Shōgunocturn

 Nocturn was pretty cool set, back in 2007. I remember everyone liking Nocturn. He had cool glow-in-the-dark parts, snazzy combo on transparent blue and lime, bizzare head with jutting lower jaw and four arms. In Finland, it was exclusive on some toy stores only existing in southern Finland, so I bought my copy on trip to some Pokemon TCG match in Helsinki. My interest on TCG was already fading, so getting Nocturn was, honestly, probably the most impactful thing on the trip. 

Everybody loved Nocturn in 2007 and he's still liked, so when group of Bionicle builders plan collaboration on 2007 sets, more than one might end up picking Nocturn. So... Oops, all Nocturn! I didn't want to distract too far from the original set, so this is somewhat usual reboot. However, and unsurprisingly, the samurai aesthetics ticked again back in! Maybe it was the two-toe feet of the set, or wide pauldron-like shoulder spikes, or twin katanas, but there was something very, very vaguely samurai-like in Nocturn. I emphasized it by making the shoulders more pauldron-like, utilizing common lime green dinosaur tails from Mars Mission line. I also gave him longer horns to make the silhouette even more radical; the crest has Sinestro print fron Green Lantern sets, which fitted the aesthetics nicely; I know nothing about Green Lantern, but the print is cool and got several cheap. 

As with Botar, the eyes are mirrors of soul, so I wanted them sharper than those light-bulb like ones on original set. They're simiral to Borat, featuring 1x1 round plates with hole, connected to T-bars with their lovable plume holes forming a penetrating stare. Usually the extra knobs on T-bars would be a problem, but here they just gave Noc two extra teeth! His lower jaw, originally using piraka foot, was re-designed to fit more visible white teeth. I also added a tongue, as that felt fitting to Oni theme and monster feel in general. Red also bounced up well among the blue and green.

On legs, I wanted to create flowing shapes very different from the clunky legs of the set. The lower leg piece is the same, however; and two-toe feet, albeit much smaller, refer back to both samurai socks and the set. Using those weird Starts Gresh armour pieces was one of the original goals, and I'm very happy for the feet turned out. The arms, on ther hand, are mostly trans-medium blue, mixed with glowing parts of the original. Building them meant facing age-old problem of Bionicle builders: Most of the ball sockets are more or less broken and don't have enough friction to hold the weapons up! Bionicle building is hard, and not least due to this issue. Partly for this reason the back arms are very system-heavy.

And the weapons! Original set has two katanas, stupid squid launcher and silver tentacle. I kept the swords, of course, as they were fitting for the theme. I thought about making a realistic crossbow, but had no idea how to pose it on lower arms, so I went with a exaggerated Japanese kanabo mace instead. The tentacle turned into a silly chain weapon with small blades. I had designed that one for pre-Pit Kalmah model 8 years back, but that one was never finished, and the chain idea was forgotten. Until now. With those weapons, he's actually not very shogun-like, but more like big mid-boss goon that gets killed by the hero's mentor. Strong but dumb.

And hey - March wasn't that much of an architecture month after all. My LUGs contest jugding is late, so I haven't been able to post the model that was the middle part of my "white buildings" trilogy. But everything is ready, photographed and edited. Just waiting to be posted.

-Eero.

Jean of Emergent Dance

Here's again stuff from more of the archive side! This model, Jean of the Dance Eternal, was build to accompany a series of articles written for New Elementary last summer. It was recently published on the second part of it, so here's a bit closer look, with more photos. There isn't any genius groundbreaking idea behind the build; just a dancer on smart blue-and-yellow dress. Simple, elegant, flowing thing. The seed part for the article was Wedge 4 x 3 Open with Cutout and 4 Studs (47755), a veteran of many Samurai helmets and so on - here embedded on the sides of the torso, taking all out of it's myriad of curves. 1x2 curved slope - a baby bow -  even demonstrates the concave of it. Another, more usual seed part is 4x6 inverted wedge slope, nine of which make the hem. They're connected with Mixel ball joints. The stucture is suprisingly sturdy.

The arms were laboratory of joints. They use light bley 1x1 round plates with bar - I've later got plenty of tan ones and naturally changed them - and the joints are made with 1x2 round plates. Such usual stud-to-antistud connections are not the sturdiest possible, but bear the weight of arms just nicely. The legs are further developed from Magadril of Dandelions; the kneecap is sturcturally part of the lower leg, which make the leg flow better than usual separate knee unit solution. The interface of dark bley stocking and tan skin is hidden behind the boat studs. Mundane dark bley balanced the vibrant blue and bright light orange well.  

This MOC ended up having wonderful balance! There is not any loosely twisting and spinning bits, all the joints are tight and precise, and the arms have very natural range of movements - not to mention the long, simple ponytail, ideal for fine-tuning the balance, and showing the motion. It can be seen on the set of photos, but I promise it is not the last you will see of Jean the Emergent Dance. But that will be another story!

