Draw Your Sword

And Meet Your Fate. The finals are here. My Deinocheirus did make it to the finals, beating Jack's heart-stopping Ai-Ai and Mitch's breathtaking Dragon. The final theme was NOT Unity, Duty & Destiny - fortunately. It is something more fun - FINAL BOSS. Free-form, but steering for the impressive.

There were three roads to take here: First, a well-known final boss from somewhere, aka Bowser; or a something that has the feel of final boss while still being an original character; or a joke on the theme, aka the last foreman in a post-apocalyptic world. I didn't want to build Bowser and I don't play enough games to know well enough anyone else as iconic. And Bionicle-related parts are not very good in building persons in suits. I took the middle road, and decided to build something that the medium is good at: armour. I made a samurai, but enhanced one with extra... arms, magical-mechanical ones. These is a magic arm for... magical attacks to dodge, and grab actions. And swordfighting with four katanas instead of one makes it different from all the mid-bosses and mooks met during the gameplay.

The final model is relatively close to the first small skeches I made for this while being away from my bricks. On the original idea the samurai was floating; I planned to make a stand, or make more arms and have some of them - or the weapons held in them - touching the ground for support. I made some build sketches on these, too, but I wasn't able to make a pole-arm that would have been sturdy enough to support the weigh and still look elegant and plausible. I instead focused on more lighter weapons and just made many of them. The magic arm felt dynamic enough without anything to hold, as it allowed open-handed posing.

This development put the figure's feet back to ground. I designed some plate armour using modern small Technic panels I had bought from "mixed box" on the PaB wall on Lego store in Vienna last september. Using those angled ones as samurai armour (under the round dish here) was my first impression with those parts. But having a normal standing charater supporting two large and heavy extra arms was a structural challenge. However, balancing things is something I like in Lego - I have taken countless one-leg-standing poses on quite heavy figures along the years. The key is balance; when the both sides are equal in momentum, even light structures can support them. And this is very true here: once one of the extra arms is removed, the model becomes saggy like a spaghetti. But with both of them on, it is possible to adjust to stand up beautifully, even without a wide stance. The very tall geta shoes, made of rubber liftarms, help in the posing by providing friction and flexibility.

From the beginning I knew the arms (or the figure, in the floating version) would be connected and supported with big macaroni parts; I have used them only in a couple of builds so far. They allow interesting forms while still having relatively sturdy axle connections. As you can notice, they bend quite a bit ad have small gaps in between, but the hold. It was not entirely easy to find the right positions: I took decent photographs first, but learned from them that neither of the battle arms were distinguishly presented in them. I re-designed a bit and positioned them more widely; you can see the original shots in the end of this post.

The magic arm was relatively straighforward. It was going to be a big arms with some eldritch energy. It felt like a perfect use for the 10 trans-purple CCBS limbs I had gathered along the years. I made it pearl gold to be able to use some interesting parts like Chima ultrabuild armour and eagle wings; and to make it feel special, videogame-like and different enough from the darker colour of the figure. The shoulder joint has rotating double-ball-joint to support the weight but allow adjustments to posing and balance. 

The second arm is weirder, but follows the colour scheme of the magic arms. However, I replaced the trans-purple wiht bit of trans-blue in form of those cool, printed Ninjago spin-tops. The battle arm didn't need to be as eldritch! The arch with smaller arms was here from the beginning, but the golden flame pieces formed a beautiful fan under it; the beam in the middle is the most fragile part of this MOC. The three arms mirror the arms of the figure itself and were designed simultaneously; the upper arms are different, having armour plate on the inside, too, as they're not against any torso; these use the newly recoloured hexagonal plates in pearl gold. The lower arms are very close to the figure but clad in gold. The hands are new designs as they had to bend on the wrist; fragile but agile. They were re-designed for the second version for even more movement.

The head was the last thing I completely designed for this - it has been the case on many of my recent characters. I went with long zipline braids as they felt somehow fitting for the Cup; I hadn't done zipline hair in silver before. I've had the tablescrap of making a ring of ziplines on a DOTS key ring for a couple of years and this was the place for it. I'm especially happy how the braids divide above the face, leaving room for the horns. The kabuto (helmet) has been exploded, with some panels on the back of the head. There's also the third braid of 8 ziplines in the back. 

And now - the final results of the Bio-Cup are up to Woomy, Nu_montag and, of course, the panel of judges. I'm off - this was a nice one. I've got plenty of more projects for August but with looser schelude, as I'll go back to working on my ph.D for a while. Cheers.

-Eero.

