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Brickfilm: Jukolan Humppa

January 12, 2013, 11:16 am
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It's time to go back into basic LEGO business after my super-popular (at least on my standards) Big Daddy MOC that pretty much gave this blog six times more visitors that I had had on it whole history. Big thanks to everyone who blogged and commented.

But on a second thought, this isn't basic business neither. It's LEGO animation debut of Vuhvelituotanto, the very indie video production that consists of me and my friend (Known as Humppakeksi in LEGO community). We have done several short life action films, but this is our first video released online. Without further ado, be ready to some serious humppa!

So, that was it, Humppa of Jukola, song by Finnish humppa cover group Eläkeläiset, which has had some appearances in this blog before.As you probably noticed, the name of the game is alcohol. No, wait. I was saying that you probably noticed that we used my Humppa-Pub as a fake scene prop on the playing scenes. The adventurous orienteering prop was built in couple of hours using BURPs, baseplates and some plates and plant pieces to add detail.
 As I said, this is our animation debut. And I really mean it. Doing a LEGO animation is often said to be hard and time-consuming work, and we wanted to test the veracity of that rumor. We didn't do any test shots. Pretty much every pic taken is on this films. I had built the outdoor prop the previous evening, and Humppakeksi came here on the morning and we made the animating in two hours. When it comes to filming, we were ready for dinner before midday.
 Later on the same day we squeezed the pics into Monkeyjam and made the stop-motion clips. Neither of us had used that software before, but luckily it was rather easy to use despite the lags and bugs in it. Humppakeksi took the clips and made the editing on the next day on his computer. I guess he's lot better than me in that (and he always does that on our films). The video was done in two days. It was not especially hard or time-consuming.


Of course the quality of the animation is not the best possible, there is some fluctuation and lot of loop. The quality of the image isn't perfect eihter, but we don't have any expensive editing software and we do not download those illegally. The pics are taken on my Canon EOS 450D. A System camera isn't the most common tool on stop-motion videos, but it was the best one available. Just in case you wanted to know.

 This video was done for Finnish LUG Palikkatakomo's annual video contest. The subject was Voyage to Uncharted. We did it as a music video of Eläkeläiset's song for several reasons. Firstly, humppa is the best music genre ever. Secondly, we had got some requests for stop-motion humppa animations after our MOCs and we had the props ready. Thirdly there was a humppa song which lyrics were perfect for the contest's subject. You likely have no idea what they are singing, but it's about orienteering trip of demented old man who forgot the map, have no idea what the compass is, has a fragment in his skull and who broke his glasses. It's a cover of Finnish metal group Nightwish's Nemo. You can listen the full song here.

-Pate-keetongu, Vuhvelituotanto
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Poseable minifig arms

January 26, 2013, 7:52 am
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I've built lots of minifigs lately. Today morning I took photos of 21 minifigs. I took the pics outside, as the lightning is a lot better there. I tried to shoot some of them few weeks ago indoors, but the pics didn't work out. Luckily it was only -5C and clear weather. Finnish winter is dark and long (but very beautiful).
These figs are an example of poseable arm design I came up with one day. It may of may not have been done before, I don't know. It simply uses small snippets of pneumatic hose that can be connected to both mifig hands and torsos' arm holes. It's surprisingly sturdy design, especially with the old "empty" torsos.
I will likely use this technique on my upcoming MOCs and figs. It allows some more dynamic poses (I especially like the mafioso on the left) and also works as a purist option to V&A Steamwork's ingenious straight arms. Pneumatic hose isn't very expensive on Bricklink, so this isn't going to kill anyone's wallet. Feel free to use if you find this interesting.

-Pate-keetongu

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Heroes of Steam

January 29, 2013, 7:06 am
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There's a new Collectable minifigure series available, so I naturally made another steampunk figbarf! This time we have a traditional adventurous group of heroes from Victorian era.


Prof. Murdstone Fitzharris Melvin, inventor and user of revolutionary Remote Oral Communication Apparatus, ROCA. He calls it "cell phone" because of steam-thrust cell technology it uses. The apparatus is very light to carry around, as it weights only frankly 80 KG. It's a very handy tool when the party travels around the victorian world.



