Billund Chronicles

Tuesday 24th September

Alarm around four. Porridge, backpack to back and luggage over one shoulder, into the darkness, bus number three A. Empty Tampere centrum, everyone still sleeping. Half a kilometre walk from the stop to bus station. Maybe twenty minutes waiting, did I read a book? Bus arrives, boarding, Circle's "Telescope" live album playing, it's over two hours. Valkeakoski, Hämeenlinna, sunrise - Bus half full, people going into business meetings as usual. Unusual smoke from side of the bus, at some point alarm sounds, steady screech. Bus goes maybe ten minutes with it, then stops next to the motorway to Helsinki, it might be the most used on Finland with 120 km/hour limit. Passing trucks wave the bus, driver checks the engine. Water hose broken, water on engine, can't drive. Should be at Keimola to change into airport bus in twenty minutes or so; another local bus should arrive in ten minutes. It takes around fifty. Change line will wait in Keimola and I had reserved over two hours for airport, it's still very stressful. But we make in eventually, bus especially leaves us at terminal one. I leave my luggage, it's full of creations. I usually travel only with cabin bag, but obviously not this time. I go through the security, find my gate, and eat a sandwich. Then the gate opens; at least I didn't have to wait at the airport.

It's quite full flight to Copenhagen. I read the book - Laura Luotola's Suoja II, Veteen heijastuvat kivet. Finnish fantasy-scifi metamorphose. It was released few days ago in a party in Sörnäinen, Helsinki. I was there but I got the book earlier. I made a map for it. A2, watercolour and markers. Lots of names, some ornamentation. Cool work which I enjoyed. Now I can actually read the book - characters a new and unknown, but I very well know every inch of the world. Geographically, at least. One hundred pages during the flight; arrive at Copenhagen. 

Copenhagen airport is huge. There are two LEGO stores. I didn't visit them, though - my transfer was only 40 minutes, and I was heading for Billund anyway. It was a long walk and when I made it to my gate (in lot more peaceful part of the port) the gate was already open. I showed my boarding pass to gate machine and it let me through. There was a bus waiting, with maybe two dozen salarymen and two tourists in it. I waited in the bus for ten minutes or so, and my phone rang. They were some SAS officials asking if I'm coming to the flight. Gate machine somehow hadn't managed to sign me into the system; I went back and scanned it again. They didn't know what was happened. But we made it to the plane, which was a small propeller-powered one. My seat was near the engines so I could study them during the flight; they're bit less harmful to environment than jet-powered ones.

45 minutes and I was in Billund, in middle of Danish countryside. I claimed my luggage in few minutes - it looked alright - and headed for a bus that took me into LEGOLAND Castle hotel. Two almost identical grey fortresses in a field; quite absurd. There are heroic castle music and battle sounds effects coming from speakers all the time, and some large brick-built characters outside, but otherwise the hotel didn't feel very LEGO-ish, which was bit a shame. I stepped inside, received a key card for my booking (which I hadn't done personally) from kind reception personnel and headed for my room. What a pleasant surprise there were for me! 4000026 LEGO House Tree of Creativity, timetable for tomorrow and - above all - food! Excellent filled bread was, as you will hear, one of the best culinary experiences of the journey. The room had overall castle theme, based on the not-that-much-loved last one. I liked the brick-built models and big stained glass light. I tried to take a nap, but felt too excited, so I went for a walk.

I first checked the main LEGOLAND hotel, which had quite De Stilj -esque wing with black, white and clean pure main colours. Then I took a long route to Billund centre; mostly it went next to LEGOLAND fence. The park was closed. Weather was grey with touch of mist; the empty Miniland and vacant stopped rides looked somehow sad. Billund centre was quite small, and very different from Finnish towns on same size; buildings are older and made of bricks (bricks baked on clay). And it the middle there was the LEGO House - imposing building made of shining white ceramic tiling. It was closed, too, for some event. I headed past it, checked Billund Center with church, library and some other municipal actions. It had quite an interesting masonry.

