✨Clone Wars Diorama !✨

✨Micro-Nether !✨

And a small wither to go with it~

There’s not much to say about this build, it’s mostly just a tiny box with triangles and cubes inside. I’m considering making more of these in the future (feel free to suggest biomes/mobs in my inbox !) while keeping the scale (8*8*8), which is a bit of a challenge, but it’s fun.

✨Bionicle crab !✨

It was, originally, meant to be just another arthropod. However, someone reblogged my previous rahi, along with this comment :

Well, guess what ? Yes, absolutely. I’m glad I saw it because it gave me the inspiration for this monstrosity (and it made me laugh more than I would admit, too). Thanks.

I must recognise that if I compare my rahis, there is a clear pipeline. I don’t think it can go much further in this direction.

Anyways, details/closeups/weird illegal technic I just found out, below the cut !

Front (smol Visorak for scale) :

Because it’s really big. It’s also a good excuse to show off my really fancy and glittery Kanohi. No clue where it comes from but it’s beautiful !

I’m really happy with how mean this things looks, overall. It’s most definitely the bad guy for Toas to fight. It has a really good scale to work with my larger customer Toas [here], but it could also act as a really large rahi for my smaller space-based Toas [here]. Why a large crab stealing Kanohis in space, you may ask ? No idea. I’d have to actually think out a lore for that.

I started the conception with the frame (which does make sense, in theory), then the legs, and finally the shell. This was only partially smart, because that meant I did not account for the shell's mass when building the legs. Essentially, this poor thing can't stand on it's own, so I'm using two technic bars underneath to keep it up right (which are hidden in editing, of course).

Top/Hind (shell) :

I think the shell was pretty decent. I tried to use as little pieces as possible to keep it light, but it's still a lot. Among these pieces can be found one Visorak claw and three Mantax feet, which have a nice texture for organic feet. There is also another foot at the front which comes from an Inika set which I can't seem to find. I'm also using some of these large technic panels, which cover a lot of surface without being too much of a pain to set up (still quite a lot, since they're connected to the feet at at an angle, feet which which are also connected to the frame at an odd angle...) Speaking of Mantax, I alsu used the black-pearl shells, because these, too, have a really organic vibe, and it gave a small touch of pearl which was missing on the body.

I tried to keep the back relatively slick, to avoid something similar to an abdomen since it's not a spider. Still I had to extend it a little bit using the rounded cubical cover, to hide some socket joints, but it's okay-ish.

Neath :

Truly a mess, I must admit. As I started with each side separately, I tried to somehow connect them with the large grey technic frame (in the middle). On either sides, I have a whole bunch of axle connectors, both standard and angled, which allow for the thing to appear rounder than it could have been. The two leg sockets peices at the front are used for the eyes, and the pieces abov (barley visible) is a classic Bionicle shoulders piece clipped backward as a base for the pincers arms.

Pincer :

Or mandatory unusual feet usage. These really works well as any kind of claw or armor, in my opinion. The black arm pieces used here (Hordika leg piece) were particularly good for the job as they technic pin holes in there allowed me to add ad additional socket practically at the same level at the original one (even if I would rather have used black technic bars instead of the light grey ones, but i couldn't find any in my supplies... It's likely the Space station's fault.

Legs :

Or equally mandatory foot out of not foot pieces. Here is a cursed homebrew way to make legs : one Bohrok head part (bricklink call these shoulders ?) to display the piston-like element and serve as structure, linked with Toa Metru legs (which slots above nicely. And then comes the magic trick, for the Rahkshi shells (silveragain, because I have many of these) have a small attachment point toward the end, that is meant to hold the back blades in place; but it also perfectly fits right on the small ledge in the middle of the leg piece ! Granted, it's not a very secure connection, but these two pieces don't need anything else but that to hold. I actually loved this one so much, you can notice two additional Rahkshi shells held similarly on the tope of the crab's shell.

In order to connect the legs individually to the frame, I am using Vahki legs for the exterior limbs, and Pihraka arms for the central ones (these arms have the particular property of having the restrictive sockets on either sides, which makes it good to keep the leg's shape.

The middle sections are made using two simple axle-socket pieces connected by old plates, usually found in technic sets predating the Bionicle them.

