KPOP Demon Hunters

 Once again the year passes. My 2025 was less proficilic in number of builds than 2024; this was mostly due to the process of buying a new home and renovating it to fit out needs, which took large chunck of my free time in January-February. Furthermore, I spent plenty of time working on a yet unpublished architecture MOC that premiered in an exhibit in October. With 17 posts, 2025 was the most quiet year of Cyclopic Bricks. But I'm not worried about it. I think I made plausible MOCs and I still have several unpublished works "in store" for 2026. Plenty of new ideas, too.

Speaking of ideas, I built this KPOP Demon Hunters with LEGO Ideas in mind and it is already published in there, gaining the support: Click here and you can support it with Lego account. KPOP Demon Hunters seems to be very popular; the film is good; and above all, the characters designs are peak, just right up my alley with their brights colours and flowing flocks of hair and well-defined silhouettes. The Ideas page has more text on the model, and I will not re-publish them here.

Why ideas, then? Lego seems to be more and more interested in character model sets these days. Recently, I reviewed the upcoming 76344 Iron Man Mark 3 and 21361 Gremlins – Gizmo and part reviewed 75398 C-3PO, all of which are very good, remarkably improving over older character set designs. However, the "realistic" ouvre still lacks elegant feminine characters. Are they more difficult to design? Or riskier to sell? I do not know, but the popularity of Hunters, if one such franchise would sell, it would be this. With the Ideas project, I offer my own insights and experience on how to design them.

The task in hand was not easy and still has some dissonances - and I think that's OK as the model would, in any case, go through the heavy grinder of the set design process. I avoided illegal techniques, as especially stud-to-pin-hole connections are very common in my MOCs. The eyes are still "standard" minifig hand-eye "Eero Okkonen heads" to give my signature to them, or more importantly, as I don't know any better options. I think printed alternative would work (and make the different characters to stand out form each other) but I had no skills nor hardware to do them. Also, I used only contemporary parts in existing colours, which contrasts with most Ideas projects that use digital bricks. Though, to be honest, the lightsaber blade and skeleton arms have not appeared for 8 years or so... But I'm sure they can be replaced with some more modern parts.

The trickier aspect is the stability. C-3PO and Iron Man are relatively fixed, and similar approach could work here. For example, the new slighty angled Technic connectors such as Angled #7 168.75° (4450) enables more finesse in the posing while still keeping the models sturdy.

But I didn't do so. I can handle the truth, or, figures that require sturdy hand. The first image here shows the intended main posing, based on the dynamic promo image. But the figures are poseable to enable me having more fun with them. I like posing my builds and finding out what they can do and how much emotion I can convey with them... Being able to post DIFFERENT images of the model also makes promoting the project more adequate, both for me and the audience. This also forced me to experiment with sturdy but legal connections: I used T-bar/1x2 round plate connections thorough. They're not perfect, but the images here demonstrate their stability.

Here are some insights on the single characters:

 

Rumi: I built Rumi first and bottom-up, that is, I began with the boots working my way upwards. Rumi's shoulders are unusually wide to capture the silhouette with the rad yellow jacket. To make the posing nonetheless natural, I added some joints in the middle of the torso - using design I initially designed for Mira. The hip joint can also slide slightly upwards to enable movement of the upper leg. I'm quite happy with the hair, which uses T-bar joints to carry its own weight. The neck has extra additional joint, too; in total, Rumi has more joints than my usual figures. Furthermore, I wanted to bling up Rumi using metallic silver parts to represent the zippers and jewelry. I'm very happy with the knees.

 PS: There's way more pictures of Rumi here as I want to post this before midnight and I have too many files...

Mira: I had strong vision of Mira and this follows it quite faithfully. The torso has mixel joint to allow some dynamic posing. I later adjusted it lower to work out naturally. The polearm is a bit difficult, as the bar sturcture always bends a little with the weight of the blade. It connects to the back also. Mira's knee joints are somewhat superficial as the tight skirt doesn't allow much leg movement backwards or forwards. But I'm rather happy how the skirt looks like. And I'm very happy with the shirt print - the cherries don't quite read WON'T MISS but the overall look is quite similar! Balloon panels were natural fit for the hair. You can spot some broken clips on them, too... Mira has such a great colours to start with. I'm also happy with the pattern on the tall boots, though I was unable to fit in the zippers.

Zoey: The bare arms were difficult without illegal techniques, but I managed quite well. I'm rather happy with the top, which includes some angled pieces; unfortunately, I was unable to capture the flower pattern - I chose dynamic shaping over details. The trousers include some 45 degree angled sturctures, but the are sturdy and legal. The braces (suspenders) cause some issues with posing; alternative would have been some cloth elements, or even Dots bracelets, but I preferred this brick-built design as more interesting. The knives are unaccurate in shape, but this simple "design" allowed me to have three spread out in each hand without any unneccessary clunkiness. I'm quite happy with the shoes, and the "flaps" (tongues?), the round 1x1 plates with clips, help supporting the poses. 

Midnight in 6 minutes! See you on the other side, and if you like the project and have Lego account, support it! Thank you for 2025!

-Eero. 