Dolores F. Hiney, one of the best gunslingers in Richmond. She's often referred as "Sister White Tender" by other adventurers, but actually she is more like a anti-tender. Hiney uses her trustworthy Pigeon-Giffor G17 musket she inherited from her mother and many different fiery cocktails named after famous Russian war-time politics. Being a excellent gunslinger, decent pilot and practical fighter, she an important part of the team. Hiney has a one weakness though: she knows nothing about cooling systems of steam engines.

 Professor Johanne Bowler Madill is the well-educated chemist of the group. She knows many potions and solutions, and carries a surprisingly big number of flasks and bottles in her two bags and the folds of her long dress. Nobody else of the group has even seen her legs, not even an ankle, so they think that she has a small trolley full of chemicals on which she stands. That would explain why she is two plates taller than everyone else!









Doktor Pahael von Knalli is the prolonged leader of Heroes of Steam. He has a pair of robotic lenses with many different devices and gadgets. His fashionable bowler has hidden circular saw on it (they have torn his suit, too... you know Monday mornings, they existed on the Victorian age too) and his rifle uses the newest technology available. Despite his old age Doktor still has very flexible limbs.








Maiden Selina B. Knalli is a beloved daughter of Doktor von Knalli. She's a rather flashy person, brilliant tracker and fearless adventurer. Selina especially likes jobs that include undercover missions, underworld pubs and pursuit on narrow alleys. Fortunately she has a father who's not too custodial or conservative in what comes to women's status on Victorian world. Selina's weakness is folk dance.











Thompson Esmond Hayes Jr., the unbelievable helipack-man, is a young gentleman with mind full of splendid (and mostly very dangerous) ideas and inventions. Thompson has quite a big beliefs of himself as a savior of young children and beautiful women. He's a big aficionado of rotor technology over rocket packs. Bunch of headless trailblazers is always better than those ugly smoke trails on sky, after all.



Egbert Breakey Flynn is a stereotypic muscular mechanic of the group. Excpectably he can fix pretty much everything that has cogs or valves on them. But the has an another side: Egbert is certifiably the best noughts-and-crosses player in the world. That's why he oftet carves a small grids with circles and crosses on the surfaces.

-Pate-keetongu
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MOC: Dwarf brothers Balin & Dwalin

February 2, 2013, 5:22 am
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 I've spend hours and hours of browsing pictures and concept art about The Hobbit movies during the passing year. It's a fantastic film (and luckily we have more to wait for) and has some incredibly cool designs. Here's couple of dwarves, Balin (fantastically portrayed by Ken Stott) and Dwalin (Badassly portrayed by Graham McTavish), old fighters and loyal friends and relatives of Thorin Oakenshield.

You may remember  Balin from the bust I made on December. I wanted to built the whole figure back then, but I thought that I wouldn't have enough dark red. But some time later I came up with an idea how to built those beautiful ornamental bits on his jacket using cheese pieces hold between 1x2x2 panels. It looked very good, so I couldn't resist building the rest of Fundin's son. The panels are Trans-black, so the cheese slopes used are normal red and DBley.
 The only movable parts are the fingers, but Balin is more of a counsellor that fighter anyways. He also has a boots with the same ski-slope motif than in his white beard. And yes, those are SW engine blocks used as the sleeves.


Dwalin was a lot harder fellow to build. He is quite of a fighter, the "Scary biker" of the dwarves, as actor Graham McTavish mentioned. I wanted to give him movable arms so I could pose him with his warhammer and axes. But the hardest part was letting go not ta the angled fur pieces on his shoulders. The battle droid arm  design was here from the start, I liked the pattern of mixed tan and dark tan pieces, but I tried couple of alternatives before this one. It's surprisingly hard to add odd-shaped angled parts to basic SYSTEM builds like this.

The weapons Dwalin uses were eather fun to build. The axes can be putted on his back.  They're quite simple, but I like their dwarven feel. the warhammer was a bit trickier one, as it has some shapes that are pretty impossible to capture with LEGO bricks, but I think I succeeded pretty well.

Dwalin's legs look quite small in these photos. Now I think I should have put them a bit further from each other, but it's also the angle of these photos which makes them look a bit odd. It's tricky to photograph these stiff SYSTEM figures with all that Bionicle stuff.

Pic for reference, taken from http://heirsofdurin.files.wordpress.com
Killing a dragon and reclaiming the lost homeland is not a job for pair of dwarves, so I promise there will be (at least one) more. More of that later. But it will have something to do with bad hearing and mixing up ravens and thrushes...