…And obviously, I had to make another makeshift studio (I actually really like this one). Have a look at all these terribly assembled elements !

✨Looks To The Moon✨ [1/2]

Where do I even start with that ? Oh, yeah. It’s not done just yet (if that wasn’t obvious enough).

Though, I won’t have the opportunity to work on it for a while, so I figured I might as well share the progress.

Obviously, I’m missing the water; and an outside — as well as a few other things I’ll mention somewhere below (along with closeups and way too many details, as always).

If you don’t care about any of that, you could still check up my silly little FP there !

Lots, lots of things to talk about here…

(Structure first, feel free to skip to the first actual close up if you consider that as boring.)

First of all, here is an edited version of the first pic, with water :

Looks much better already. And although it might prove complicated, I have a plan. Sort of. Because Lego has this really cool, transparent blue piece which they produced a lot of : folding garage doors. They’re everywhere on firefighter sets, and they’re really wide. With a few tricks, they might work.

As for the outside, well…I’m not there just yet. I’ll try to cover it up with some Iterator-esque pattern, I suppose.

I’m also missing a scug ! I absolutely want one, and given how I chose to represent the scene, it won’t be Saint nor Spears (shame). Rivulet is really tempting, but it might make too much blue; currently, my choice might be on Monk, to have sufficient contrast (and Monk is cute). Though I might change that, depending on how much small yellow pieces I have.

Now, before talking about the inside, let’s take a peek at the outside :

Here it is (back side, specifically). It’s a bit of mess because of the technics im using — which I’ll come to in just a seconds — but I also find it oddly fitting with the Iterators theme. The blacks on each sides are holding the cube together, and the technic bars in the middle are ensuring everything is held together — and also compensating for the weight of the top plate, kind of like how I did with my Carrion MOC a while back.

Anyway, the Technic™️.

The one thing which I find striking in Iterators cans is the tiling (14x14 from my last count), and it’s not that easy to replicate through Lego. Either you have no gap at all, and you use only the tiles’ grove as a separation (which, here, is way too small) or you make them very far apart, which looks terrible here). However, my tiling technic here is (not entirely mine) usually something you’d see to make floors, especially castels.

Here, I have three layers : the dark grey layer, which is the base; the light gray, which is the tiles; and, in between, I have a layer of black dots forming a grid diagonally to the first layer, on which the tiles are placed. This diagonality explains why, on the pic above, my plates have so much spiky edges, and which I have to use this whole complicated system to hold everything together.

Of course, it gets worse ! Because the cans are not perfect cubes, the edges are bevelled. And so I bevelled. Now, with all these intricacies, there was no way any regular connection would keep these edges in place. You can also spot what I used instead, which is an awful lot of ball and socket joints (mixel style). Incredibly useful, those pieces.

Anyway, enough boring structural details, here come the fun part !

Small things first, here is a comparison of the first vs final design for the neuron flies :

I’m really glad I actually managed to do that — they’re an important element, and the conception had me worried for a little bit.

The first design is, in my opinion, the best one can make at this scale. Slight issue : it’s not actually physically possible to make it hold together. After a lot of different iterations (ah !) I’m came up with the design on the right. It’s a bit more square, but it has a distinct head and floppy tails, which was all I was asking for. Obviously, the two tooth pieces I’m using are hardly held at all (using a mod 1x1 joint piece). There’s also, behind, a white dot with a hole, which ensures that these can be connected to the background via the long, transparent bars. Wasn’t easy to stick them without breaking them, and there’s no way I’m touching these now.

Her. She is the central piece of my MOC after all. It took me a while to figure out the design (mostly the head), but I’m glad of how it turned out. It’s not perfect, of course, but I feel like it works well, both scale-wise and color wise. And there’s only one (two) illegal connections, for the antennas which I’m making using hands. It’s very tempting to draw her a face — I’ll probably consider it, at some point.

The arm behind is also relatively good, with loose cables hanging from it. Once again, ball and socket joints are here to save the day; although I do feel like some parts of it are a little bulky, and it doesn’t drop down low enough…

Additional details, the piles of debris.

It’s…really difficult to make debris which don’t look purpose, and aren’t simply horrendous to look at. I tried to keep some grey tones, but also incorporated some brown, because it does actually bring some well needed contrast to the whole scene; and a few plants.

