Goblin Raid Gang

This is my entry for Bio-Cup 2025, round 1, theme: Mythic Beasts: Troll/Orc/Goblin. I naturally went for goblins because goblins are the best of them. They're quirky, anarchist, and very much alive. They also never come in ones, so it was obvious from the beginning that I would make several. Two is a pair and have to be coded to compliment each other, whereas three is a gang and the singular goblins can be their own individuals, balanced by the other two. Making three characters was a rather heavy task for round 1, but then again, I knew to be against talented builders (as one round was dropper of to make the overall contest more competitive). Also, these are not very large characters.

I chose dark red as the skin colour early on - I generally dislike green goblins. I first tablescapped the goblin heads. The right one, with a wide nose, heavy jaw and small tusks was the first one. The middle one was easier, it is based on a goblin rogue character I'm playing in DnD, Gug. The left one took most trial and error. I wanted to make a brute with big teeth, and heavy brow with sort of skull armour plate. The problem was they eyes; when they were positioned forwards, the composition was too eagerly intelligent - something like Gollum. Angling the eyes 45 degrees solved the issue and made it look more unhinged.

After making the heads, I continued with the brute goblin - Brrag the Smasher - as I had a clear vision with him. I made heavy, scaled knees with plant pieces, expanded HF torso armour with ninjago spinner blades and built a heavy-set silhouette with wide shoulders. The Gen 2 skeleton warrior armour add-on piece is challenging to use, but its aesthetics worked very well here. I built the mace only after finishing all the goblins; I'm happy with how dangerous it looks.

 

I then continued to the triangular goblin head, based on my DnD character. I used a Vidiyo strap to make a collar, as certain streetwear quality fits goblins. This was going to be Van-Gug the Raidboss. The printed shield part from ninjago gave it some prestige, and the beautiful speckle-black copper pauldrons from KK2 helped with this confident feel without making it too polished. The limbs were difficult in this scale, as I wanted to use some constraction parts. Nevertheless, I'm quite happy with the minig armour as bare lower arms. The flag piece from Fantasy Era castle helped with the goblin feel.

 The final goblin was going to be more serious. The head was inspired by Japanese Tengu, so I gave him a Japanese-inspired armour: Kargas the Stalwart. I have a decent bunch of Uruk-Hai swords, and the made a nice pair of pauldrons. To be honest, I was running out of ideas for armour! The red-printed chest plate from Skull Grinder helped here, having the right aesthetic and colour. I was also able to use marbled Kalmah armour shells, which felt fitting for the theme, but were difficult to use due to their heavy connection points. Wide hat helped to create a distinct silhouette, as I didn't want to use a standard kabuto helmet. It also shades the face nicely.

 That's all for now. I have plenty of finished and photographed models, but being generally busy has kept me from posting them. Happy midsummer for all.

-Eero. 

Baku

It's summer again and that means Bio-Cup! The contest is made one round shorter and more competetive this year. It remains to be seen if I'll hang around until the final round this year. My goal is to make myself do some additional nice builds that I wouldn't otherwise do; and use some of these special pieces I've gained since the last year.

 

The theme for this year's prelims is dreams. This was my first idea for it - the Japanese folklore tapir that eats nightmares. When doing my background work I found out (in Wikipedia) that the creature is called Baku and the term also refers to Malayan tapir in Japanese. I also found out that this seems to be due a French misinterpretation of Chinese term Mo that means great panda (which westerners weren't aware of at the time) and mythical chimera Mo that is depicted on having rhino and elephant parts, thus looking like tapir. The French thus assumed that the panda would actually be an tapir; and it is possible that Japanese Baku is also a tapir because it's based on the chimera Mo that was thought to be the animal tapir and... this is something like a fever dream. Check Mo on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mo_(Chinese_zoology) 

 

 It was new to me that Baku is a mostly benevolent being - that's something I like. Especially as tapirs are friendly to start with. Nonetheless, Baku is a creature of night, so I made it somehow demonic (but not in a very serious way). It was also more amusing to build while looking slightly demonic! I began with the eyes (though the tire rims were later addition) and soon continued to the mouth (munching nightmares), snout and the cool mane. I'm very happy with the mane!

 

I wanted to have the colours of Malayan tapir, so this creature has a white "diaper". It's a lot harder to build white Bionicle mass, mostly due to limits in available parts, but also because the mechanical details look so severe on white - all the shadows are visible, and it's harder to build flowing shapes. Nevertheless, it turned out decent - only it isn't very visible in the main photos.