And finally, something very very much the same but still so different: some pictures of the version 1.0 that didn't look impressive enough in the photos:

Pessi & Illusia

Not the Pessi & Illusia of course, but something of a similar nature. This is my entry to Summer Joust 2024 category Beast Master, which is about a beast and a master doing their task. Why Summer Joust entry in middle of all the Bio-Cup builds? No worries, I made it to the final round which ends 4th August (in some American time zone) and my build is already in the good shape. This one has been finished for some days - I made Illusia (the fairy) between 2nd and semifinal rounds in two days, and built Pessi (the toad) in a day after finishing Deinocheirus. The basket and the cloudberry stalks were built in the beginning of this current Cup final round. I wanted to make something for Summer Joust this year - I won the subterranean category two years ago - but I also aknowledged that it would be thigh with the Cup going on. Beast Masters is a designated character build category, so I focused on it. This was mostly a laid-back easygoing System play thing between those more challenging Bionicle builds.

A large part of the time used for this category went with the first idea, of which nothing remains in this model; I was going to build a Japanese giant salamander with a samurai, but I really couldn't capture the weird, minimalistic facial features of the damn salamander. This final build, on another hand, was more of a tablescrap fun with the sleeves and Elves Queen dragon head skirt. The wing are from the same dragon, four in total; I've had this fairy wing idea for years (I've bought two of those Queen dragons used locally) and it felt perfect with the head skirt. I also got to use some new Lugbulk parts (white ferns on the shoes) and recent Pick-a-Brick picks (light aqua petals on sleeves and shoes). 

I built the fairy first, leaving open what kind of beast would I make. The size of the animal was quite open, as fairies can vary from few centimeters to half a meter in size. I almost settled at a bumblebee, but I wanted to use some olive green and a toad formed such a nice contrast with the fabulous fairy. Toads are quite expressive creatures as well. I like to think that these two are friends despite their external differences.

The category brief asked for some story on what the beast and the master are doing. Picking berries was an obvious fairy activity; it's also something I do a lot this time of year (for example, one hour ago - my fingers are still purple of blueberries). I built several berries, but concentrated the most on cloudberries which are the most revered berries in the north. They were also a perfect combo with the very weird Belville fairy flower pieces I got from a friend some months ago. Thanks Piko!

-Eero.

Deinocheirus

 

This is my entry to Bio-Cup 2024, semifinals, theme Feeding Strategies - Omnivore. This was the second idea I got for the theme. The first one was literal omnivore, all-eater, a hungry temple-sized demon eating everything, from priests to temple roof to park trees. I even had a punchline: "The sect didn't have enough faith for an omnipotent god, so they had to settle for an omnivorous one." There you go, you can imagine the MOC now. I even built a bit for it, adding some Technic cable holders as teeth to Star Wars Coruscant planet halves for teeth. Then I lost interest. It felt like burdensome task, building the temple and stuff in few days and with focus on Bionicle/Technic pieces. And above all I remembered the golden rule of Bio-Cup: Keep it simple, stupid! No high concept MOCs with million elements in them!

So, I turned back to my childhood. Aged 6 to 12 I was a big dinosaur (and other kinds of prehistorical fauna) enthusiast. One of the dinosaurs that intrigued me the most was Deinocheirus. It was one species of the Late Cretaceous Mongolian area, very rich in incredibly varied fossil finds. In July 1965 Polish paleontologist Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska discovered a pair of over 2-meter-long arms that belonged to a hitherto unknown theropod dinosaur. The genus was given name Deinocheirus, Greek for "Horrible Hand". But the mystery remained. Was it the largest carnivorous dinosaur ever lived? The arms surpassed any known species, yet belonged to a bipedal theropod. Most theropods were known to be meat-eaters.

It took until 2010s when people got more information on Deinocheirus - after an exciting case of fossil robbers and smuggles. Between 1965 and 2012 I was born, got some dinosaur books and was mystified by the case of horrible hands. I drew Deinocheiri (?) and tried to imagine what it would look like. At that time it was suggested that it was an ornithomimosaur, an ostrich-like dinosaur, a hypothesis that still stands today. But such large specied would have needed to eat a lot, and no eating habits was known, for example due to lack of skull. In my books Deinocheirus reached for tree branches with its big arms to eat leaves.

In 2010, more complete skeletons were claimed back from black market to Mongolia. Deinocheirus turned out to be better than I had ever imagined: Big, bulky, with long duck-like bill and tail fan feathers, possibly other feathers too. It looked friendly and was described being a megaomnivore - mostly eating plants but likely some fish and small animals too. Bulky foot toes suggested it was adapted to wetlands, being able to support its weigh on mud. This seems to be logical with the flat, round beak, similar to present day ducks. Actually, many life reconstructions of Deinocheirus look more like ducks than the original duck-billed dinosaurs - the hadrosaurs. There seems to have been a sort of parallel evolution going on.

I missed all of these discoveries as I didn't follow dinosaur discoveries. My interest turned to the history of architecture, I graduated and became making my Ph.D on bank architecture of Tampere. At some point I checked what the scientific community knew of Deinocheirus and was overjoyed. I left Deinocheirus be until I got this Omnivore theme and thought myself into corner with the demon idea. So here we are.