Speaking of plants, I’m no really liking these vines hanging from the ceiling (much thinner and darker in game), but as far as my expertise go, I dont see another way to get them here — and if there’s nothing at all, the whole piece suddenly gets really dull. Of course, there’s also the gap in the ceiling, with cables falling out; this, I will add more details to later on — and I have the hope to get a proper light source to go through it and act as a sun which will fall directly on my small LttM.

To conclude, here are final views of it, from further away, and with a brick separator from scale. It does look quite flimsy, doesn’t it ?

Oh, and, well. I’ve been messing with Dots recently. Figured this was worth including as a footer (probably on of the first achievements I unlocked — poor Moon~).

✨Geonosis !✨

Ah, Geonosis. What a terrible place. But it’s aesthetically pleasing, so I did it anyway. And it was a good excuse to use the movie-accurate minfigs (a commander, a sergeant, and three shinies. I have a lot of other commanders, but I’ll figure what to do with them later).

Since I didn’t have much of these orange bricks, so most of them are sideways, with some modified bricks to keep the clones in place. Also, the bottom of the first spike is an old bionicle part I thought I’d never use, but it did a good job here.

✨Custom air Toa !✨

6/6, that’s the last one ! And the biggest one, too-

Closeups under the cut !

Front/back views

As you might notice, it is tall. And it has more than four limbs, which would not be a problem if it was the only one. But. It appears that all my green mocs end up with too much limbs, and I can’t fathom why. Really, another prototype standing on my desk also has for and so does the green hero factory one…You get the idea.

Anyway, the colour scheme for this one is dark green and silver, with some translucent bright green accents. Using only bright green would have brought too much contrast with the others Toas (notably the dark red one), but I had these cool pieces to use and no one else to put them onto. And since these are experimental…

The two supplementary limbs are intended as movement claws, given that we usually see air Toas moving in jungles (Lewa mostly, that is). The silver pieces at the front and back ends are respectively Kopaka’s skis and Pohatu’s foot pieces (shoes ?). The largest bits are made out of technic pieces directly, to give some simple angles.

Bust views

I find this silver/green chest piece really cool, it’s a shame I don’t have much of them. The two bright pieces on either sides are Vahki head pieces, and since their only connectors are on their relative tops (side of the piece in their actual orientation), you may remark that they are connected to nothing. I’m having the arm socket go through them, and the rest of the body’s shape avoid too many movements. While nice, this also limits the movement range of the arms, but it works well enough (these are not really made to play, anyway~). The two bright pieces with spikes are from a Ehlek. Wish I could have managed to put that one back together, but it instead served a higher purpose.

The Kanohi is Hordika Matau’s, with transparent Bohrok eyes underneath (it share this technic with my previous white Toa). The back piece is coming from a Piraka, but it’s actually a broken piece. I have quite a bunch of these, where the mask and flexible parts have broken off, so I make the most of it (like you might see in the future on another MOC). I’m using technic angle (type 3, to be precise) to keep the shape of the middle ones, but the others are free.

Finally, a (dismantled) leg view.

Finally, the leg segment !

The Toa was too big for proper leg showcase, my lights created terrible contrasts (shelf not deep enough…), so here is a stand alone leg instead.

Once again I have integrated the Metru chest piece to the leg, but as a foot this time. It offers a good stability and looks nice.

The next part doesn’t have much interesting bits, except that I’m using technic tubes to hold the additional piece, making this technic less illegal that my usual works (keyword : less; there is still a whole lot of stress on these poor pieces).

The top part is…somewhat more complicated. The frame is of technic pieces (like the additional limbs), which keeps together an immobile socket joint which keeps the double socket and two Bohrok feet (one for decoration, one connected to the hip socket). The double socket is used both to connect the two halves of the leg and to hold the small arm piece which is here only for decoration.

And that’s it for this series ! I’m hoping to bring them to next month’s exhibition, along with some Bionicle MOCs I haven’t showcased here because…shelf…Given the sheer size of my big project (posted here next week in theory), I’m gonna have to improvise something quickly, and profite of it to get some pictures of my other big ones while I’m at it. Eh, I’ll figure it out (and if I don’t, I’ll just delete that statement later :}

Thanks for reading, have a good day !

