Palutena (3)

A new version of Palutena was on my short list for 2022 and Palikkatakomo's digital scene contest was a good opportunity to build her. I've made two version in the past, the first in 2015 and the second as a part of Iron Builder in 2017. After five years, the previous version felt mostly decent - except for some messy arms, silly staff end and dried-out rubber bands on the sock. What I wanted for a new version was larger scale - specifically rock'n'roll scale of Zinnia Superfuzz and such - and actual posing possibilies; both of the old ones were static statues with some arm posability. I knew it would not be a easy feat: Palutena has a long hair and a long, asymmetrical dress. 

Brick-built dresses are static and hard, and don't allow much movement for legs. On more static dress-wearing characters I tend to build only the ankles sticking out under the hem; or when aiming for movement, I build thin upper legs unseen under the skirt. On Palutena, the left leg was visible and had to be complete, white the other leg was visible only from the ankle downwards. In this case, both of the legs are "real legs" on usual five-stud wide hip joint, but the right leg is much thinner to fit there. The skirt itself is a bold construction, as it had to look natural and flowing, while being thin enough to fit the legs inside. The second layer with its red trim didn't help. My solution was to make it study enough with some Z brackets and SNOT pieces, make the side panel angled with an old car roof joint, and make the whole dress thing swivel like a pendulum on a two-sided pin joint above the hips. You can observe this on the photos - the 1x2 wedge curved slopes under the bust are hardly ever on line. The upper torso (one stud under the bust and upwards) has a turning joint too. I think this combination works quite well, giving the torso sculpture-like aesthetics, varying on different poses. In the end it's not as fragile as I feared. It took a lot of engineering.

The belts on the dress were another embuggerance. The 2015 version had rather unsatisfactory solution of brown bricks on a string. The pneumatic hoses of 2017 looked better, and I tried them here, but they were too thin for this bigger scale - and also way too short. The original plan was to use the zipline pieces (one is used on the sock), but they were even thinner, more like a string than a leather belt. I ended up going with bow/arch pieces on reddish brown. Definitely a more Lego-like solution than any of the others, but the scale is pretty good. I had to use 1x2 round plates to get the measures flexible enough, and there the golden... things are denser than they should be - the open studs looked too severe. I took plenty of liberties with the knick-knack, again including a saxophone.

The dress and the belts wasn't the biggest challenge here; that trophy goes to the shoes. The shoes! The first version had Mixel ball joint ankles, that enabled one-stud-wide feet. The shoes were bulging as the sides were 1x4 double curved slopes... and the were fragile as hell. The model got destoyed several times while standing on them, and thus I had enough and replaced them with sensible sturdy ones based on 2x2 ball socket bricks. I was afraid that I didn't have the right pieces in dark brown, but it worked out in the end, with some caveman 1-1/3 pin SNOT to connect the heels. I also discovered that a joint of old style ball joint + old type 1x2x3 slope with open stud + bar inside for reinforcement is very strong. This makes a 1x2x3 slope a viable lower leg option, as long as the stud is open! The shoe design is not as faithful as the first thinner one, but at least it keeps together. And doesn't bulge.

The rest wasn't actually a piece of cake, but got easier after the shoes. The arms are nothing revolutionary, but I did in fact redesign the right arm after the Smash Bros scene shoot, so they appear a bit different; this added some much-needed friction to the elbow while also making the wrist sturdier. I'm rather proud with the neck connection - a golden round shield piece is embedded there, with the handle hidden inside the upper torso. The hair is combination of brigh green (on the head) and green (the... ponytail, or whatever) pieces. Bright green is closer to the SSBU model, and I had some sweet pieces like Ninjago blades and clip-claws for the bangs, but I didn not have pieces to make all of it in bright. I think the result looks pretty good, the big lick of hair being clearly on the background. The hair was also reworked after the scene shoot, as it kept falling apart and I got enough of that. I also included the round part of the halo, as the model looked incomplete without it; the wing parts of halo were omitted for being too heavy.