I began with the head as it's the most crucial part on defining a creature. The beak was quite easy (the tongue was the last addition to build though) but the eyes took many tries to get right. They were much larger at first. The colours are partly inspired by a Deinocheirus clip on Prehistoric Planet, narrated by Attenborought himself. I haven't seen the series but now I want to - especially as it features such a perfect duck-like Deinocheirus scratcing itself on a tree (Walking with Dinosaurs was a huge hit when I was a kid, 7 years old I think; I had a big book on it, and the DVD was the first thing we rented when we got a player). I added more bright colours though, as making it all brown wouldn't have been interesting - and there are not that many brown bonko parts...

I used brown on the two parts I built next: The tail with its porcupine-like feathers and the back dome with 14 updated dino tail segments (ironic that I didn't use them on the tail). The tail segments are from my Lugbulk I got last week; the spikes I've collected along the years. Before connecting the tail (and making the limbs) this looked quite a bit like a swimming mallard. The limbs changed it and made it look like a dinosaur. Sleeve feathers are common in many Deinocheirus life restorations and they are known to appear on some theropods, so I added them for colour. Building the stomach gave the creature some needed gravitas, and the tail fan finished the build. I also made a bit of scenery to underline the omnivorous wetland-roaming Deinocheirus hypothesis - and to use the Atlantis crab guy's head and torso and arms on a little, prehistoric crab monster.

We'll see if Deinocheirus allows me to make one Bio-Cup MOC more.

-Eero.

Where the Falling Tears Reach the Sky

 This is my entry for Bio-Cup 2024, round 2, theme Classes - Monk. Now classes here refer to D&D Classes such as rogue, wizard, cleric and so on - not social classes, school classes or anything like that. I liked the theme and I liked monk in particular. Monks are often calm, benevolent and refined, similar to many of my favourite fictional characters.

This round ends tomorrow (in the other side of the globe, so it might be Saturday here already). I was most of this round away from home, so I built this in two days. However, I developed my concept while not able to build, and it changed very little; the only thing I can think of is the more relaxed sitting pose instead of some sort of lotus position. It became quite obvious early on that I was going to build Keetongu; he is my favourite Bionicle character and I've gone with the nick (Pate-)Keetongu in the internet in tha past. In the third Bionicle film Keetongu appears to be some sort of monk, hibernating in a lotus position in a ice pool (?) in a hidden sanctuary known only in legends. I took this idea, the portrait of a mystical beast-man living in a forgotten temple somewhere, waiting patiently the dire hour.

I've built keetongues in the past. Many of them go back to 2007 when I started posting MOCs in Brickshelf. There is an alt-built Keetongu, black keetongu, skinny Keetongu, flying Keetongu, small Keetongu, smaller Keetongu, the first proper Keetongu, the second proper Keetongu, the refurbished second proper Keetongu (already on this blog) and minifigure Keetongu. I picked up the proper Keetongu from my childhood home last week and took it apart for this; but fret not, the third proper Keetongu (different from this one) is already in progress. It shall be out soon on the next lion-themed review article.

Unlike most of my older keetongues this is definitely the Keetongu of Metru Nui (they used the say same on Makuta). I also wanted to take a wilder, more robotic and probably more Bionicle take on Keetongu; my proper ones have tended to be mushroom-shaped and muscular. A week before the round theme was revealed a friend had sent me a Discord gif with the official Keetongu set render among rabbits saying Good Morning or something (true story). I stared it for a while, wondering that the official Keetongu looks pretty weird with it long eye stalk and everything, but cool nonetheless. It inspired me to make this model that tooks the keetongu essence to very different direction from my previous models. Look, I even ditched the hat! I instead wanted to embrace weird piece, feeling more like Neo Shifters of all things. The Skopio dude (Telluris) mask I had managed to find in a Pii Poo event a year ago helped there. What an unusual piece. Elves dragon lower jaw made a nice counterpart to it.

I also made my own version of Keetongu's weird whirligig weapon, turning it into a more ceremonial staff. It uses a piece from my this year's Lugbulk order I got on Monday, the black Potter goggle rim. I ditched the sword, because who the hell cares about it? Miramax certainly didn't.  

However, Keetongu itself was not clear enough for the theme "monk" so I designed my own version of the forgotten shrine he inhabits. Miramax version isn't very interesting and the weird pool would have been difficult to built, so I turned to more classical Mata Nui Online Game aesthetics and bound this to my Bionicle-themed builds of the previous Cup, Harvest Merchants and The Forbidden Ceremony. There's something serious, solemn and mysterious in those Tohunga headpieces, and they helped to form the bionicle-religious atmosphere. Ten candles, recycling the flying buttresses of the Notre-Dame cathedral, complete the scene.

-Eero.