Next to it began the art trail of Billund's sculpture park. It was heading to the right direction, so I give it a go. There were several interesting sculptures, including "Hello Golems" and "Fabulous Animal". There was even a little LEGO reference. Little polecat figures were among my favourites.

Back in the hotel I solved the puzzle inside and received three copies of Mini Ultimate Batmobile polybag (quite weird gift but alright). Then I took the nap, hour or so, and headed to meet Matt Goldberg who I knew would be there for tomorrow. We went for a dinner in Billund centre. Matt's company was convenient, Danish cuisine less so. Billund has three steak house pizzerias and that's it. I ended up ordering kebab sandwich (what an odd concept) and it was huge, like a big pita kebab. The worst part was cheese. Kebab doesn't need cheese. But I made it to (almost) end, as sort of prelude of my culinary adventure. We headed back to hotel and saw the building site of new LEGO headquaters. It had large 2x4 bricks on facade.

Wednesday 25th September

I woke up, eat the hotel breakfast (3/5 no porridge but plesant personnels) and went outside where I found Matt and some other folks. A bus took us to LEGO House, where we were hosted by Jan Beyer, Stuart Harris, Mike Ganderton, Birte N. Knudsen and some other LEGO personnels (who didn't hand out their minifigs, which means I can't recall their names). When it comes to us visitors, I'll quote LEGO House's press release;

Eero Okkonen, Finland
Marion Weintraut, Germany
Matthew Goldberg, USA
Milan Sekiz, Serbia
Paul Hetherington, Canada
Ryan van Duzor, USA
Simon Hundsbichler, Austria
Stephen Gofers, Netherlands
Sven Franic, Croatia
Jason Allemann & Kristal Dubois, Canada
Timofey Tkachev, Russia
Caroline Mockett, United Kingdom
ZiO Chao, Taiwan
Hsinwei Chi, Taiwan

(I don't know why my name is the first one.)

We took our heavy baggages to their conference room (LEGO Forum) and were taken into a guided tour by Stuart (who looks like Aavikko's Tomi Kosonen without moustache) and Mike. They told us about the actual huge Tree of Creativity, which amusingly combines rock-hard mega-scale LEGO engineering with nostalgic and creative little details. There is a main staircase around it, something like Le Corbusier's architecture boulevard, which ended up to the final floor, with big round skylights inside the studs of huge 2x4 brick on top of the House. In the space - can't really call it room - there was three large brick-built dinosaurs - from Dublo, SYSTEM and TECHNIC - and empty glass cases lining the walls. I took a peek and yes, found my image and plague on one case, in the corner over minifig scale World Explorer. As you all already figured out, I was there to display my models in Masterpieces Gallery alongside fantastic fellow fans.

We didn't get into work yet, though. We were given a tour around play experience zones in two groups. I was in Stuart's group and his facts about World Explorer were especially interesting as he had been one of the main designers of it. I was also very pleased with city planning zone, which is near my current studies, and helped to perceive functions of diverse cityscape to children and adults alike (it also involved building). Another fantastic thing was the frog building spot. There was a own spot for frogs! They were built on lilypads (green 8x8 tiles) and floated around in a pond similar to an air hockey table. There were also spots for building bugs and flowers: Pleasant and colourful things, I was a fan.

We were also taken to the basement (though I was not entirely sure was it on this point) to see the museum of the company's history and the nostalgia Monolith in the core of the building - a brick-shaped room including some classic sets along the decades. There were all six Toa Mata, fortunately, and actually twice - in the monolith and in the timeline. Some of them were posed badly ("päin helvettiä") following the glorious traditions of Bionicle display. The museum also hosted some interesting minifigure and minidoll prototypes and concept art. Also huge multi-layered LEGO logo built by some artist was fascinating and we spotted several strange and unusual pieces from it.