Wario

I chose Wario as the second fighter for my Super Smash Bros. creation and contest entry after finishing Palutena, and the scale was determined by it; Wario's nose would be in level with Palutena's stomach but he would be much wider! Actually my Wario is slightly too small, but hopefully not too much to look wrong. He's quite large character build actually, measuring 15 and 3/5 studs/modules/units wide. I began the building with the lower section of his torso, utilising plenty of SNOT with magenta colour that has became pleasantly common. 3x3x2 quarter-domes helped to capture Wario's round shapes. The legs are fixed things to support the weight; they were connected with magenta 2x2 jumpers at first, the stud into a Technic hole, but I replaced them with red 2x2 tiles with pin for more stability; the red doesn't seem to jump out too much.

Up from these the things got more compicated. Ironically, I had lot less yellow than magenta to work with. I also had to make Wario's thick arms' shoulder joints belivable and wihtout any major gaps - never an easy feat! The solution, that uses yellow cylinder pieces, is not perfect, but at least it something different from what I usually do... there is a ball joint hidden behind it, enabling limited array of movement. The joint is a bit too visible on the back (where the joint looks unfinished anyway, gorrammit); I wish they made the piece, which got updates recently, in more colours.

The neck joint was another bugger. Head tilts in general give plenty of character, so Wario has a double neck joint using Mixel cup-ball limb piece. It doesn't have obviously enough friction for the heavy head, so it had to be supported by the yellow shirt... which leads into some chaotic balancing issues! It's all matter of luck in the end, but I think the posture is fine on these pics. Lot of anger and tears was put into it, I tell you.

The head was... interesting. I haven't build many "caricature" characters with exaggerative facial features. A punk I built for Parts Festival springs into mind, but that was 5 years ago. It was fun though - I got to angle macaroi eyebrows and build eyeballs and teeeeth... The final result is not horribly sturdy, but it's more stable than it looks. I'm particularly happy with the 'stache, made of robot hands, and the boat stud tongue in the dark red canopy mouth.

-Eero.

Super Smash Bros.

 Hihoy. I mentioned some bigger projects on the last post, and here's the second biggest! This was built for my local LUG Palikkatakomo's "Digital scene" contest, scoring me the winning position with a decent margin (thanks to voters). The idea sprung (naturally) from buying Switch and SSBU in January (the plague seemed to be going on still, and we wanted some additional fun at home). Of course, I've played plenty of Smash Bros. before, with friends' consoles and games. Never owned it though - I've only ever had Game Boy Micro before!

Controlling the wide variety of characters is a great inspiration for building, and my previous creations from SSB range include Samus, Samus, Samus, Samus, Dedede and Robin. Palutena gets her third iteration here - I've always liked the design; the first one (with rather special eyes) was built in 2015 and the second one, with more streamlined but still static nature, in 2017 for my Iron Builder against Jonas Kramm. New version of Palutena was on my short list for 2022 so it felt natural to include it in the contest entry. I chose Wario as the second character. Foremost because I like playing Wario, and Wario is cool - but also because the sheer stylistic difference between these characters was fun and illuminated the variety of the fighter roster! I had also wanted to build a proper Wario (wahahahaa) for years, and now I finally had enough magenta for his overalls. (Purple would probably have been closer, but magenta doesn't look bad, and there isn't much old purple around.) I'll publish separate articles for the character models soon.

 

 

I wanted to build Palutena in the same "rock and roll scale" with Valerie Orion and such to achieve a good level of detail, and it also made the scale of the scene very big! I believe it's the biggest character build scene I've ever built, surpassing The New Shogunate from 2017. If I counted right this measures exactly 100 studs (units, modules) wide whereas Shogunate is 94 studs wide. I did not think it would end up so large... and I ever visioned having four fighters in the beginning! I'm happy I settled in two. Battlefield was chosed to be the stage on the very early stage. I did not want to associate the scene with any other game than Smash, and Final Destination would have been too much about wild background visuals, too big and striking the be build. Battlefield had some background visuals, Stock Fantasy Game stuff mostly, but enough the give the scene some depth and context. I ditched the additional platforms for clarity; the scene didn't need or fit them.

