Palikat Pinoon + New Century City Block preview + Public display info + Interview special

Great news: Several month's work is now finished. Palikkatakomo Ry's first major exhibit in Tampere is now live. Palikat Pinoon (or Brilliant Bricks - you can thank me for the English name) takes place in Vapriikki, a museum centre located at Tampella's old red brick industrial buildings. It has, for example, a Finnish gaming museum (which is excellent), ice hockey museum, stone museum, nature museum and some temporary exhibits - including our glass cabinet exhibit of 12 LUG members.

This is also another sort of milestone because this is also the first LUG exhibit with me being the main organizer on the LUG's behalf. Everything went alright, expect for one vitrine, which was 30 centimeters shorter than I was told; Ismo "Awis" Aavaharju had to shorten his "Lost Highway" model down from 197cm to 170 cm. Luckily MOCs are at least somewhat flexible in this manner. I was also asked to ask our members to send photos of creations for the wall art. Nobody sent anything, so they made those glorious canvas prints of my creations, 13 in total (Cohen the Barbarian, Porco Rosso, Lingeán, BotFA Dwalin, Susan Sto Helit, three houses of New Century Corner, Dragon Dance, I am the Mole, Mace-bearer, Noa Excela Aura, Gale Serpent Arises, Foraois, Clam-type heavy diving suit, Forfhuarú and Kushana). I will get the prints after the exhibit. Though I must confess that some members though I meant mosaics, which were offered, but the museum didn't want them. Exhibit's home page features my work too, along with the promotional material of the show.

Ah, yes, the MOCs featured? There were 12 builders, and here's some photos. They are not of very good quality, and unfortunately I didn't have any decent photos featuring cabinet with Aavaharju family's Finland 100 MOCs: Kantele, Aalto vase, book and border.


  Dragon battle by Asser/Tiikeli:

 Timo Mäkinen drives rally hood up by Olli Mäkinen:

 Lost Highway by Antti, Arttu and Ismo Aavaharju:

 Smith Ilmarinen plows the viper-ish field by Antti Aavaharju:

 Little red hut with potato plot by Mikke Palvanen:

 Maisa-Kyllikki by Fanny & Janne Kortelainen:

 

Three Bungalows by Mikko & Eevi Aalto:

Aaand then there's my work.

Quite lot of it, actually, because a. I am a local man b. my student flat (currently shared with no one, actually) doesn't fit very big numbers of MOCs. So I dumped them to the exhibit, so to speak. Well, actually around half of them were imported from Joensuu by my parents. Thanks, parents.

Anyway! Three boxes, one holding Brand New New Century City Block, which I have mentioned probably in every post during the last half a year; and one for misc character builds (recent stuff mostly) and one for Discworld builds (Wizards of UU and City Watch). But you know that stuff already. Let's focus on the block.

Firstly, I would have liked to photograph this thing properly before shutting it inside the glass box, but I didn't really have a chance, so proper photos posted on Flickr and Eurobricks and Palikkatakomo will wait until the exhibit's over. These remain as Special Preview Pictures for the readers of the blog. It is, you know, very hard to photograph anything behind a glass, especially when there's dozen of other boxes nearby reflecting things. But I hope you enjoy the block on this brutal presentation.

House of the Sword of Justice:

House of the Firefighter Alliance:

Scala Arcus:

Corner of the Honour of the Empire:

House of the Sunrise (In the middle):

Domus Lupus:

And the other cabinets:

Palikat Pinoon/Brilliant Bricks at Vapriikki till 13.4.2017.

ATTENTION! SPECIAL BONUS CONTENT!

Other public displays

Yes, indeed, I have two - no, three - other public displays. 

In Pii Poo Helsinki, an excellent unofficial LEGO store in Finnish capital city, there are six of my creations: Foraois and Fómhar in shop window and Mace-bearer, King Dedede, Dwarvish Dragonguard and Dain II Ironfoot in the glass cabinet inside. Check the location (it's in very central place near Kamppi shopping centre and underground station) and opening hours at their Facebook page; A must for any AFOLs visiting Helsinki. I think I buy most of my bricks from Pii Poo these days.

The second one is in my current hometown Tampere, at the best street of the city (Puutarhakatu, or Garden Street, hosting also awesome antique bookstore Lukulaari and board game café Taverna): Vintage Palikka, or Looru, a small and cozy shop selling used bricks and sport (mainly ice hockey) merchandise. Gale Serpent Rises and Doktor Viktor Von Nebula are on display there. It's also located on the Pantin Talo, the pawn shop house, which is one of the most beautiful Art Nouveau buildings in the town.

