Baroness Ruby

This moden began as a innocent counterpart of Princess Sapphire. The model was successful with its use of transparent colours, trans-purple and trans-blue. I wanted to make something similar with other colours and investigated my inventories of trans-yellow, trans-green and trans-red. My trans-yellow collection was smaller than I remembered, and trans-green was concentrated on a couple of part types in large quantities. Trans-red didn't fare much better, but at least I had enough basic parts in it for background support uses. 

The bloody yet regal trans-red directed towards more dramatic and even gothic feel that the bright, magical sword and sorcery style of Princess Sapphire. It took a turn to a military-esque anime vibe, an uniform with golden buttons. And the process was a far less straightforward. This creation standed headless on my desk for weeks, and many parts once established had to change.

What remained of the orginal proposals are the windscreens on the upper legs, the macaroni tube belt, and the loincloth thing with the printed gold bits. All iterations had golden buttons, but their position changed and changed. The arms remained relatively identical thorought the process; only the single pauldron was a late addition. The feet parts were nailed at the first go - they have a surprisingly complicated structure.

The first active phase ended with the establishing of the Technic figure helmet breastplate with its golden ornaments. This was followed by a few-week hiatus with growing dissatisfaction; the legs were too thing and unfocused, all the heads looked too large. I began and even finished some projects during the time between, until deciding that I have to finish this or it'll end up standing headless on my tabel for years. I re-made the legs I wasn't happy with and added the cape. It's actually Chirrut's (Salta Pinnar's) skirt. Capes helped me to define characters twice recently, with Princess Sapphire but also with Tahu last year. It worked here, too. I'm particularly happy with the golden adornments that help to pull it down. It was a shoulder cape, so I applied the single pauldron on the other side. I also ended up with a striking, asymmetrically coloured hairstyle. Only when almost finished I realised that it'll probably remind some people of the dog-eating Disney villain. I've seen barely any Disney films, so it was not obvious to me; I'm not kidding. I was thinkin a bit of Finnish popular musician Vesta who has (or had at some point) similarily dyed hair.

The sword and the scabbard were the last additions. I wanted to include a blade to mirror Princess Sapphire, and had planned to build one using a sole 1x6 inverter curved slope in trans-red. Howerver, the style deemed more finesse, and I settled with a more elegant fencing sword.

-Eero.

PS: Check my freshly published article on the recent Notre-Dame de Paris set on New Elementary.