Next up, more architecture!

-Eero.

Villa Korpkuusi

 So it's March, once again. I'm sure that somewhere in the community these is a thing called "marchitecture" going on. I might center around mini-scale cool and polished models, but I wasn't distracted by that, so here's little woodland villa, designed as something like "dream vacation dwelling". This build was rather fast, with aim to create somewhat organic, expressive building, cozily crammed, rich in textures and weirdly constructed. 

What makes a dream cottage here? Steep roof makes homely feeling, according to Christopher Alexander, the author of pattern language. A tar-black shingle roof (using CCBS armour panels) can be made with local materials and has pleasant pattern. Low ceilings emphasize nest-like atmosphere and reduce the volume of heating (there is a fireplace inside - note also the beautiful smoke from the chimney). According to the universal laws of traditional building, there are units of different height and thus hierarchy (the tower being at the top, there had to be a tower). The hierarchy creates feeling of place and order without being too strict or authoritarian. The visible boulder masonary (cyclopic bond, fitting for this blog) is a concrete manifestation of real materials and natural forces.

That's it, philosophically speaking! It is inspired by sculptor Emil Wikström's atelier building Visavuori in Sääksmäki, Valkeakoski, not so far from where I live. The atelier, designed by Wikström himself, has a wonderful observatory tower and steep shingle roofs. Another inspiration was Gesellius-Lindgren-Saarinen's white, red-roofed villas from 1898-1904, including Miniato in Espoo and destroyed Suur-Merijoki near Vyborg. However, this is much smaller, with white plastered surface only in the tower and the rest built with natural stone and timber. I recently bought some 1x2x5 bricks in medium nougat, and they made such nice timbers laid horizontally. Actually, pretty much everything here is laid horizontally, except maybe the tower - and that made building quite challenging.  

The landscape was a result of fervent improvisation. I had bought plenty of dark orange bricks from LUGBULK, and wanted to try them to capture colour of dry forest bottom with lot of pine needles... I think it worked okay, not that realistic, but fitting for the bit twisted feel achieved with strange building techniques. The olive green moss patches and stones hide the flatness. The trees are very small, but there's lot of them. Some sort of absurdity and stylised-ness was the aim again. Actually, they are not that unrealistic for small young spruces; and somehow the make the house feel bigger. I chose this technique mostly because I had lot of those new bar-connecting grass stalks around.

The doors are very small, as entries for this sort of cottage doesn't have to be imposing. It is okay to bow a bit while entering! The main door is an old one pre-dating minifigures, while the balcony door and the door under the tower (mostly hidden on photos) are brick-build, and unable to open. There isn't many choices for beautiful and interesting door designs so I tend to brick-build them. Inside, there are mostly basic stuff - small table with candle, armchair, legless bed on the gallery, wood-powered stove, the fireplace... The stairs are presumably on the "other" side of this house, cut in half. Adding a ladder for the sake of it didn't feel interesting enough.

 And of course, the figs! This is the cottage of dreams, so on the balcony, enjoying the view and breating fresh air there are me (bearded and all) and my partner Pinja!

This is it for the Villa Korpkuusi! Next up a character, OR another, even bigger house!

-Eero.

Bartakha

This big fellow has been waiting to be posted for some time. It was build as a part of local, bottom-up grassroot level story development project in November. Build day was traditional "one day with the usual tweaks on next morning" type of thing. He turned out being more serious build than I first intented. Not 100 % serious, but not completely joke neither. Car hoods make pretty nice biceps, right?

He's named Bartakha and he serves sweet drinks in pub and nigh club The Definitive Hazel Grouse, which he owns with his partner Kinlika. His species is Rigelian Vatuka, and he wears Vatuka Kanohi mask (they're like usual kanohi masks, only harder). His name is a pune or a play of words on him owning the bar AND the bartakha moustache on his Vatuka Kanohi. He's a friend of Guardian, Taguna and Deputy Fuzchel. He is an ex-pirate but isn't everyone though? He once took part on Artakha lookalike contest, but was banned for his main colour was apea green instead of masentava green and he had a staff, accidentally. The contest was won by Artakha himself, as everyone else were banned too. He has clumsily big hammer, unuable for any sort of arts and craft. He uses it to hammer badly behaving customers out of The Definite Hazel Grouse.

That's what he is. As a build, he was sort of comeback to Bionicle pieces, as this is couple of months older than Botar. It was "easy comeback" as this wasn't super serious, and uses lot of System; finally got use for those car hoods, too. The arms are tad too short (but think at least) and the fingers fall of all the time (but they gleam nicely). The feet are dull, being only dark bley too, but I quite like the legs. And I'm happy with the hammer, that has wrought iron flames on the back and metallic silver rim inside. Managed to use Ninjago dark pearl grey container piece, too. I think it fits Bionicle aesthetics well. 

Next up maybe Discworld, or some architecture; not sure yet but I've got few finished models and one big thing down the pipeline.

-Eero