-Pate-keetongu

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MOC: Oin

February 4, 2013, 4:24 am
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 Dwarves do not arrive all-in-one packs, so here's Oin (portrayed by talented Kiwi actor John Callen) in your service, brave northern dwarf and pharmacist of Thorin Oakenshield's company.

This was, like Balin and Dwalin, an interesting character to build. I started with the head and beautifully braided beard. I got the handcuff idea previously, and I had to built this older gentleman just for use that design. I came out pretty well, I think. The basic shapes of the head are quite similar than on my previous dwarves, but I altered the nose and some other bit to make them look individuals.

Like Dwalin, Oin has movable arms. The shoulder joints are built using T-bar hinges (one of the best pieces ever) and elbows are ball joints. The hands have six points of articulation on each. I gave him tight fingers as he has fabulous knitted mittens on the movie.

Another part of the original idea was using "brick-bricks" on the woollen cardinal as the texture of the overcoat. I like the effect. The torso has quite a lot SNOT on it, as it it built studs facing on the both sides. It isn't the stablest build I have ever done, but stays intact pretty well. He has a belt like other dwarves and a grey scarf.

The boots were a bit challenging. They they have quite a flat and rounded shape which was hard to shape with my limited arsenal of oddly-shaped brown parts. Well, they are not especially flat, but at least they have round shape and those wool shreds on them.

The staff was interest, too. I made several concepts, but didn't have needed pieces for all of them. Now I think that the final design of the ends is a bit oversized, but at least the shape is right... I will change them a bit before the next exhibition or show.

I'm already building the next dwarf, the one who is vegetarian, but I might take some time before I can finish him. I'm not sure if I have enough pieces, but we will see that. I've already built the head, and that's usually the most fun and interesting part.

-Pate-keetongu

EDIT: Here's a reference pic:
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MOC: Toa Atya

March 1, 2013, 7:43 am
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 As you probably noticed, I built a Bionicle MOC after few-month break. Or actually just finished a WIP. This gal has been on my table all the way from last summer.

Toa Atya is a Toa of Water and leader of her small team. Or was before he committed a suicide for she couldn't kill her former rogue team member Toa Ämkoo. She's quite a tragic character and had a restrictive sense of moral.

I've build this character before, few years ago, with quite a bad results. It is based on This drawing by scary gentleman Don Delucci, who also created this character on Klaanon project. I liked the colours, gold and blue and splast of dark red on the cloth piece on hip. I had got some beautiful pearl gold pieces earlier when I bought Glatorian Tarix from flea market. I built the torso and arms few months ago, but got struck with the legs. But few days ago I realized I had got many pearl gold EF robot arms from somewhere and started to greeble a femur armour with them I quite liked the results.

 I wanted to make the high-heeled shoes blue, but realized that I didn't have blue Bohrok feet at all - What a gap in my Bionicle parts collection! I need to bricklink few some day. Useful bits. I also wanted to use more teal in this MOC, as there is one part on the chest armour, but didn't find any places to mess up with my very limited collection of that classic rare colour. But on the other hand, I like the color splash it gives.

-Pate-keetongu

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MOC: Anti-Pigeon Fighter

March 4, 2013, 6:58 am
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Steampunk -or dieselpunk, whatever- has sometimes no sense at all. This Anti-Pigeon Fighter-Ornithopter designed by Professor Marcellus Gartland Ostrich, whimsy gentleman and inventor. It's function is to eliminate the pigeons (Columba livia domestica) that commit acts of terror around London's House of Parliament.

Anti-Pigeon Fighter is a fast aircraft with rather light-weight hull and three engines which positions can be angled. To make the fighter agiler, it has no landing gear nor any sort of wheels that could be used to gain speed on the ground before take-off. Because of these absences, Professor usually begins his vendettas against pigeons from the Clocktower of Big Ben, and after he has shot as many little flying bastard as possible, he aims to the river Thames and makes a cool "landing" which includes very big cloud of mist and steam. Because of the wet nature of landing -okay, rivering- he always uses his Neptune scuba powersuit to walk through the pollution of Thames to get back to civilization. His suit and fighter are of course covered with thigh layers of varnish so contaminants don't corrode them away.

