Reactorback Strider

 This is my entry to Bio-Cup 2024's first round, with the theme of energy - nuclear. Only a couple of days before the reveal of the theme I had wondered how to use some of large wheel/hub pieces I have around; my prelim entry used the coolest of them, the wholly metallic silver 90s concept hubs. This uses large F1 hubs with the Harley-Davidson hubs (from New Elementary's 2019 Parts Festival) to make the two large nuclear reactors on the construct's back. In general terms, this stayed quite similar to the initial concept. I imagines a two-legged machine striding over a landscape, a nuclear reactor hanging on its back. In the end, I doubled the reactors and turned them pointing slightly backwards - in my three small sketches, made in a train during a day trip to Helsinki it was angled frontwards like a rugsack on a hunchback's back. 

For a large part, I let the spontaneous process to define the character of the machine. I wanted to use plenty of those CCBS add-ons with a bar; a rare model of Batman's motorcycle spiked their price in Bricklink several years ago, and since then I've picked them up whenever possible. I don't know if the're worth anything now, but at least they're fun pieces. The neck took several tries, but worked in the entry. While designing it I also smashed a Breakout launcher with HF body shell and complemented it with small red eyes (2L bar with ring) to create a head reminding of metallic horse's skull. It made the machine more ominous - a walking nuclear danger. There are some elements akin to the aesthetics of the dieselpunk board game Scythe.

Initially, I had envisaged the scenery to be a rolling greel British countryside, which indeed has nuclear power plants. It's something I've picked from Sir Terry Pratchett's autobiographical writings. However, the steel horse-turkey demon didn't fit this setting. I turned into the other nuclear aesthetics, somewhat depressing Late-Soviet landscape. Actually, this landscape could be anywhere in Finland and is not alien to me at all: snow, bare trees in lines between the sleeping fields, and concrete housing block (straight from Hervanta!). The winter landscape also helped to make this stand out from the most typical sci-fi atmospheres. Only the convoy of miniltary vehicles and the tiny red flag establish the Cold War atmosphere. And a gigantic nuclear walker... I'm especially fond of the military convoy on a winding road under the machine. It tells a story without revealing too much. These soldiers are on the same side with the machnine, probably but can the control it? Are there humans in it? Is it from this world? What would they do if it chosed to step on that housing block?