MOC: Toa Ruki

Toa Ruki is a semi-important Klaanon character, but she hasn't appeared in the story lately, because she got imprisoned on the Nazorak Empire's battleship SS Ironwing in 2011 or something and has been in captive even since. She is a Toa of Water with little or no battle experience, as she has trained to use her elemental powers for healing purposes; A classic fantasy class healer clerk chick here. She used to work as the reception of Bio-Klaani before the roaches but her behind the bars. Now you know that.

I've build Ruki before, in 2011. The MOC wasn't perfect, of course, but it was quite good back then. The upper leg design used here have been in continual use ever since, last used in Mace-Bearer. The old Ruki remained built for years and outlived most my creations, until I got tired of it few months ago. The shaping was just outdated and odd. So started to mod and build an entirely new torso using LUGBULKed Space Kitty tails to create wave-like shapes similar to movie version of Hahli.

The torso came out pretty nicely, and I left the rest of the MOC unchanged, photographed it and show it to some other Klaanon writers. I got some honest and essential feedback: The old legs were way too thick for the new torso, making the proportions very odd, and I myself highly disliked the old arms. I left Ruki standing (lying) on my WIP table until today. I worked the whole morning/midday on this, remaking the limbs entirely and redoing most of the already reworked torso. I also gave Ruki a little writing pad as she's the reception worked who likes well-done paperwork.

Technical details? The shoe design is altered from Japanese builder TAN, used on several of my creations. The lower legs are purely SYSTEM now (except for ball joints) as the old design was too thick. The Kiina armor skirt was always there, but I buffed it up with two more pieces (bricklinked a few, I like those a lot). The black battle droid fingers are not the best option, but I still haven't got any dark blue or blue ones and black skeletons arms are still quite rare. That's it, pretty much.

-Eero

  

MOC: Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson

 Yeah, back in the Discworld again! Now it's time for an Anhk-Morpork City Watch character, Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson, a man raised by dwarves and the first voluntary recruit in the Night Watch. Carrot is six-feet-six-inch tall and his dwarvish name is Kzad-bhat, The Head-banger. He's honest, good-natured and honourable, despite the city's best effort.

Building Carrot began shortly after a LUG event taking place in Imatra three weeks ago. I got some flat silver 1x4 double curved slopes, which were perfect for Carrot's chestplate; He always keeps it shiny and clean, that decent he is. Commander Vimes's armor was dark bluish grey, as he prefect a bit old and beaten uniform, so flat silver on Carrot achieved a nice contrast between the two characters.

I also gave Carrot a dark red cape to make him look brighter and more heroic (mind you, Vimes can be pretty heroic too). Other reason might be that I had already used all my reddish brown 12x4 wedges.

Carrot doesn't have sleeves, as the visibility of his muscular arms is often mentioned in the books. He is also described wearing sandals (whereas Vimes wears second-hand boots) but I settled with the open-toe boots established by artist Paul Kidby. They are similar to Vimes's, if a bit richer in color. The leather skirt is almost the same, if a bit longer.

Carrot's head isn't the most interesting one I've build as he's clearly clean-shaven. But he needed an encouraging smile, so I had to meddle with some SNOT. I've used 1x3 arch as a smiling mouth before in Bofur, but back then I could hide the connections behind the moustache. This one was a bit trickier but worked out alright.

Carrot also has his "kingly" sword, that is only a plain and very sharp piece of metal; It's ultimately non-magical, which is odd, because the magical background radiation in the Discworld makes almost everything at least somewhat magical.

-Eero

MOC: Mace-bearer

Sorry for inactivity during these couple of months. I've been working, but don't get that wrong - I've also built a lot! I have been working on modular buildings for our LUG show at Model Expo 2016 in April. I have five buildings to do, three of them are mosty done, and then there's an additinal stand-alone house for a contest. It's somewhat refreshing to work on minifig scale, but don't worry, I've had time for some character builds too... Here's the first, though there's another, completely different one coming soon.

Who is this? No idea! But the idea was to build a muscular warrior with a spiked mace, using dark green with those glorious speckle-black copper KK2 armor pieces. I think this is a female character, being of the same "theme" than builds like Cyira the Paladin and Annya. But I though that hell, no need to underscore the gender this time: Let's make this somewhat realistic costume to wear when swingin around a spiked mace. This decision was done when I plugged those armor pieces to lower legs. Otherwise the legs are my (boring) old type 1 female legs back from 2011 or something like that. Of course there's the long hair, but men can be have long hair too (Hippes, for example, and heavy-guvs. And cavemen). The hair's almost like a mane here, but it adds nice dynamics to the build, right?