Anti-Pigeon Fighter is armed with four light and inaccurate cannons and one heavy machine gun with super-rigorous aiming mechanism. It has two magnifying glasses, on on the helmet and other on the gun which makes it possible for professor to count his victim's chest fluff before the strike.

-Pate-keetongu

PS. to animal lovers: I have nothing against pigeons, those grateful lords of mid-air.

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MOC: Imperial Steamguard Suspended Attack Monorail Gondola

March 19, 2013, 11:51 am
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 Hello dear readers, as you can see I'm back in one of my favourite themes, Steampunk, loaded with nonsense vehicles and cool goddamn longcoat Victorian officers. This "baby" is  Imperial Steamguard Suspended Attack Monorail Gondola for urban warfare in alternative history's giant steam capitals. It hangs under a singe rail like suspension railway. Yes, the long thing on the top of this MOC is the rail and not part of the MOC itself; I'd like to build some building to stuck the rail on, or probably a station with longer track, but didn't have enough pieces. Yet. The name also suggests a gondola lift, or a cable car, which have similar function.   
 So, this Attack Gondola clanks around on under the trackes between the buildings and fires enemy suspended monorails with its double Gatling guns. It of course makes no sense on strategical ways whatsoever, but as long as it's wacky and steam-powered, it fits well on a steapunk universe at least in my opinion. And there are always enemies to fight for.. What about suspended monorail pirates? Anarchy in the UK!

-Pate-keetongu

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MOC: Bifur

March 23, 2013, 9:41 am
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 It was nice to see that many people enjoyed my big Hobbit dwarf figures, so here's the fourth I've promised: Bifur, cousin of Bofur and Bombur, a toymaker dwarf portrayed by Kiwi talent William Kircher. Bifur has  remains of rusted orc axe in his skull and is rather odd fellow, but somehow very gentle fellow - and apparently vegetarian. He didn't have very big role in the first Hobbit movie, but he's got some sweet background activity is you look closely. There's a cool article in Tumblr about it.

Like the previous dwarves, Bifur was quite a fun build, having lot of interesting patterns. I made the head first, as the main idea of building this guy was the cheese SNOT on the beard (yes, he has snot on his beard, badum-tish) and mustache braids built using 1x1 round plates. The cheese pattern is similar to Balin's robe, though it is made in smaller space. I like how its diagonal line matches with the robe's pattern.

The robe was pleasingly easy to build. I luckily had enough dark tan slopes and 2x2 jumpers to make the pattern. It is also rather sturdy. The hardest part was to angle the knife correctly. It is done using ol' good T-bar, which are also used to make the shoulder joints. Elbows are basic 1x2 brick joints, sadly not dark tan but sturdy design.   I'm particularly glad of the use of barrels as bracers, as they are very similar to original. Fingers are same as Dwalin's, tan skeleton arms from Ninjago Skeleton Bowling.

Bifur is pegged with boar spear, long-bladed spear with great profile. Very easy tool to build - just some slopes, round bricks and awesome 4-bar-connector.


When it comes to future of my Hobbit dwarves project, I'd like to say few words. I like building these bearded fellows, but obviously my LEGO collection is limited. So, I'm not going to build the 9 waiting dwarves very soon, but might make some when I like to - and I can say I have some plans for Thorin II Oakenshield. But time will tell.

-Pate-keetongu



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MOC: Lady Liberty 3000

March 31, 2013, 6:46 am
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 Far on the future, the Statue of Liberty is replaced with gigantic mecha that fights for freedom and liberty and against tyranny and persecution.

(And that backstory of this build was invented in five seconds after I attached that barraki spine in that head and noticed that it looked like Lady Liberty's crown.)

As you have noticed, I built a big-scale Bionicle MOC after a half year's break. There is not any exciting backstory with this MOC. I guess it started with those heeled shoes; I first made the other one black and planned to build a MOC with inverted color halves, but didn't have correct pieces (the biggest grief of a LEGO builder) so I went for normal coloring instead. As those shoes seem like they are impossible to walk with, I decided to build a mecha, as most of my Bionicle MOCs are less mechanical and more organic characters. Or something, they all are plastic after all.

I had wanted to use those Insectoid wings, terribly underused and beautiful pieces, for a long time, and this seemed like a great opportunity. To match the big trans-blue areas, I added bits of trans-blue all around the MOC. There are, for example, minifig visors used as small pieces of armour on the arms. 