I realised I’ve posted quite a lot of my MOCs on this blog, but any of my more 'photographic' works, yet, so here’s one of the first I made (we don’t talk about previous attempts), which still works quite well, although there are some things I would do differently, were I to do this again.

My process, and other details, below :}

So. The process I used to get this effect is not a really complicated one, but it still offers a more or less good render at the end, which is nice.

The blue guy has nothing special, but the red one I made float, but how ? The answer is not telekinesis, but superposition. Take a look at the images below :

Left one is the original, with no special effect (and no cropping, to offer a larger view), while the right one is the same, without the red minifig. By taking both photos without changing the camera angle (which is a painful thing to do with a phone, I would not recommend), and with a simple image editor, I put the 'empty' image (right) on a layer under the image I want to modify, and simply erase the supports.

It is important to note that if the erased bit casts a shadow, it’s better to also remove it, to avoid weird effects (here, there are no shadows because of the light source).

I’m also using an old set of blue LEDs inserted directly into Lego bricks to get this foggy aspect at the top, and to get a darker aspect to the blade of the red minifig, though there is also a desk lamp above providing some proper light, of the whole thing would be blue.

Last interesting point, this technic is the same I’ve used for the blog’s banner (but with proper lighting, for once). One might even recognise that the background for the two pictures is the same, because black was easily findable and gives quite the dramatic effect. The banner is, in fact, only half of my picture. Since you’ve made it here, I’ll offer another tiny bit of it here, as a treat :}

(And yes, I stole the characters from Star Wars sets, gave them light sabres even if they’re not meant to have one, and also added one of my cool cloaks, and made them fight. Don’t you dare judge my poor choices.)

✨Trade space station !✨

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Today’s gonna be about the progress of the build in time, which allows me to ramble about the building process. Yay !

Before actually commenting the build. You may notice chocolate and my (empty) tea mug. They should be apparent in most of the earliest pictures (there was not enough space on the table for them at the end of the project, sadly~

So, here, you can see that my first step was to see the scale of my project. The template of the large ring to see how much space it would take, and the small ring to see how round I could make it (and at the bottom, you can see the white curved pieces. Enjoy this view, it won’t last.)

You can also notice above that I already stared making some small ships.

The next day ! You can see on the left my long rod. This was the ideal height for the central cylinder. I also created the first core of the build (replaced later because too fragile), and the first arms to hold the ring (too fragile too).

Progress ! This is the moment I realised my original color scheme would not work (you can see orange and bright green on the side, which I tried before the sand green).

I had half of the big cylinder added (you can see the slots left for the additional details) and another naked half on the right side. And my collection of boxes on the table is growing. It’s only getting worse after that.

See ? More boxes (and pieces) scattered all around. And a hammer, too. I at this point mostly finished the big cylinder (or so I thought, some reinforcements were necessary), started the smaller cylinder, and realised white pieces were running out. I also still haven’t touch the ring yet, as I wanted to stay focused on one bit.

Mostly done with the cylinders at the point (you can even see the start of the smallest one on the right side). Agin the boxes grow ominously.

Since it was time to start the ring, I created a replica of a sixth of it. Given that there were twelve sections, I wanted to be sure of the design before starting to build them all, starting with the facade. It took some fiddling around (you can see these aren’t symmetrical, as I was trying out different designs). Really, if you have this kind of things to do, try to make it in a vacuum first, you’ll gain a lot of time later, once the prototype has every problem answered (mine were mostly the curve, and the link between each plates (solved with mod 1*2 black plates).

See ? After the prototype was done, I simply built all of the facades and attached them (you can see my 1*4 curved pieces were all missing at the time though).

I kept the prototype on the side, because I’ll still need it later. I also am missing half of the ring (the part above, since there is only a structure below), because I was not sure of how everything would fit, and I waited until these parts were assembled before making it, in case adjustments were needed.

Here is the top part ! And all the hangars done, too. It took me a surprising amount of time to do all twelve of them…

Huge progress ! There is no more room on the table for the boxes, but you can see them…on the floor, on the left…Lot was done, from the bottom cylinder now finished along with its ring, the covering pieces of the big ring (except the internal faces), the hat of the station, and a huge reinforcement for the six arms, which was done separately). At this point, except for a few details, the station itself is finished.