We went to set up our models. I unpacked Circle - I think the order was Jussi, Janne, Pekka, Julius, Tomi and Mika. It didn't take that long. They were quite well-preserved despite having been thrown around by airport crews, and I had set it up for exhibits two times before, in Hupicon and Harjavalta's Palikkapamaus in 2018. I think my experiences with going to events via public transport carried fruit (so to speak) in this project. Only problem was the cables (official LEGO string) of maybe Julius's and Jussi's amplifiers that were knotted. Fortunately one of the personnels (it was probably Birte) pronounced that she is a mother and solved it easily. I carried the figures and accessories to my case, next to Caroline's pleasant micropolis. After some suffling of display blocks I managed to have Leppänen's drum podium higher than the others. I did want to have the other musicians on the same level for equal coverage. My model also needed a bit less space than my neighbours, we centered the micropolis between Circle and Lego7's various models. That meant we had two rock bands in the case - though Hsinwei's band consisted of animals.

We were offered a lunch (including chicken legs and cauliflower) in the middle of set-up time, and after some of us were finished, we were asked to build birthday-themed builds for the House's second birthday for tomorrow, using the parts available at building zone. I hunted for bright light orange and magenta pieces to make a slice of cake with rather psychedelic frosting. Mike gave us an extra tour in the museum. It was nice. After everyone had set their things up, we went and printed our own six 2x4 combinations. It's one of the most interesting concepts of the House. As you know, one can (or can't, because one will die of old age sooner) connect six 2x4 bricks in millions of different ways Or tens or hundreds of millions. Anyway, there are darn many connections, and as they are not such valuable currency, everyone who visits gets their own, printed on high-quality plastic card and accompanied by freshly molded six bricks. I can't recall the number of my combination, I've put the card in some safe place or another. Anyway, it was a good combination (they don't give out fragile ones with bricks connecting only with one stud).

But that was not all. As we were important visitors, or artists displaying our work, we get to put our combinations with personal messages into glass case in the lobby! It had combos and messages by previous displayers (we were the third batch, once per year) and some celebrities, like some guy from Metallica (I'm not sure but it would feel logical to be the Danish guy). I wonder if Circle members would be qualified into the wall. They encouraged to make the messages in our own language - which was cool, as Finnish is beautiful and interesting language and I was the first Finnish person on the wall. I ended up with fitting reference to Circle's Rakennus ("Building") live album from 2007 and small self-portrait I tend to draw on messages like this. Wittiest readers might notice that I almost typoed T but it turned out fine in the end.

We were taken back to Masterpieces gallery, where we were given little trophies designed by Stuart. They were brick-built and sturdily glued, featuring large white 2x4 bricks. Then we went downstairs and had some nice time eating dinner, discussing things related mostly to LEGO and enjoying some drinks. Afterwards, there was a LEGO House quizz (I got six out of ten right, I think) and some cool presentations by Stuart (about designing the big models and assembling them in Czech Republic) and Mike (featuring Galidor walrus projected hugely into LEGO House's forum space's wall - also Piraka - I would have liked to had a picture about it but I don't). In end of the day, around eight'o'clock after twelve hours of brick activies, we were given goodie bags, hugs, handshakes and a bus drive back to the Castle; The bag included LEGO House Dinosaurs set, minifig accessory -like tea mug, couple of keychains and a book about the House, with plenty of beautiful pictures. In the hotel I built my dinosaurs to moderate my excitement levels. It had been a fantastic day, with such nice people. One of the best. And the next day was going to be a busy too.

Thanks, LEGO House team!

Thursday 26th September

Thursday was the AFOL day in the LEGO House. After packing and breakfast I walked there with Catherine. Jan Beyer helped me to get key for one of them big lockers to get my luggage into it; then I went to listen to the opening speech. There was about 600 AFOLs around. I also met Jonas Kramm and some other German builders; Jonas was my rival at Iron Builder couple of years ago. After the speeches (There was talk about sustainability and monorail) they play experience zones opened. I wandered around, read some books, talked about my Circle, met some people like Are J. Heiseldal, journalist and På Kloss Hold host, and Tim Johnson of New Elementary. I played with bricks. I tried to make realistic self-portrait mosaic in green. I built a frog for the the frog pond (it used a rare technique even) and a purple flower for the meadow. I took photographs. And around ten minutes before the line for the LEGO store opened I went to the queue, and it was worth it!