The ground of Battlefield is something between light bley, tan and dark tan. I didn't want to scene to be too grey, and tan would have looked a bit odd with the same skin colour on the characters. I had pretty good inventory of dark tan tiles (stressing the "had") so it was a natural choiche; I also added some worn-out dark purple areas on the sides. The bluish crystal thing on the bakcground could have been larger, but I that was all I had in these trans-blue hues; there should be plenty of car windscreens of my childhood collection in Joensuu though, out of my reach! The stone formations were duller to construct (I did not have much interest on building them) but I guess they're alright. I think them being taller than Wario adds some three-dimensionality to the scene. The orange-gradient banner was fun little build though, and I managed to include a little Smash logo to it. I think it balances the colours nicely. Other than it I wanted to keep the background colours down-to-earth and muted to make a contrast with the characters. Regular green appears only in Palutena's hair, while the scenery had dark green, sand green and masses of olive green. Most of the background elements are also behind the base. This made it possible to angle them freely, and also emphasized the idea of them being in the different "reality layer" - as in the game, the fighters can't reach them.

 

 The contest was about a scene, and Smash Bros. naturally depicts characters battling each other. How physical would that contact be? I wanted both of the characters work a character builds on their own right, so the postures had to be somewhat neutral. I also felt that having the literally on each other's throats would have made the scene hard to read. I'm also relative sure that "middle-hit" posing would have been near impossible to balance without additional supports - and I generally want to avoid those on character builds. So the battle is somewhat rigid and not so dynamic that it could have been; but depicts two fighters from the game, both making moves from their set; Wario performinh down tilt where his hand and pointing index finger become large. Palutena answers with side-B, explosing light, but the effect doesn't fit the battlefield, or probably the starting lag is still going on! I found the exaggerated proportions of Wario's hand fun, though I also made him normal left hand, too. I first made a big fist for side smash, but the posing didn't quite work. More of this on the character posts, soon.

 

-Eero.

Dwarf statue from archives + Exhibit time!

 So it's been about three months from my last post. No worries - I am quite okay. I've been building on the usual pace, only my projects have been big and time consuming, or they have been part of upcoming New Elementary articles, or contest entries... What I have in line right now are:

- a WIP of a 64x96 stud modular building with some interior (!!!)
- an finished entry for @palikkatakomo contest
- four finished models for New Elementary + 2 WIPs
- a small build that is a slightly militaristic, in a humorous way, and it didn't felt right to post it now as Russia is invading Ukraine

This model is not new, however. It was build in early 2014 or late 2013 and was a part of my dwarf fortress in Palikkatakomo's modular castle layout in Model Expo 2014. The fortress was mostly wrecked in its cardboard box during the train journey back home. It was not a big deal as I was not that happy with it; however, I kept the statue for possible use in a future model and it stayed in my parents' home for all these years. You can find the original fortress in these photos from the aforementioned exhibit.

The statue was inspired by the statues at the gate of Erebor on the Hobbit films, but it was never intented to be a direct copy; I was not able to build it in sand green, so trying to copy the exact thing would've felt a bit unneccessary. The posing is very similar though. In all it's a pretty good model, for being 8 years old, but I'm nevertheless happy my creations are more colourful these days. The photos are black and white, but as the model uses only grey parts, that isn't a big deal.

 

And the second topic - I'm currently having a personal exhibit on Koilliskeskus Library in Tampere, called Osa-aika (part-time):

 

It's two big glass cabinets, with mostly character builds but also a couple of buildings. There would have been space for more models, but that was all Pinja and I were able to haul by bus!

 The models in the exhibit are:

The Luggage (2015)
Porco Rosso (2016)
Samus Aran (2016)
Zinnia Superfuzz (2019)
Master Yupa (2019)
Gwathlo of the Order of the Morning Star (2019)
Fresh Fruit Not Good Enough For You, Eh? (2020)
Samurai of the Blood Moon (2020)
Magadril of Dandelions (2020)
Senior Wrangler (2021)
Tam the Enchanter (2021)
Hai Spektrum (2021)
Villa Korpkuusi (2021)
Doreen Inverardi (2021)
Archchancellor's Catch (2021)
Rincewind (2021)
Virva Staccato (2021)
Inadvisedly Applied Billiard (2021)
Valerie Orion (2021)
Windle Poons (2021)
Queen Namárië (2021)
Woolly Mammoth (2021)
Makuta of Yuurei (2021)
Mesilinna (2021)
Dustsettles (2021)

I also had an exhibit at Messukylä Library during January, featuring the complete speeder bike race series:

However, it's long gone now. The Koilliskeskus exhibit is open until the end of March. Also my exhibit on my local Hervanta Library is still on so check it out if you haven't done yet (and happen to move around in Tampere).

-Eero.