Avacyn, the Guardian Angel

 

I make Magic the Gathering models on unregular basis. Avacyn is an iconic character and one I've considered every now and then. There are some large challenger on her - foremostly, she's an angel, which means the model should be able to carry two large wings, and the wings should have relatively natural-looking feather pattern - not easy task in any case. Secondly, Avacyn's skin colour is somewhat vague, being between ligh nougat and some sort of grey, depending on the artist. I settled on regular tan though, as grey didn't look good.

I built this model for a small one-day exhibit of Kauhucon (Horror con) in Helsinki. It was located in Richardinkatu Library in the centre, adjacent to some Lars Sonck buildings that I adore (the Korkeavuorenkatu Telephone Exhange is located next door; I have a large framed photograph of it above my screen right now). The event was laid-back and non-profit and had two attendees from our LUG Palikkatakomo, me the chairperson and the vice-chairperson. We did pretty well in the horror quiz, which included naming six Lovecraftian horrors; we got five out of six as they didn't accept Yoggoth (it's a planet and not a moster but I did not remember that at the time). Avacyn stood properly the whole day without topping, so she's pretty well balanced.

 

As a model, this began as a sidetrack of another character aimed for Kauhucon; the bust made of gorilla bigfig arms didn't fit the character but matched Avacyn depictions pretty well. There's a T-bar in the back connecting the upper torso securely to the main torso block, while enabling an slight backwards angle. The hip arch uses an excellent 45 degree trick presented by user named 1992pb in a fascinating New Elementary article on escaping the stud grid. I also utilized the sugar grid technique found in the article on the dark green skirt flowing naturally. I'm very happy with how it turned out; the dark green hexagonal windscreens on the hips really helped to capture the fine line between the bare upper leg and the skirt edge. The wind-swept sense of motion reappears in the hair.

The arms are very simple, with the main innovation being the fingers with inverted barbs (viking horns). They somehow resemble elegant fingers - being slightly too long but not as stubby as ones without the barbs. The legs have some more tricks, as Avacyn has boots with V-shaped opening above the knees plus another pair of inner-boots (or armoured stockings? I wonder which one makes more sense) with arching opening halfway up the upper leg. I used old solar panel pieces on the lower opening and formed the upper edge with some of the recent small Technic panels. The thin edges of these parts enabled natural transition between the colours.

I built the wings after finishing the body and most of the limbs. The connection is extremely simple - the wings are pressed to the back via dense sandwhich of bricks of plates, measuring 3x5. The wings itself have a layer of wedge plates with several hinges to achieve a slight curve forwards; this makes them look more natural, and, importantly, helps to set to point of balance withing the footprint. The simple plate layering is finally covered the with the feathers, utilising a wide range of parts from different systems and decades. They're not identical to any real-world bird wings, but I'm quite happy with the angles of the small and large feathers, working in a relatively natural way.

-Eero.