And there is a picture taken moments before disaster. The station is done (ignoring the transitions between cylinders) the arm…supposedly, too.

Sadly, the arm wasn’t, in fact, finished. If you read the first post, you will notice it isn’t as bulky, and isn’t attached on baseplates yet.

Well, guess what ? When I finally tried to see if the arm would hold onto the station, it broke. Rather, two pieces broke, then the rest came down, and so did the station, which shattered on the floor below. Luckily for me, the main cylinder was so dense it practically completely survived. Most of the hangars of the rings only broke section per section, so it only took a few hours to get it back together, but much more time to make the arm solid. And now, it can hold the station for ten hours without flinching ! So, here is a lesson. If something you do fails when you do it with your heart, let the rage flow through you and build it back out of spite. It works* !

*don’t hold me accountable for any failure using that method

Get booped

Get booped back ! Ah !

Oh, and have an actual (Lego) cat while I’m at it !

✨Custom fire Toa !✨

Yay, yet another custom bionicle ! And a big one this time !

Details below the cut !

Front/side views :

I’m using Vakama Metru’s kanohi for that one, as it’s pretty good shape-wise and there are few dark-red kanohis anyway.

Anyway, this was a lot of fun to make, and this time starting with absolutely nothing. Most of the bright red pieces were added at the end to give a bit of contrast. You might recognise some Stars elements, as well as some Bohrok elements from an unknown set, and even a very old piece from the precursors of Bionicle.

If you pay attention to proportions, the legs are completely messed up (bottom part too small, higher part far too long). It’s fixed on all the others of this series, luckily. Given it still works visually, I kept it that way.

The weapon is a mix of a cool disc launcher, with the flame sword from Stars set, to make…what you want it to be. I initially said it was some type of crossbow, but to be fair, it doesn’t look like anything at all.

Just like the others I have shared so far, I am doubling some limb pieces to quickly give some thickness. On the higher part of the legs, though, I have used the body

Most of this is quite experimental, from the feet to the higher parts of the legs using Vakama Metru’s body piece (it’s a fun one to work with).

And, yes, maybe I will be spreading this over 6 weeks to get enough time to finish my current project (currently waiting for important parts to arrive…), and because I am running out of content faster than I can make it, but well.

To pardon me, take this picture I took to see if the articulations had a good enough range :

✨Bouldering wall !✨

I reeeally wanted to make one of these at some point, but never took time. Incidentally, I got commissioned — is it even a commission if it’s for a relative and I’m not paid ? — so there is is !

Closeups and details under the cut, of course !

Closeups :

So ! This was a lot of fun to make, with some really interesting techniques. The first thing is that overhang with an increasing angle at the top. A large part of it is just a big plate connected to the base by hinges, while the second part is connected to the first one, instead of the based, to make sure that when something break, everything break only attach one plate to the base, to provide a thin finition. The holds have nothing particular, except perhaps that some start 'in' the wall while some are on it, which is here to pretend there are micro holds — possibly the worst invention of the story of bouldering/j. The top layer of the wall is finished by 1*1 held horizontally by the outside the plates. Speaking of, the triangular plates holding these 1*1 are not connected to the rest of the outside plates at all. Instead, they’re connected directly to the overhang, which keeps the plate at that approximative angle.

But of course, the most important detail : the minifig hanging with its bare hands ! I knew from the start that I wanted it to be in that type of position, and the choice of purple holds came easily (it’s defining one of the hardest level for the bouldering center we usually go to). Of course, I wasn’t in possession of any purple piece a minifig could grab, because that would have been way to easy. So instead, I used magic science a trick, which you might have seen if you pay close attention to the hands of the fig. The 'trick' in question is that I managed to get my hands on a thin elastic thread, which is around the fig’s wrist in a loop, and then is stuck between the purple stud and the round grey tile — which, by the way, makes for the second worst type of holds in bouldering : rings — and since these pieces are on the second overhang, the rest of the thread is hidden, and not stuck between two plates, unlike what I did in my Carrion MOC, which tends to dealign pieces, which leads to broken MOCs (not the Carrion one because there’s too much tension for it to break), which I don’t want because this is meant to end up as a gift for someone I won’t be able to visit often to make maintenance, so it has to be sturdy (and it is !).