Steampunk Burghers Barf!

 Here's the third and last steampunk figbarf for this instance. These people are more or less regular citizens of Victorian era towns.

 Miss Ambrelyn Sundison is a daughter of a rich and overprotective father and that's why she has to wear a steel armour inside her corset... Or at least that's what she says! But some who know more than the others claim that she's no human at all, but a ultra-tech clockwork robot on an undercover mission...

 Baron Frederick Von Fraadbrick is the old master of Von Fraadbrick manor. He's the foreman of a mighty family and spends most of his time on the gentleman activities - Fox hunting (On homing bomb-pigeons), Bear Polo (With gas-powered clubs and flaming ball), rowing (his aids row, of course, while he stands on the bow in a heroic pose) and so on. But he always prefers fiddling with top hats over everything else, of course.

 Miss Michelle Pearlbury is a fine lady and the head of The Care Foundation for Victims of Explosive Boiler Accidents. She is one that would be called a good person, but of course the most think that she is only promoting his own interests... But she doesn't care, not when there are unstable boilers around!

Barbara Nardon works as an alchemist in one of the city's shady garrets. But she's not mad, uncommunicative and explosive. She's well-educated and ready to bring a liberal and fresh touch to her sector. Barbara combines old lore and chemical formulas to create new substances from exotic jewels to handy engine oils.

Mark "Gingerbeard" Haystett lost his leg in the Third Europe-Wide War and has made his living as a famous war novelist. His books describe the war experiences of the sons of Britain in a human and warm way without losing the sense of realism. The leg wasn't the only thing he lost in war - All of his friends died when the Belgian Air Defence dropped one of British Airships. Nowadays Mark's beloved pipe is his best and only friend.


-Pate-keetongu

Spectacular Steam Heroes!

 Ladies and gentlemen! Here's another barf straight from the boiler! These are more adventurous sort, definitely a pack to survive from different situations!

Mr. Aaron Birmingbeef is a stylished and modern huntsman. Urban areas are his speciality and he hunts everything that lurks around the block - rabbits, foxes, sewer crocodiles, dock seals, gulls and rats. Mr. Birmingbeef is not afraid of getting his hands dirty. The most important thing is that the ladies of England have nothing to worry about!

Mathias P. Hotkins is a renegade and full-time adventurer. He definitely doesn't have taken a bath in a few years, and the barber is not one of his trustees, but his enormous moustache, straightforward attitude and exploding sense of "humour" attract women in a very, very odd and twisted way. Or at least he thinks so.  

Miss Emily Barber is the chief of home security squad and has brought quite a few crooks behind the bars. She wield a powerful air shotgun with a climbing harpoon. Emily isn't afraid of grazes and scrapes, and does everything to keep her mother's tea pot collection safe,

Alan Granter is a well-known mechanic and inventor. He knows engines, pipes, boilers and fireboxes. Granter's father was a suspended monorail engineer, and his mother was a self-made aircraft inventor. Alan got his first tools when he was three, so he absolutely has the skill needed to be a revolutionary technician!

Norah Allison doesn't like the Industrial Revolution. He wants to protect trees from becoming firewood, stop factories from pumping gas to the atmosphere and save endangered frog species from new suburban areas. And she's ready to use hard means with her duties. Woodcutters should definitely wear helmets when she's around, but Norah is so good at lurking in the forests that she might be hard to notice before it's too late...


-Pate-keetongu

Steampunk figbarf: Arctic Explorers!

The new Movie Minifigure series is out, as well as the new 2014 January releases. I bought a handful of figs alongside with the escape glider set, and here you can see the consequence - a barf of Steampunk figs! And this won't be the last one. This time the Victorian adventure takes place around the cold waters and glaciers of the North Pole, so don't forget to dress up properly!

Bratislav Tupsaar is a huntsman and tracker from the Far-Siberia. He's been hired by businessman Bob Rikoff to stop the British explorers from discovering the underwater coal beds on the bottom of Arctic Ocean. Tupsaar knows how to live in extremely chilly environment, so he's just the right choice to the job! But poor Bratislav don't know that his master wouldn't allow Mother Russia to have the energy resources neither...

 The British Empire needs the coal to run its numerous steam engines, but Half-British and half-Russian businessman Bob Rikoff is planning to set up a business and a monopoly of the northern coal resources! Bob gained his status among the lords of economy with his diamond mines, but his senses say that the industrial development is a lot faster way to the real fortune and glory.

 Elena Rikoff is Bob Rikoff's daughter, but not so fond of his father's plans. She has studied economical science in the Bufferburg University for Talented Women and is now part of the expedition of the northern sea regions. Yet no one knows which side she will choose - The British Empire's, Mother Russia's or his Father's?

 Mr. John-David Matson is a geographer and an adventurer, one of the trustees of his country. He's eager to discover the new northern lands and new, undiscovered tribes and peoples. Matson doesn't care much about the coal resources and don't see why the "bad guys" want to disturb their work for the science and knowledge.

Miss Monica Rutherd is an athletic and fit scientist from The Great Britain. She uses the expedition to north as an excuse to have good time with her rocket skis and stylish winter sport outfits. But she's a smart woman, and secures Matson's back when he's too busy with outcrops, lichen or samojedis.