Photographing was pain. White models shouldn't be photographed on a white background, but I couldn't use very dark backdrop either, because the wings wouldn't have looked so good with it. I used plywood boards at first, but then used grey cardboard. They weren't very big, so the MOC is near the backdrop and these pics are a bit poky.

-Pate-keetongu
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MOC: Thorin II Oakenshield

April 3, 2013, 6:52 am
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 These dwarves keep coming! But here's one notable and noble one: Thorin II Oakenshield, son of Thrain. Thorin is Durin's heir, dwarf king in exile. He's a proud dwarf and determined to take back the Erebor and Kingdom under the Mountain, or at least some of his kin's old treasures.

Thorin, potrayed by talented Richard Armitage in Hobbit films, was such a fun dwarf to build because the amount of detail in his Costume.I started with the armour mail using dark blue jumper plates and 1x1 plates to create neat pattern with diagonal grid and square plates.

 Then there's dark blue coat and black furred overcoat, which edge's angle came out particularly nicely. I also like the shoulder's fur. I was afraid it would be very hard to do without entirely killing the movement of the shoulder ball joint (I had bad experiences with Dwalin) but it worked out quite well.

The arms gave an another chance to use some gimmicks. I'm especially happy with use of turntables (one of my favorite greeble pieces) ad the detailed bracers. Tan skeleton arms are optimal fingers, but sadly those were my last ones. Got to buy more from Bricklink.

I also built Orcrist, Noldorian sword that Thorin picks up from Troll Hoard. My version obviously isn't very sharp, but I think I captured the profile and handle's shape quite well.

I have no idea when I'll build the next dwarf. I have eyes for one left, but I'm doing a BL order someday during spring and get some dwarf material. We will see then.

-Pate-keetongu

 

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WIP: Bag End: Pantry

April 23, 2013, 9:51 am
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Yes, this project which I posted months ago is still under progress. Bag End, the homely home of Bilbo Baggins, has now got a pantry , along with some other new bits, but is still far from completed.

The pantry is quite simple. The design is based on a movie prop, though it is not exact copy. There's some wine (nearby as old as Baggins himself) for more gandalfic taste behind the big ale barrel. When I complete the roof (possibly detachable) I might add some vegetables and other greenish food hanging there. And some pillaging dwarves.

This project will get a serious boost when I buy the Bag End set, Unexpected Gathering, next weekend on Helsinki. There's Model Expo there, Northern Europe's biggest scale model exhibition with Finnish LUG Palikkatakomos's LEGO section measured 120 square meters and being a lot bigger than last year when we won the best model prize with Moducity, a big LEGO City. This year the city, now named Palikkala, will be bigger than ever before. And include my Humppa-Pub too. But more of that later.

-Pate-keetongu
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Report: Palikkatakomo at Model Expo 2013

May 4, 2013, 5:16 am
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Finland is rather small country, or at least the population is, but we have a strong LUG, Palikkatakomo, to build exhibitions and shows that seem to get bigger and bigger every year. We had this years biggest exhibition in Helsinki at Model Expo, Northern Europe's biggest scale-model event, and it was impressive.
The whole area. Note one of the Kortelainen Brothers as a size comparision.
Last year we won the Best of the Show award, so this time we got a much bigger area on the Expo. It was 120 square meters (nearby bigger than my house!) and there were around 40 square meters of LEGO which weighted half a ton. Our main  showpiece was of course the city of Palikkala, which, according the knowledge of Kim Thomsen, member of TLC's Community Team who came to see our show, broke the world record of "Biggest LEGO town not based on baseplates but completely brick-built modules" or something. Okay, that isn't the most uncluttered record title ever, but it is a lot faster to just stack 48x48 baseplates to make huge areas than build everything on sturdy bases consisting of plate, plate, brick, plate.
DiscJet's The Dark Tower.

Palikkala was build by 30 AFOLs and TFOLs all around to country and there were definitely lot to see.I had my Humppa-Pub there, two modules, but it was a very little area compared to some AFOL's efforts of dozens (or hundreds?) of modules. LUG members Lönkka (Marting Lönqvist) and R2-D2 (Pekka Pihola) had heaps of modules around the town while "A-Klaani", a LEGO family from the eastern border, had their own quarter wing (More of that later).