They took only certain amount of people in at a time, fortunately, and I was on the first batch. I heard that most people were in for the House exclusive sets, given that they're only sold here and double their price on the other side of Atlantic, but I wasn't interested in buying those (I already had two of three, and I'm a builder, after all). I was in for the parts. And the Pick-a-Brick was absolutely fantastic. In addition to the normal selection they had cardboard boxes of unusual fan favourites and some plastic boxes of more random stuff, maybe some Systar System things and dark red Star Wars junk. I ended up with four large tubs of parts: Plenty of bright coral things, teal round things, pearl gold 1x1 round plates with handle on side, dark green baby bow wedges (both sides!), dark red and dark tan tiles, lime green baby bows, trans-clear 1x2x5 bricks... to mention some. Random boxes included for example newish 2x4x4 half-cones and teal 3x3 dishes.

The store had also another surprise for us. They sold build-a-minifigure parts for some price as PaB, limited one small cup per person. I've not so much interested in minifigs, as I usually work in larger scale these days. But that was a great deal anyway, and there were, after all, plenty of accessory pieces to use outside minifig scale (I already got use for some shark-printed surf boards). But honestly, I got minifig parts too, pieces I had missed due to not buying CMF for few years, and parts suitable for 110-years-ago aesthetics of my Art Nouveau modulars. I got some elvish lady torsos and some dual-molded legs, nice berets to be used as caps and umbrellas I didn't have any; I also got some 10-20 golden lassos. Maybe I'll find a use for those. The PaB was crowded, but minifigure part section was completely full of people scavenging. I was easy to see why. I made it out alive and 680 crowns poorer and felt that it was completely worth it. I was also very hungry, so I left my loots to the locker and headed for Mini Chef restaurant.

The restaurant worked on interesting concept. You got a polybag of bricks and an exclusive minifig, built your meal on different ingreients using the bricks, inserted the "MOC" of five parts into brick-built machine which scanned it, and then your meal arrived in a box via corkscrew track and was pushed to you by a couple of robots in bow ties. My machine recognized the creation in third try, but the robots had a bug when my meal arrived to them. I watched them spinning their little hands for five minutes and then asked the waiter to give me my meal; The guide said that the robots have some loose screws but I still don't know if it was an intentional feature or some sort of bug.

The food was good. It was also the one of the two vegetarian meals during the trip. However, the vegetarian options were lame. Well done, good quality, but you can't substitute the main dish with potatoes, almonds or not. It was slowly dawning on me that vegetable proteins are unknown concept for the Danish, sans maybe trendy Copenhagen area. I'd suggest LEGO House crew to look out what can be done with things like falafels, lentils, soy or oat; they'd be amazed. I was not left hungry, and the restaurant concept was witty, but there was still room for improvement. I filled a survey, too.

During the final opening hours I wandered around, met some people and took photos. I tried to overall photograph all cases and plagues in the Masterpieces Gallery, but Beyond the Bricks was interviewing Jason Allemann & Kristal Dubois at the time and I didn't want to bother or photobomb them, so I don't have exact pictures or Jason, Kristal and Marion Weintraut's case. Fortunately I took some photos on them in Wednesday.

After the experience zones closed down, I went downstairs, talked to people, filled a survey about the day to get Emmet's Piece Offering polybag and fetched my luggage. I went outside to look for the bus that was arranged to take fans from LEGO House to Skaerbaek (Surprise!). There was a bus waiting but no information. On the yard I met Bogdan, alias BrickBlues, a Serbian AFOL who was working as an architect in Prague. Sadly I don't remember his Croatian friend's name, but we had a great time. Finally the bus driver arrived (he looked exactly like a stereotypical Finnish bussikuski so I recognized him immendiately) and we set out to south. We talked about local customs, architecture, Prague, LUG politics and everything; they were cool company. Radiant City was mentioned. The bus arrived to Skaerbaek, a Jylland town of around 3000 inhabitants around six'o'clock. I set out for the train station,which I found in growing dusk. The town was small, but there was a ticket machine in the station and it was quite cheap. The train took 12 minutes to Bredebro where my AirBnb was. Big windows and very clean train, but there wasn't many passagers. I Finland, Denmark is seen as highly developed, modern and trendy; but that wasn't the case. The infrastructure was good, but people still preffered personal cars.