And the third one... This is a special case, as the builds displayed there are not my property; They're just built by me. Last summer we had a brick convention in Harjavalta and there was this Constraction building table. I slept at the indoor ice rink where the event was held (what an adventure) and during the night I built this demoness with machine gun leg, and some samurai dude too. Aforementioned Ismo Aavaharju who owned the pieces took the creations to his Imatra Legoista display in Citymarket Imatra. They have got good feedback despite being rather chaotic builds. But fun ones, admittedly.

ATTENTION! MORE EXTRA BONUS SPECIAL CONTENT!

Just to mention - check rather long interview of yours truly at Tiles or Studs. 

And for our Finnish friends, check this "Reportaashi" by Aamulehti's Moro. It also appeared in printed paper. The article includes super secret spoiler content about upcoming MOCs.

 There was also a radio interview (My first! It was fun.) for YLE Radio Suomi Tampere but I don't think it was put online; there will probably be an article on YLE's website later. I'll link it.  

MOC: Admiral Ackbar

 So here I am again! Gap between the builds became longer than expected, despite this fishy fellow being photographed at the same session with Madventures. But there has been lot to do. I was on a LUG event last weekend in Imatra, where I saved the future of Finnish brickfilm with my fellow Vuhvelituotanto founder Esko. We held a workshop and got maybe a minute or two of good-quality stop motion; a compilation will follow. I also had collection of newer builds on display (including this one). Check photos on Mikko Kortelainen's photostream. And in addition to that, I have been getting ready for our two-month exhibit on local museum complex Vapriikki. My modulars are pretty much completed, road pavings, back walls and everything! I'm getting the old bit (New Century Corner) from Joensuu this Friday and then it's showtime.

But yes; Ackbar! Our favourite admiral and definitely my favourite minor character from Star Wars; also the first SW MOC on this blog, despite Original Trilogy (honestly, I didn't like Clones or Menace much even as a kid; Sith is alright) having huge effect on me something like a decade ago. And last November I went to watch Rogue One, and there was this new Mon Calamari admiral Raddus, who was great in his Churchill-like attitude. I wanted to build him, but I thought that hell, I'll build Ackbar first, he's more iconic, having the fantastic and memetic lines like "Our cruisers can't repel firepower of that magnitude!" and "Concentrate all fire on that Super Star Destroyer" and "May the force be with us". Raddus might follow in the future, who knows.

This was going to be full size figure, but I managed to capture the eyes rather nicely on this bigger scale and it ended up being a bust; No chance making a complete Ackbar in this scale, almost all of my white bricks are already on use. At least this scale made it possible to precisely build the bristles of his "beard".

In general, this build was a fast two-day session between bigger and somewhat more important projects. I just grabbed most of my dark red system parts and tried to make Mon Calamari out of them. I'm happy with the result. There should be more session builds like this. Maybe there will be after the New Century City Block.

-Eero

MOC: Madventures

Hello readers, here I am again. Sorry for lack of inactivity, the reasons remain the same - studies and a modular building project slowly but steady getting done. There's still awful lot of back walls to do, and few roofs, and one facade... but I'm getting there.

Now this is a character build, or perhaps an actual person build. 2017 marks the 100th anniversary of Finland, and as the only (and best) Finnish LUG Palikkatakomo is hosting a Suomi 100 contest with two categories, An Important Finn and Moment from the History or Mythology. This is entry for the former - Madventures, AKA Riku Rantala and Tuomas "Tunna" Milonoff, two traveller-journalists known from several TV-series and books. The original Madventures show is about travelling, mostly in the third world, with just them two guys and some filming equipment. The first two series (2002 and 2005) were made in Finnish while the third (2008) was made in English for international audiences. Madventures is the most widely broadcasted Finnish TV program with 200 countries or territories. They are also awarded with several awards, including National Award of Information Distribution (or something like that anyway).

But above all they're both very entertaining and thought-provoking, diving deeper into the global wonders and issues. I think that qualifies for An Important Finn.

Build-wise this was just another character build, though not without challenges. I built them partly simultaneously, first making some drafts of both heads, them building mots of Riku (left on the photos) and then rest of Tunna (whose head got redesigned few times). Riku was somewhat easier: His style, with distinct beard, stays pretty much same through the series, and as Tunna spends more time behind the camera, there was less reference material of him. Riku's clothes are based on Indochina episode (Bad quality photo, I know), with red bandana, blue utility vest and trekking shoes. Sleeveless undershirt leaves the tattoos, here achieved with couple of tan printed round 2x2 tiles; the PotC one with stylish world map work pretty well, I think.

Tunna's clothes are more casual, with dark green T-shirt that cunningly evaded me from using valuable pieces for tan shoulder joints; the trousers and shoes are similar to Riku's. Tunna's head was challenging, partly due to limits of the colour (dark tan) and lack of coherence of the man himself. After all, they're on the road for months and hair and facial hair grows all the time. Now the moustache might be a bit too bushy, looking like 3/4 of 80's Black Sabbath, but it was the best alternative. I also built a camera for him, based on what I believe are promotional photos of season three.