The head overall was the challenging part. I liked the use that awesome KK2 mask part (Was is Karzon? Or was Karzon the yellow dragon fellow? Don't remember them KK2 guvs). The first version has also one of those shoulder/knee armor parts as a helmet (I have five) but it didn't fly... It was hard to connect properly and didn't really look good. It also had more samurai-like horns that weren't that good neither. These parts feel off eventually. For long this version had the bat-cross thing stolen from Moko's ancient minifigs on the forehead, but it was moved into the dramatic-looking brazier; sometimes simpler's the better.

This was a fast build. I made the legs in tomorrow morning and 90 per cent of the rest in couple of hours the same evening. This was finished today, though it was much slower progress than on yesterday. But around six hours, I'd say, on a model that is based on nothing. Pretty good.

-Eero

MOC: Foraois

So, here we are, at the end of "Four Seasons" project, with the summer personification, Foraois (Forest in Irish). Concepts behind this one varied a lot; there's pretty much nothing from the first sketches here (I rarely sketch creations, but here I did few drafts). At the beginning there was sort of a harvest motif, with some crop, sun and possibly a sickle, but didn't fly. There was even a cornucopia idea, something that was at some point going to be on Lingeán, but that was too close to the sprout feet so I ditched the whole harvest thing. Harvest has never been anything I've associated with summer; I've always lived on a countryside, but not near fields; It's forest all around. This is Finland, after all, too northern for proper farming. So I went for long trumpet-style dress and a birch motif. Nationalist art, what?

I wondered the colors for some time. Green would have been logical, but I already used it on Lingeán. Yellow or bright light orange would have been nice too, but somehow too close to the skin color, and I wasn't sure if I could have hoarded the parts in those colors. So I ended up with white, as birch bark. Birch by far is the most common leafy tree species in Finland, and the green leaves on them is probably the most apparent sign that summer is, after all, here after long dark winter.

Not now though, these was slight snowfall when I photographed this.

I build the dress in black at first to see which kind of bricks I need; My white curved part collection isn't too big. So I have (so far headless) WIP with 78% same design (upper torso is different with single strap, and the arms are bare), and it's actually the original. I bought white parts from two Bricklink stores, most from Finland and some from France. The dress has some SNOT, as the lower part is identical on both front and the back. 90s hinged car roof are excellent for this kind of  180 degree plate SNOT!

Black is secondary color here. It's not very summer-y color, I think, but birch branches are black, and hell it's easy color to work with. Naturally there would also be some green. I was thinking of doing a sort of a scarf or a shawl with it, but they developed into something bigger and snazzier. Autumn and Spring girls had rather ordinary clothes, but Forfhuarú had those striking ice wings, and I though it would balance things to give summer one something extraordinary. The leaf snakes were even crazier at first, but gravity pulled them down after a while, so I had to make them sturdier.

Head was (almost) the last part. I knew I'd make black hair (winter had white) and bat wings worked rather nicely. The rest was harder. Ehlek's spikes used in Lady Liberty-like manner saved the case, also being a note to Forfhuarú's icy crown. But it also caused problems: It kept pulling the head halves apart. I actually took a set of photos in same session with Ridcully, but the head looked bad on almost all of them, and I reworked it a bit: I made the structure sturdier, loosened the crown and added some hair, including the bangs. It improved a lot!

I naturally also made a base. This one is similar to Fómhar's leaf base, but more organized, creating a star-like shape. I also added some lever-base-boosted flowers to it, but they too are organized to the corners. But then I felt that it wasn't enough, and the character needed something else, probably an animal friend! I though of a fox or hare, but didn't feel like building another mammal, so I went for a bird to sit on a finger; a little posing aid. It was a White Wagtail at first, but the grey color felt a bit bland, and I went with a magpie instead. Magpie is a very common bird around here, but a beautiful one, with its dark green wing marks and the long tail. They are also very clever and playful animals, definitely worth being in this MOC.

