular and strong to create a contrast with the flower motifs and lavender touches. The new bunch of leaves piece, from a set I just reviewed for New Elementary, made an unique chest plate; style is here more imporant that realistic protection. A selction of printed a stickered parts had fitting colour, and the trans-blue belt gave extra depth to the colour palette. I didn't have that much of the initial trans-purple to use, but later on trans-blue worked nicely on the bracers.

The various opal (or satin) pieces defined this character and, indirectly, caused a lot of trouble. I had got a good lot of those thin wavy things from Bricklink for cheap and I used them both on the hair and the skirt. There isn't any good ways to connect them in the same colour, so I made a helmet and emulated a way the hair would billow from under it; the effect isn't perfect, but I managed to make the hair considerably bushy by utilising binoculars to maximise the amount of connection points. The strands go sligthly under the shoulder line, which means they occasionally pop off when turning the head; this is the minor problem. The major problem is the skirt. The horribly flimsy connector uses the plume bars in the ends of the sausages (sounds cool, right) to connect into the plume holes in the end of 1x1 round plates with bars. Now this connectin isn't very strong, obviously, but it's not the most problematic bit, no; that's the sausage itself, which allows nice clip connections if the clips are positioned plumb toward the concave or the convex. If the clips are positioned on the side of curve, as indeed they are here, they constantly want to plop into the previously mentioned state. This is because the curve stresses the clips more. Combined with the risky plume hole connection, the skirt is prone to exploding on mere thought and that's not fun. It looks nice though; but probably some other technique would have been better... One strives to make his builds sturdy and pleasant to handle, and in general terms succeedingly, but then such visual details ruin the effect. Hehe.

That's the venting bit. What else? I like the colour contrast of the pearl gold detail and I was happy to use those glorious opal pink fern pieces. They add an upwards curve to the silhouette of the model, making it brisker; this is something I've noted many times. The Gen II Bionicle mask was weird enough to work as a shoulder armour, giving a bit of asymmetry. The boots are decidedly simple to avoid the character becoming too full of stuff, as the torso and the helmet were already quite complex. It took, however, many tried to get the boots right. The final design borrows from an older model of mine, SOAR-SWIFT IV, with sligtly elarged soles to fit the heavier-set balance of Princess Sapphire.

The cape was a late addition. I liked how it underlined the regality of the character, and also the slight asymmetry established with the shoulder armour. It also made possible to use the Prince of Persia dagger as an ornamental brooch, something I've wanted to do for a long time.

-Eero.

Commander Vimes (2)

I read Terry Pratchett's Discworld books again all the time, but only make new models based on then very occasionally; the previous one (as I'm shocked to note) was Windle Poons in 2021. My "latest" models have been new version of classic characters I've built in the past, and so is this; Sam Vimes is probably the most important character of the whole series. It's good to occasionally think, "What would Sam Vimes too about it?".

My old Vimes was from 2015 so that's almost 10 years. He's still intact, as you can see in the last photo. I still like some things in the model; the colour are decent, although I never liked the Dark Bley boots. Chain mail sleeves look plausible enough. And the facial features capture the "old stoneface" (nickname of an ancestor, but also used by Nobby of his commander, too) still very well. So well, actually, that I didn't find any better way to built them; characters without beards are hard. It only works with the cigar, though, otherwise he's whistling. I added posable eyebrows and a neck ball joint to this design, and made a brick-built, somewhat conquistador-like helmet. The head and the helmet were the hardest parts to design; otherwise this was straightforward, enjoyable built.

The main goal on this re-design was to add movement and poseability, in a similar fashion than I did on the most recent Ridcully. The old version had immobile legs and very limited arm movement; this one can almost run. I even added instep joints to the feet, with their sandal-boots inspired by Paul Kidby's art. The leather flaps are jointed as well, to enable leg movement. The arms are standard issues; the most challenging part was to embed the shoulder joints to the mudguards (another trick straight from the old version) without losing movement. 

I added extra flair to the breastplate by angling the wedges into a V-shape, filling the gap with cheese graters and wedge plates. The badge re-uses the axe blade from the old version; I wanted it to be copper (pune or a play of words) and there isn't many options. The connection is more flush than before; 2L bars didn't exist in 2015. The cape is almost identical to the old one but features brass buckles; the sword is a new addition, but I wanted to keep the baton as the main aid.

Now Vimes is again decent enough to commandeer the Watch. I'm still happy with some of the older models: Detritus looks still great, and Nobby & Colon are actually on display at Hervanta Library (although they're now too small compared to Vimes, Colon especially). 

-Eero.