Bredebro (Bridge of Brede-river) was even smaller, with little more than one thousand residents. It was dark and raining. I was hungry and there was one restaurant in the town: The ordinary pizza place. It had three tables in quite large hall. Lad behind the counter was younger than me. I ordered a pizza pretty much in random and the lad started to bake it behind the counter. It had sausages, or frankfurters; Hot dog is the national cuisine of rural Denmark. Fortunately they had curry powder on top so I could imagine eating a currywurst (I ate fantastic currywurst in Berlin's Mauerpark in 2018). I ate few slices and tucket rest of it under my rucksack's strap. I visited a local supermarket (which was probably closing down, but I didn't see opening hours anywhere) and went over the bridge to find my accomodation. It was dark and I didn't remember the right address so I went to the wrong house. They were very helpful, the right house was next door. With some rummaging in the dark I got in, sorted some parts, and slept.

The next episode "Skaerbaek Chronicles" will be published soon.

-Eero

Zinnia Superfuzz

This is another built finished during the summer months. It's a part-based build that evolved during the process; no plan, no concept, just some colours, patterns and combinations that together formed a bassist with rad flower-themed attire. The most important factor was the parts I got from LEGO stores in London and Glasgow in May. The most notable of those were plant pieces - new grass stalks with bar connections, 1x1 modified round plate flowers in various colours, and as used on this creation, medium azure 2x2 flowers (great pieces I only used to have 4) and dark pink friends trumpet-like flowers. Those were used to build the long gloves in early summer; but I had no idea who'd end up using them. Another starting point was Hero Factory ammo belts with dark pink flowers stuck into them, to be used as braids.

The character evolved first with the arms (I'm particularly happy with the "wanted" tattoo in the left arm) and upper torso. It formed a neck strapped dress that was going to be a long dress but ended up much shorter and less formal instead. I developed the diagonal pattern of flowers and medium azure stripe to fit the gloves. The dress widens using Wedge 8x3x2 opens. Their connection is quite complex, as the hip joint of the legs is crammed within. There's bit "cheating" there, as the upper legs are too short; or, in other words, the hip joint is lower than it should be, as there is no room for it higher on. Fitting the hip joints and upper legs inside dresses is always challenging, but having some movement for them give some needed dynamics to the character. So there's double joint under the large wedges, with homemaker figure hands. The round plate swivels a bit, giving it extra mobility when needed.

Tall, heeled boots felt fitting to this character. They feature some experimental piece uses, such as integrating SW buildable figure shin armour to SYSTEM-based leg. It's a bit wobbly and leaves a small gap, but I like the shape. Between it and the knee joint there is a pattern using medium azure 1x1 plates and the flowers; it turned out rather nicely. Making the build on larger scale than usual - it's quite close to characters like Fómhar in size - made it possible to add more details. One of those 2x2 flowers is used as a trim of the boot opening. The feet sections are based on "Persian" arch piece, which gives a nice form to the heeled boot; They're monochrome and free of detail except for showy, dark pink ribbon-like add-ons. I believe that within them came the idea that the character would be a musician, as that, if something, is cool.

The hair is unique and had some fresh challenges. I wanted the use the ammo belt thing that I tablescrapped on the early phase; but long flocks didn't feel fitting here. The final design ended up being an elaborate mess suspended to the back; it uses four of those ammo belt, two on both sides and bent symmetrically; between them there is a sort of mohawk of big flowers. I think that the result is not very LEGO-like and thus works. A lone bang over the right eye, as well as the yellow rubber band, were late additions that felt essential.