These series, along with dozens of other MOCs, will be on display on "Leiki LEGOilla 2016" event at Imatra, Eastern Finland, during this weekend. So if you happen to be around, take a visit; It's at Imatran Kylpylä (spa). There's sale area and everything!

-Eero

MOC: Mustrum Ridcully revisited

 I've written numerous times to this blog that I often come back to my MOCs and mod them. Seeing them on a shelf from day to day make you see things on them that could be done better. Sometimes I even end up building the whole character again: I feel like I want to have the MOC on display, but it just seems completely outdated... Last time this happened on Balin, my favorite of The Hobbit's dwarves, and now it happened on Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully, my favorite Discworld character.

The old version had pretty good face, and I liked the crossbow and hat. But somehow it felt unnaturally stiff, and was too tall compared to my other Discworld builds; that also made the hands feel tiny. I based my approach on clothes, drawing lot from Paul Kidby's art as usual (I didn't have his Discworld art books when building the old version), making Ridcully have elaborate waistcoat, dark red jacket, brown overcoat and wizardy robe. Sir Terry gave us mixed descriptions on Mustrum's clothing, and I think this is quite pleasant compromise.

Probably even more important change was making the character more lively and less stiff. I made the beard hinged, so I could push the head a bit backwards; real beards are flexible. I also tilted the had (almost identical to the old one) a bit backwards using some Technic. The trousers are shorter and the boots aren't ridiculously big any more; I'm actually very happy with their overall shape. 3x3x3 cone is one of the best pieces there is.

The shoulders were hard. The old one used T-bar connection, usually pretty good technique, but I switched it to ball joints to increase mobility. Both 4x4 wedge slopes and frontal bits of the robe are jointed to enable posing the arms.

Ridcully still has his hunting crossbow, but also gave him a Staff with a Knob on the End. He doesn't use very much magic, but usually believes that six-feet oak staff is at least as efficient!

-Eero

MOC: Fury Road: Max and Furiosa

 V8! Valhalla! Witness me, bloodbag! Mediocre, Morsov!

Mad Max: Fury Road was amazingly breathtaking movie. It was, like, whee, super cool. Flaming guitars and all. I think it's the best film of 2010s, so far, though I naturally haven't seen every film released since 2010; This might also be the best film of 21th century, but comparing it to Lord of the Rings trilogy and Spirited away is a bit problematic (Porco Rosso is still the best film though). 

I think I started to make first version of Furiosa in June or July, month or two after seeing the film; But it didn't somehow work, the legs weren't poseable, they were just stiff like bricks. I knew from the beginning I'm going to build Max too - He's Mad Max, after all. First parts of Max (Head prototype and parts of the jacket) were build a month or two ago, simultaneously rebuilding most of Furiosa, and they were completed in a building fury last weekend.

Legs were overall the biggest challenge here; LEGO bricks doesn't give very good options for building human trousers that are poseable and natural. Fortunately both Max and Furiosa wear tight leather trousers, as baggy shapes are hard. They might be a bit robotic, but at least the posing makes the characters look a lot more natural.

The colors were interesting, too. Max's jacket and trousers look black in earlier films, but in Fury Road everything is covered in lot of dust so dark grey looked more accurate; Black is used only on Furiosa's undershirt and Max's harness. Both bleys and old greys are used together to create dirty look.

The clothing had enough details to make the building interesting. On Furiosa I'm particularly happy with the belts, where different browns add nice variety. The belt accessory with the steering wheel and the chains were nice touch too. Max's harness worn in the last third of the film includes lot of stuff and deemed lot of image browsing to get them right; The shoulder pad was always going to be the round CBBS add-on, a piece I love. Other things I like here is the dark tan minifig bag on the harness and the iconic leg brace on the left leg.

Max and Furiosa naturally needed some firepower to fight Immortan Joe's War Boys. Furiosa's sniper rifle was a obvious choice, but as it's impossible to make natural shooting stances with it, I also equipped her with a revolver (not based on anything particular, but there were lot of guns in the film). Max has a sawed shotgun, not used with the harness, but it was so iconic part of the character I couldn't miss it. And it is seen in the film, after all, just in a different scene.

I wonder if I should build Nux and Immortan Joe, too. I think I could. They both have their iconic look that would be interesting to catch in brick form. We'll see. But, until then, here was Max and Furiosa. I hope they weren't mediocre. What a lovely day!

-Eero