The cool thing about Palikkala was that it seemed like a really working town: For 3000 citizens there was plenty of apartment building, farm for food supply, elementary school for education, military forces for national defence, obligatory hospital, fire brigade and police station, working road, rail, and river transportation, couple of skyscrapers (the taller one, Lönkka's Daily Planet, was 215 cm tall), management building, shops and outlets, a big outdoor market, many interesting landmark and, of course, plenty of attractions for entertainment: Pubs, a disco, a cinema district, entertainment park with a huge minifgure statue by PtLeskinen and a couple of sport events.
Awis's Imatrankoski, a model of an actual hydro-power plant on Finland.
Every city needs energy, and for that need there was Awis's (Ismo Aavaharju) Imatrankoski, a rapid with a hydro-power plant, a model of real place in eastern Finland. It was probably the most impressive single MOC on the show, weighing around 300 kg  and having the most realistic LEGO high-voltage lines I've ever seen. The MOC was built with help of hours of walking near the rapid and hundreds of photographs of the actual thing. Well played.

There were, of course, plenty of other stuff than the city. On the back of our area there was a viewing point of KastleVania 4, 146-minute excellent brickfilm by Hovinet team, with giveaway DVD copies of the film and a cool Vania-themed MOC frame on the television showing it. Next to it was Zwenkka's and his friend's NXT XBOX Disc Changer, which was joy to see on move.

Some of my Bionicle MOCs and other stuff.
 On the two other tables, there were plenty of MOCs based different genres and building systems. To mention a few these included some of my character builds, a gigantic remote-control tank (I sadly don't remember who the AFOL who built it was...), some vignettes, Markku Jääskeläinen's Groterdam, Humppakeksi's Humppalava with awesome audio tracks, Finland Brick's and Panzy Boe's TBB'd Battle of Amroth and, above all, Oskari Nääjärvi's mosaic of Urho Kaleva Kekkonen, Finnish Ex-President and one of the manliest men of history of the humankind. While Palikkala was, obviously, our main showpiece, these tables gave visitors a taste of more special stuff that can be achieved with LEGO.

Castle scene by unnamed FOL, Mario Brothers by Janne Kalliola's son, Oskari's Portrait of the President and Aaronix's Winter War mini-scale vignette.
I also spend some time with other LUG members outside the Expo. We had a assembly of Palikkatakomo RY (Registered association) and after that we spend a evening on Lönkka's basement full of LEGO. Kim Thomsen of Community team was also there, and he gave us a challenge to build a 8x8 stud microscale city or building using parts of 31011 Aviation Adventures. He chose three "winners" ( Roope Kyyny (Finland Brick), Janne Kalliolla (plastic) and me (hooray)). We kept the sets and the winners also gained some extra. I got Hulk polybag and three series 10 minifigures (no Mr.Gold). It was a very nice evening -and a whole weekend overall- to spend with people who share the love to Our Favorite Brick.
Finnish LUG Palikkatakomo team - I'm pretty much on the middle, right above the old train speed controller.
 All photos on this post are taken by Mikko Kortelainen. You can see much more of these beautiful shots at Hovinet Gallery.

-Pate-Keetongu
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WIP: Bag End III

May 10, 2013, 9:04 am
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(Yes, quite a boring title, but nothing special on this update really)

As you can see, this Hobbit-hole project has taken a few steps onwards. I bought Unexpected Gathering in Helsinki as I planned, and shortly after I had built it I took it (Partly) apart to add the necessary bits to my own version.

The main problem of the otherwise excellent set was the scale: It was not really meant to figs with small legs. For example, the windows next to the door were so high that poor Bilbo should have stood on his chest to see who's at the door. I've fixed this bug on my version, where Bilbo is able to look out from every window - and Gandalf can stand straight on a very few spots.

-Pate-keetongu
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Revamp: Kongu Mahri

May 11, 2013, 2:57 am
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Do any of you remember Kongu, the old Gukko pilot who was suddenly turned into muscle maniac with shoulders wider than length of his body and way too much firepower? Well, I've taken that even more extravagant...
When I began building this guy, I didn't know it would be Kongu. He's never been my favourite Toa Mahri; I loved the mask, but the rest was pretty much boring, and I don't really like cordak blasters. I was just thinking of building a very different humanoid Bionicle-MOC after those streamlined female MOCs. I built a early version of those legs and then abandoned the project for few week. Then, on the last week, I picked up them, finished the lower legs and built a torso with those HF-built shoulders. I had the hulk-ish body I wanted to play with, but not any idea what to do with it.

