Dedofiktion Racing Unlimited Warpplasm Turbothrust Rocketsuit

Two posts! Contest time! Space Jam again, and still the collaboration team contest, a racing team, with Aiden! More about this process on the other post about the other contest model. From short a beautiful psalm, as we say in Finland. About so.

This was my model two, so the colour scheme is taken from Winona Skyrake's bike; black, yellow, medium azure, bit of red and white hair. The character is, hmm, Blizz Corten (no relation to the steel popular on student contest entries). She has a pair of very bulky rocker boots, and a jetpack to add extra thrust. Pretty cool huh? This time I began with, as usual, the head. It is quite fascinating! It has a new head design, with the jaw made with two double cheese slopes. May look simple but ain't. It uses old, easily breaking Technic connector, with two studs on side, to work. But the initial shape is quite pleasant! The hair took plenty of time to get right too, and is quite complex package. But I think I made it in the end.

The rest was, after all, easier. The jetpack used lot of cool yellow parts I had left at all; rest of them went to the boots. Old yellow Technic wheel hubs give the thrusters nice patterns. Tipper ends steal the limelight again - they are familiar from my New Elementary article, and gave the boots required bulkiness, like slalom boots exaggerated. The heart pieces and light grey macaroni tubes refer back to Winona's bike. Printed Alpha Team Deep Sea wedges are another pieces I've been wanting to use for a while, and Glatorian ankle guards tiptoe towards Bionicle themes. The arms are quite usual, I like the shape CCBS panel add-on piece gives to them; I got those from LUGBULK and you can expect more on future buils! Obi sash link this to the another entry, and the chest plate refers to Samus Aran.

Few weeks after completing the build, I though it would be cool to display the rocket boosters better, so I made a simple little base with flame jets carrying Blizz towards the skies. Long rectangular lbright light yellow pillars are maybe to the most realistic jets ever, but I like the flma burst with six different shades of red, orange and yellow, reflecting from the black surface.

-Eero.

 

Botar

 

Who will survive the coming of Botar? This was part of a collaboration work on re-imagining 2006 Bionicle sets and combiners, including 23 (!) people. Please find the complete list on Flickr.

 The edit was done by N (Brick Brickolson), Ari (Buttloafbuilds) and me.

I chose Borat because he's completely very absurd, tall, human-shaped fellow with very small head with huge teeth and big golden ears, actually quite good colour scheme and idiotic weapons; I ditched the wrist blades as half of fantasy characters in general have them, but I left the axe-blade thing. It was too silly to miss. Botar was also killed in the story just to be replaces with person named "Borat's replacament", to make him bit more weird.

 I first tried to imagine Botar as a big, semi-humanoid rabbit, but his creepy, prolonged look reminded more of a slim, short-hair cat on its hind legs, so I emphasized the cat-ness, still leaving the very long ears. The tail, absent from the original, stresses the cat aspect. It is definitely inspired by filmation of Cats (2019, or 2020 in Finland) - actually the latest film I've seen in theatres! It was in Kotka, a small theatre with weird, angled floor and the film was awesome and horrible and absurd and better than Rise of Skywalker -

I began with Borat's head, and for a short time the was version with eyes with two-studs gap between; but it looked bit too convincing, missing the odd look of having Metru head behind the teeth completely, so I returned to this look. I'm very happy with how the white T-bars light up the eyes. The head is mostly System, but I assure you, the rest is almost completely Bionicle and Technic, first time for many many years (membuja ei tässä lasketa)... Once a part of Bionicle collab, I really wanted to brush up my bonkle parts. It wasn't easy - there's still trickiness in getting the right pins in right places, and having only around five black 3-long ones didn't help! The chest is closest part to the original model, other areas are more freely interpeted. Eight-pack abs in gold fitted the upright cat idea, and naturally continued into chainmain loincloth. The skull spider mask knee pads emphasize the horror feel, and dished behind them mimic mechanical joints - Motif I enjoy in my Bionicles. What I'm not 100% happy with is Botar's colour balance. I would like have done the fingernails in pearl gold and lower legs in black, but didn't have the correct pieces available. I have them, just in some models somewhere else. But that's not too bad.

-Eero.

Tam the Enchanter of Gales

The original idea behind this build is lost in the mists of time (last November and December), but I'm fairly sure it began with using those dark purple quarter round parts as a skirt, flanked by large dark blue cockpit pieces I got cheap. The composion is mostly colour-based, with cold, fresh hues of royal dark blue and different purples, balanced by white. The main inspiration was finding out that I have pretty broad collection of medium lavender; sadly, broad did include about three cheese slopes (two of them 1x2) which meant the hair is bit of compromise. 

I'm happy with the stomach area shaping especially, and layering of fabrics turned out nice. Choice of emitting legs for long, ornamental dress was quite late, and fuelled by lack of parts in right colour for legs. It made the process nicely unique compared to usual figures, but left me wondering if I should have gone bit less baroque with the dress shaping, especially the part with clam shells. The just were, along with medium lavender barrel halves, marbled purple dragon wings and that printed magic portal 4x4 dish, on a mental list of parts I want to use somewhere. The round shapes all around are complemented with trans-pink jewels inside life saver rings, decorations I'm happy with.

Colour scheme seems to fit January's pleasantly cold weather nicely. The name is, of course, reference to Monty Python's Tim the Enchanter. And yes, she's got a third eye too.

-Eero.

 

Senior Wrangler

 Good time of day everyone. Happy new year too, though it feels like same old 2020. I've been sitting home writing my diploma work, and occassionally building. This model is from around November though; yes, it's a Discworld model, after two-year break! He's Senior Wrangler, and not really an important character, but I had built rest of the Senior Faculty of Unseen University already, so he was bound to happen. The wizards are one of my favourite bunches in Sir Terry Pratchett's books, Ridcully being my most beloved character there.

This model evolved around one particular piece use, the Star Wars ultrabuild leg armour as a beard. It curved on top of the round belly quite nicely, and formed pleasant shape with big barbs as the moustache. The beards are probably the strongest element to distinguish these wizards. Otherwise I wanted to emit pearl gold, which is prominent secondary colour in my earlier wizards; silver is used instead, as these has to be something sparkling. The yellow cummerbund hopefully balances it. The pantaloon design is taken from Paul Kidby's art and recycled from Dean. It brings some three-dimensionality to the build.

The wizards tend to have tall staffs, but I wanted something that stresses their personality better, so I went with some light refreshments - a gin tonic (as referred in Soul Music), some biscuits and a fat piece of strawberry cake (setting of food was also displayed with Chair of Indefinite Studies). Building them was also rather more interesting and composing another staff with knob on end.

More to say about Senior Wrangler I have not. It's quite simple, humble, traditional character build. It also might be that my recent excursions in world of academic writing have made my output more compact. Well, not for bad, that. - I also updated the old (2014-2015?) portrait here, and made a Instagram account, which so far features old builds in exciting new compositions. Enjoy!

 -Eero.