Starboard Admiral

This is just a "free build" character - not intended for any contest, article nor similar. It seems that I haven't had many such builds this year. That isn't really an issue, but occasionally it's nice just to do something for yourself. I was inspired by the bright pink petal pieces from the pink roses bouquet. Colour scheme of pink, dark blue and white felt pleasing, suggesting something with authority but carrying a modern twist. So the character turned out to be a startship admiral. 

I toyed with the interface of modern and classical, with the fast popsicle goggles, plastic body armour and pink colour suggesting the former and gold details, long coattails and long gloves suggesting the former. I got to finally use those Friends horse blanket pieces on the legs. Their closed rear end is always a bit difficult, but I think the knees turner out alright. I think the goggles are the defining detail here, as eyes always draw attention. I'm also very happy with the large hair. The upper legs are modified version of a older standard that I've used many times. Here, I updated it with a couple of new round curved slopes. The golden handcuff detail is another successful one. The bright pink opening on the shoulders, made with the thin mudguard pieces, took some extra effort, but is worth it; that and the knees aside, the biggest challenge was somehow the lenght of the torso (and the general proportions). I believe the first version was a stud too short in relation to the limbs.

In many ways, this is a "standard" build of mine, without any revolutionary ideas or techniques. It's nice to do something casual every now and then. 

-Eero. 

 

Cat Brawler

 

I built this character for my New Elementary article on Lilo & Stitch set Angel - which I don't like as a set design piece but which has some really nice bright pink pieces. The process on this model was certainly an unusual one, and I think the model is quite unusual, too. I first build the upper legs and the hips, reveling in those recolours. And I though it would be just another human character with fashionable pink trousers (and maybe some other pink garments too, or maybe a bright green jacket). But it didn't. I wanted to use the thin 45 degree macaronis, which were to most interesting pieces in the set, and I couldn't find a good use for them on usual human character. Pink hair, maybe, but pink hair with pink clothes wouldn't have stood out very well.

This took a sci-fi turn when I returned to work on it. First, I made the sleek boots with sort of okobo shoes, festooned with some bow ties. I still didn't know where I was heading. I still had to find out how to use the macaronis. I wondered if I could make some uncanny tentacle things, but that didn't proceed. Instead, I made a tail inspired by our cats. And with the cat tail theme emerged the rest of the model in very fast, straightforward process. 

Aside the tail, the bulky shoulders defined a lot, giving this a Samus silhouette (but with a long tail). Those big eye prints, asymmetrical with the other one closed, are pretty challenging pieces - but here I think the asymmetry works well, being more of an feature than a bug. I'm particularly happy how the black frames crop the shoulder pads. That aside, pink petal pieces made a nice pair of paws (albeit fragile ones). The head was made in a spur of a moment, combining Samurai X sticker from Ninjago with a petal piece, originally designed to be the face plate of super hero action figures. I like the cyberpunk uncanny feel of this combination, spiced up with the cute bow-decorated ears. Posing helped to establish the character.

-Eero.

Brown Lands Ranger

This was a fast last-weekend entry for Palikkatakomo's Monochrome (actually not monochrome) contest. We had two contests running side-by-side, and I had already completed my entry for the other one (I'll post it here later for weird reasons). I felt an obligation to make something for the other contest as well as I usually like to pay some attention on the colours of my MOCs; limiting to one gradient was an interesting challenge, as such. I had already done a model of that sort for Summer Joust in 2022, though. My small efforts were rewarded this time as I got the second place and the Plum Blossom set (I had reviewed it for New Elementary last year, but another one doesn't hurt).

I had some brief ideas of using green to make some sort of earth/plant creature, probably as a somewhat two-dimensional painting type. I have lot of green plant pieces as I havent built many green landscapes lately, and they're difficult to utilise in character builds in large masses. I abandoned the idea, though. Instead, I ended up using the vast palette of different browns - one of them is the skin colour here, included free of charge - with the actually plausible idea of camouflage. The jump to Tolkien-themed ranger associated to the notion of Brown Lands west of Morannon was a short one. Rangers are cool, and I find myself liking Aragorn more and more as years pass (though this is not him). 

The hood is an old tablescrap originally intended for the Death (of Discworld) years ago, in black. I thought it was best not to preserve that any longer. The dark brown beard is associated with Numenorean complexion - naturally I could not make this one bearded - and a simple serious expression felt fitting for this figure. I used more dark brown to add a simple leather armour detailing to the dark tan tunic, while the mudguard shoulderpads help to make the silhouette more heroic. The joints are made completely with brown pieces, evincing the pleasantly vast selection of pieces in these earthy colours. 

Themetically, this has more than few similarities with one of my Palikkatakomo contest entries of last year - Vainolaista vastaan built for the medieval diorama contest.  Both feature a down-to-earth warrior with a bow and arrow; though here I added a sword instead of a spear, as that felt more natural for a ranger fighting orcs of Mordor that Finnish iron-age hunter. The bow, while having some similarities, is a tad more "civilised" with S-curve near the tips. The quiver uses the same tech with the arrows.

The final tweak here was changing the trouser colour to dark brown. They were medium nougat at first, but that felt too 1970s-1980s, reminding me of the weird underparts Aragorn of Ralph Barkshi's animated Lord of the Rings and even He-Man. The dark brown legs were more clearly trousers and balanced the colour better - that was the point of the contest, after all. Finally, a patch of land with wretched plants demonstrated the camouflage attire's function.  

-Eero.