WIP: Aikapoika - Time Boy

Here's a little sneak peek of one of many projects - An action figure of a steampunkish time traveler Aikapoika who is sort of an alter ego of myself:

The head is a rather SNOTty build with scuba helmets as a goggles, which looks rather good for me. The scale is a big bigger than in my dwarf figures (stay tuned for Nori and Gloin when my BL order arrives) and the rest will be built using a similar Bionicle/SYSTEM fusion style than in Samus etc. More of it later.

-Pate-keetongu

Some archive stuff

I was doing a sort of Christmas time cleaning on my computer, deleting useless big raw images and such, when I stubled over some MOC pictures which I never edited or published. Here's some, as there weren't really any good-quality photos of Qwena (original version). So nothing new really, but decided to show them anyway. There won't be any new uploads for a week now as I'm off to have some good time with friends and board games and such. See you later!

-Pate-keetongu

MOC: Father Zeeron

 No, he's not Father Christmas despite the date. He doesn't eat ham or turkey or gingerbread or whatever people use to stuff into their mouths during the Christmas season. No, this old Matoran guy who lives in a tree in the deep Lehu-Forest only eats mushrooms. A lot of mushrooms. A lot of mushrooms that no one seems to care about.

But Zeeron's not a complete madman, even though he mutters to himself and reads other people's thoughts all the time. He's an ancient telepathic cleric, one of those who know the religion and lore of Athism by heart.

This MOC is sort of a revamp or mod, but then in other hand it is not. I have mentioned the Klaanon project few times in this blog. It is a bionicle-ish story written by group of Finnish old sort-of bionicle fans. It's a huge thing and I can't really explain it here, but some of my bionicle MOCs hopefully give some bits about the project.

The character Zeeron is not created by me, but it is actually based on one anonymous MOC by me:  the Athist Monk. The character turned out to be rather interesting and likable, so I decided to revamp the MOC to make it feel more the guy appearing in the story.

The tweaks are mostly basic stuff - filling the caps on the torso, making the arms more poseable with some fingers, adding some interesting eyes (taps they are) and updating the accessories, giving him a rotten wooden stick and a mushroom; the mushroom is important.

-Pate-keetongu

Post Scriptum: Merry Christmas!

MOC: Zero Suit Samus

 Video games are a big thing on the Internet, and two of most popular creations on this blog are based on video games: Big Daddy and Power Suit Samus. But I can't say I'm a heavy class gamer, no no. I have some history and some quite good achievements with Game Boy Micro and I have beaten Super Mario Land in something like half a hour, and I still enjoy great Super Smash Bros. Brawl matches with my friends, but the truth is that I'm not an video game maniac.

But still here's a rather big and time-consuming MOC of a video game character, Samus Aran in her Zero suit. The reason for this build was not, believe or not, "Popular character brings lot of views". I have played Samus on Brawl quite a lot, and if you have "AFOL MIND" that makes you wonder how to build things around you, you might know what happened: Play, ponder, think techniques and tricks, build it. Pretty much same thing than on Power Suit Samus and the Daddy. I have barely played any Metroid games and never Bioshock (though I have many friends who love both of these) but there just happens to be a wacky spin-off multiplayer stuff that I stumble upon from time to time. Brawl is awesome, and while I'm not very familiar with Sony characters, smashing stuff with Big Daddy in PSASBR (what a terrible "word") is quite cool work too.

The design here is not the Brawl one, though. It is more like the Other M suit with those (probably impractical?) heels. This figure worked as a reference, though I made some changes on the color scheme (because the lack of parts in some colors) and proportions, making the length of the arms more accurate. The torso is a bit longer on my MOC too, though it is in a bit odd posing on that statue.

The shoes were the first part built, as usually, though I reworked them a few times during the building. The legs came out rather painlessly with a lot of black placeholder parts (made an order on Finnish Bricklink store Lapasen Palikka later) but the torso was the real problem. Not the lower torso, I was easy. The upper torso. Hard shaping there. I pondered for a long time if I use Nuva shoulders or not. They are quite mundane, and sometimes look too big, but there isn't really alternatives in blue and the allowed me to put the pink marking on the left breast. The upper torso is still a bit wonky and is only connected via a half of a pin, but I think it looks good enough. The arms weren't easy neither, the rest of the arm is connected to the HF shell via ball joint and it's connected to the ball socket with 3-long bar. It took some time to figure out the best alternative there, but I'm happy with the results. It's quite sturdy.

The head was a challenge. A real challenge. The only somewhat good-looking female LEGO faces around are anime-ish and wouldn't really work here. It's vast different from the dwarves who don't look that glamorous, so headlights-as-eyes would have looked terrible too. My design sure is rather flat, but it at least has a nose, a mouth and rather stylised eyes similar to Qwena. It has some really, really tricky SNOT stuff inside. The hair is pretty basic thing with dinosaur tails and robot arms, but the forehead hair was hard to arrange correctly.

Samus also has her stunner pistol. I also took some action shots (which is always hard with tall MOCs like this) with a plasma whip she has on Brawl. At least it uses one of those odd TECHNIC slopes I have never used on anything before.

The scale is bigger than on Power Suit Samus, so these don't work on same scenes (except on the humorously one in the end of this blog). I was going to built this on same scale than Belsa, but the shoes were just too big. The MOC stands around 40 cm tall.

-Pate-keetongu

Dammit! Another one shrunken on the wash!