A bass ended up being the character's instrument of choice. It's a showy instrument in means of stance, but not as stereotypical cool element as a guitar (nothing against guitars mind you mind you). I've built instruments before, mostly in the Circle project (posted almost exactly one year ago), and this used similar shapes. However, the bass design is not based on anything. It has these holes to make it lighter, and uses some printed pieces to give it character. I'm particularly pleased with Pythagorean slope piece used as the headstock; it's not that common in yellow, and the light blue neck under the flat silver strings. There is also an amplifier that uses plenty of medium azure 4x3 slopes; I've got a lot of them and they're not the easiest to use. The colours of the amplifier are chosen to fit the character. She also has a fuzz pedal, as the name suggest. Superuzz Bigmuff! As the build is very tall and has plenty of joints, some of them redundant, the posing was quite challenging, but I managed to take some pedal poses too. Enjoy!

Next up, a speeder and a rider.

-Eero.

Munburr, the proud father

 Hi readers! Today's build includes some classic Cyclopic Bricks content a.k.a a member of dwarven race. This was a fast build, completed in couple of days sometime in June. I wanted to experiment with some beard designs and use some dark brown parts, originally released in Chima sets.

The figure began with the head. Crowbar beard and barb moustache were some early installments. I also wanted to make a mohawk, as something inspired by Dwalin's flashback appearance in The Hobbit movies. Even with it the head looked tad generic, so I added the dark red war paint streak over the right eye. I liked the contrast it created, and it enhanced the berserk look. Spiky shoulder pads were natural follow-up of this motif. They're premade pieces from KK2 line, but their colour is very cool. I wondered if I should give the fellow a bare chest, but armoured tank look was an iconic dwarf trait, and more interesting to build in this case, so I made a chest armour with silvery grille pieces. I wanted to use several different metallic shades to represent different types of metal used on the armour.

The wide leather belt uses four dark brown car bonnet pieces. Letranger Absurde used them on his Doc Ock build in last December, and it made an excellent gut shape, so I shamelessly stole it. The pieces have some stickers, but they work nicely as rivets or something; however, they're not well visible on the pictures. Under the belt there are some skirt flaps protecting the legs. Chima Ice Age printed flag piece felt fitting for the overall aesthetics. Using printed and stickered pieces is something I've gotten engaged with lately. Triangular (or actually pentagonal) wedge slopes in the sides have nicely similar shape. The back side has less elaborate but equally protective flap. The legs recycle some ideas used on Dwarvish Dragonguard from Battle for Wesnoth and Nobby Nobbs from Discworld books. They created a bit crouching, down-to-earth-pose associated with dwarves. Even the boots have some metal fins for tight spots.

After finishing the figure itself, I though about its equipment and setting. Weapons felt natural; an axe or a warhammer or something, like previously. But then I though: Where's the challenge, where's the idea? It felt obvious, and thus not bit, but very dull. Another blood-crazy little warrior dude. I though about the over-masculine dwarven tropes (which are well processed on Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, of course) and habit of seeing fantasy races based on their warriors in general, and ended up making something completely different. Farming maybe, or making a fence or something. But I went even further and made him (or her, who knows with dwarves anyway?) holding a baby. It felt quirky and original, and I managed to add some humour to the build with the baby dwarf's tight light aqua swaddle, little cap and brown beard with a pacifier stuck in middle; it has a golden chain, as it's a dwarf, after all. Gold gold gold.

-Eero.

The Wanderer

This is the Wanderer, a planeswalker from card game Magic the Gathering. She is a mysterious individual with a habit of planeswalking from world to world slaying monsters and enemies with her decently-sized sword. She's a new and currently quite minor character, appearing only in War of the Spark expansion with 31 other planeswalkers; I do not know much about her character; but hers is a pleasant and exciting visual design, with light turquoise cape and elegant light pink dress and large brimmed hat and everything, so once I saw the first I though I just might end up building this character... Inevitable or not, here's the Wanderer.