The I remembered Kongu, and without better idea, began working on a revamp. I made the hands similar to ones of Ragnfast the Viking to make him hold a gun. I also added some a bit more extreme tubing on his "breathing apparatus". Story-wise they don't need breathing apparatuses, as they can breath underwater, so I thought they would contain some anabolic steroids to keep him "fit".

I also gave him cooler gun than those ugly one-piece blasters. I had had that barrel idea for some time, I'm very happy with it, and now I had a proper chance to put it on use. The gun isn't really a Gatling gun, but still powerful enough to keep those nasty Barraki on a distance.

-Pate-keetongu
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Every Skakdi moderator looks cooler with sunglasses

May 15, 2013, 7:04 am
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WIP: Bag End: Furniture

May 18, 2013, 1:04 pm
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A little bit of an update with traditional WIP photo quality. Bag End Project is progressing well, and there's some bits of furniture of the hobbit hole. I took inspiration from the movie's beautiful set designs. The shelf on the left is my favourite. I'll give it a darker background to give it cabinet-like look. The next one is quite a odd. Hobbits are not feisty folk, so it is not likely never used as a shield, but as a well-crafted handwork that hobbits give to others on their birthdays. The couch is based on the design I used on Minas Tirith Concert House more than a year ago but is "hobbit-ized" with more shallow base. The other shelf is quite basic one, nothing much to say about it. I also made a green and comfortable easy chair after taking this picture.

-Pate-keetongu
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WIP: Bag End IV

May 19, 2013, 6:12 am
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 Mr. Baggins got a roof today. This MOC is starting to finally look like a hill!

The roof was quite challenging. Its base is a ceiling build using 12x1 arches and plates stack underneath of them. The challenge was to make it work with the angled wall.  Because of that the angle of the hill get obtuser near the door and gives it a nice esker-like shape. There are some gaps near the chimney (with Light-up brick and mirror stickers from 5770 Lighthouse Island to give the fireplace some cozy light) but I made them smaller with some SNOT.

I also (nearly) finished the interior of the dining hall. It includes the table consisting of three parts and 13 chairs for the 13 dwarves (though I only have 4... So far!). I'm about to run out of 2x2 dark tan tiles now; I though I had enough, should have taken more on Berlin's LEGO store's PAB where they were cheap.

Next up is the living room. It will be hinged (you can see it on the photos) so the dining hall can be reached. I'll make it about as big as the dining room with another, bigger fireplace and furniture from my previous post. Stay tuned.

-Pate-keetongu


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WIP: Bombur

May 22, 2013, 8:05 am
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Hallelujah it's raining WIPs.

Bombur, the big-boned-one, is my next dwarf to build on Hobbit dwarves project. As you can see, the basis of the torso consists of Lowell Sphere like studdy platework. I quite like the effect, as it achieves the rough look of Bombur's big trousers. The dark brown vest is there too. The shirt is currently yellow, but I will change the colour to correct olive green when my LUGBULK arrives with its 1x2 olive green plates.

The shoes are very similar to my Aulëthur Dwarven Hardsuit built an year ago, using those small catapult pieces to give the shoes a correct shape and a color. Bombur doesn't wear boots like the other dwarves, so this is quite a fresh difference.

-Pate-keetongu
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WIP: Bombur: More fat (and beard)

May 23, 2013, 10:16 am
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Bombur keeps rolling. Mister Stud of the dwarves has now (nearly) completed torso and limbs (yellow needs to be changed olive green [I'm waiting you, LUGBULK] and upper torso need some more work, but that's it pretty much. And them there's the head (which I actually began building, it has very wide mustache, double chin and all) and probably some cooking props to make.

I'm currently very happy with this. Studded areas make nice round look as dwarves, especially Bombur's family, are not very polished folk. This MOC is likely my "studdiest" MOC ever.

I also like how the strangler beard came out; I hadn't thought that technique before. I first just orange slapped plates on the vest and stomach, but the angles looked way too bricky. I'm glad I tried this angled plate thing, as it achieves the round shape which is also Bombur's most distinguishable body feature.

-Pate-keetongu
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