These are my first character builds based on real people (not including fictional characters portrayed by real actors). Time will tell how they'll do in the contest.

-Eero

PS. Photographed another creation with this, so it shouldn't be so long gap before the next post. And I'm still having loads of WIPs around!

MOC: Robin

No, not the Boy Wonder. Nor the Sherwood vigilante. Nor the small bird. Nor the Sir Not-as-brave-as-Lancelot. This Robin is from Fire Emblem series (which I haven't played, but I'd like to if I I had consoles) and Super Smash Bros. 4, where she (or he, but she on this occasion) is rather fun character to play due interesting Tome and Levin Sword mechanics. So, this creation is rather similar to Samus, Dedede and Zero Suit Samus. SSB is cool.

Building Robin began with the robes. She has rather sensible garments for a video game heroine. I began with the buttoning, using pearl gold cheese slopes for triangular patterns; the first try was too think and heavy, so I ditched a purple line there should be and made it a bit simpler. Fence pieces are used as golden lining. A blade piece is used on the hem for detail. They should go all around the hem, but you can't have everything: They would have been very hard to connect to the TECHNIC panels used at the back, and I only had two!

Thunder!

Under her robe Robin has white shirt, some sort of belt-like garment with couple of buckles and some black-gold leather armoring. The legs use lot of CCBS parts that are sturdy but give some dynamic posability. Black lines of the white trousers are built using T-bars, lightsaber hilts and viking horns. The feet are somewhat unstable, as there are both ball joints and T-bar joints: the T-bar is connected to the underside of the smallest CCBS armor piece working as an ankle boot. The arms are quite basic stuff - CCBS on the upper arms, formula 1 tires to fill them, 3x3x3 cones (lovely pieces) on the lower arms and a big hubs for golden wristbands.

The head was hard. I tried several different designs. Stylished Nausicaä-style head was too small and made the shoulders look too broad and manly, and Batwing-eye-style looked too big. I finally settles with a design using minifig arms as eyes, similar to Red Lady of the Stream. It eventually grew on me, and I quite like it. Longer hair sets Robin apart from her male counterpart, otherwise they're quite identical.

Archfire!

Robin also has some accessories. Most importantly she has her Levin Sword, which is weird zig-zag-blade impossible to fit to a scabbard; but it's a magick sword that breaks down after few uses, after all. Building it wasn't that easy, and it isn't perfect (or symmetrical), but captures the overall look alrighty in my opinion. She also has two of her Tomes, Archfire and Thunder.

So, this was the first MOC and post of 2017. Last year I wasn't as active as before, and I can't promise to post as much stuff this year than in 2015 neither. But I have few tricks up in my sleeves: I've been building modulars for an exhibit beginning next month in Vapriikki, the most important museum in Tampere and one of the biggest museums in Finland. There's still plenty of things to build, but I'm progressing, and I naturally also have lots of other WIPs and ideas.

Time to tip the scales!

MOC: Purifier

 Tillbaka i Klaanon, as a Swede would say. I'll continue with the baddies (I think I've built one good guy (gal) from Klaanon this year). This is Purifier, and he's a Bahrag, or maybe a Vahki-Bahrag. He used to be a Toa. He is a Dark Hunter. He collects strange spheres that grow organic Krana-like substance on him. He has been killed numerous times but the spheres always bring him back more powerful. He's got lot of teeth and not all of them are on his mouth.

In other words, he's not my character. My characters are usually stout and reasonable.

There were two main points behind this build. One was the head, which had to include lots of sharp teeth and no much else. The other was the organic feel; Purifier really differs from average inhabitants of Matoran Universe. He's nowadays something like walking piece of black meat with some teeth. So I naturally used lot of CCBS pieces, though some older sleek parts like "destroyer droid feet" and roborider halves make appearances.

I fortunately was able to restock my CCBS shell collection, as I bough some cheap used HF sets on summer and some extra parts from Pii Poo's shop and event in October. Purifier, of course, used most of my good black CCBS parts, like round armor add-ons, SW armor add-ons and long shells. But it's cool that parts I've bought see use. It's no good keeping them in their sorted bags.

Construction-wise this is quite simple. Surpringly few SYSTEM parts are used, mainly on the head. At last those black insect legs from LUGBULK couple of years back see some use. Interesting parts but somehow limited. The torso and the arms are almost pure CCBS, legs are more traditional Bionicle/TECHNIC construction. Colour scheme is not very interesting, but hey that's the point, and at least it's not red.

Next up, I don't know what. Christmas Holidays are soon here, but I have two tests to go (only tests this year, Human and Environment (essays) and History of (Western) Architecture (mostly drawings). I might or might not be able to post more during the holiday. Anything might happen.

-Eero