The Wanderer appears in three card arts, so my reference material was very exact; They are the planeswalker card, the alt-art Japanese card and the signature spell card, decent common removal Wanderer's Strike. I naturally took some liberties, as I usually do. The most challenging and probably also defining aspect of the build were the colours. I have plenty of sand green, one of my favourite LEGO colours, and it worked nicely on the robe and the hat, especially with some light blue mixed in; they're flowers from my North Sea trip in May, likely from Glasgow's LEGO Store. Even pearl gold is somewhat common these days, even though it comes in rather specific variety of pieces.

The bright pink was actual challenge. I try to buy all oddly-coloured pieces from Pii Poo's used stock when I browse them, and I grab some from PaB walls when I have a chance. But I don't have many Friends sets, so my inventory consisted mostly of 1x2 plates and tiles and 1x1 round plates, reinforced with some odd slopes, plates, SNOT bricks and few more special pieces. Could be worse, honestly - there's lot you can do with a bunch of 1x2 plates - but then again, a dress with three cheese slopes and no usual curved slopes, that was tricky. In the end, I focused the interesting parts on visible places. Gothic arches (I have two) form the loose fabric at the chest. 4x4 "wide" curved slopes angled behind them add some organic, life-like shapes to the torso behind them. The hem of the dress is made with old good 1x2 plate/1x1 round plate curve technique, allowing some, if limited, organic flow. The technique forms an interesting pattern - not exactly like the pattern on card art, but not bad nevertheless. The sides of the hem are frankly quite stepped, like a on a pixelated video game character.


The robe and the hat use similar curve technique, so there are contrasts between the flowing and jagged forms. A pre-made KK2 piece is used a lone shoulder pad. It was bit unclear if the Wanderer had one or two shoulder pads - the other might be hidden behind the hair on the main card image - but I though one looked better, as part of the robe covers the other shoulder. The shoulders use usual T-bar-joint, as does the right sleeveless elbow. The left arm has a loose-fitting sleeve, so I had to compose the elbow with bright pink parts. It doesn't have very much friction, but it allows some posing, even with the big, heavy sword. A 2x2 metallic gold dish is used as a bracelet.

The Wanderer's boots are never shown completely, so that left some room for imagination. I wanted to build the character on the pose seen in the main card -descending some stairs. This was different from anything I've build before. It is also more interesting than statically standing figure, as a dress built with bright pink would have limited the dynamic poseability to zero! Thus I built the stairs, dark bley with some dark red as in the art, and made two completely different legs. The right leg is essentially a pillar; there's a joint in the ankle, but is it not really needed; a TECHNIC axle runs through the leg, supporting the build. The other joint has a double joint behind the knee armour. The armour itself is boringly square, as I didn't have any good round opinions in sand green. The boots are mostly improvised - I wanted to use sand green to balance the colours a bit - and the left leg has a joint even at the ball of the feet, forming the stepping posture.

The head is probably the most important part of the character and the Wanderer's posses an identity-hiding white hair and cool brimmed hat with feathers and everything. I though about using some large dish as a hat, but I didn't have any in good colours, and they wouldn't have been the right shape that helps hiding the face. I ended up using the aforementioned curve technique, and light blue flowers made the colours nicely fresh, even though it created a pattern not appearing on the actual art. I wanted to use a 4x4 dish in pearl gold in the top, but found out I didn't have one (at least not here). A backup option was cast-iron ornamental cart well. It diverges again from the original, but doesn't look bad. Some minifig katanas form the feathers.

I wanted to make something special with the hair, and TECHNIC figure scuba flippers were the way. Their angular shape formed the medium-lenght flatly cut hair-do well, and their thinness helped to hide the face. The face is of usual female character type, but without the minifig hand eyes to enhance to feel of anonymousness. The wind blows the locks to the right, as it flows the robe. The sword is not-that-sharp stud-thin one, with a spiky crossguard and curved black handle. I made it white, as it seems to be white-hot with power on the card arts.

Next build will be a dwarf with a twist. My fourth university year starts on Monday, so the pace might slow down a bit. But this has been a good summer, and an active one, too.

-Eero.