✨Bionicle…Rahi ?✨

✨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~).

✨Snowman !✨

Couldn’t miss this year’s Christmas-themed MOC, of course ! Although it certainly is way less 'christmasy' than the previous ones (here and here) and more of a general winter decoration, it fits well.

There’s not a lot of technical work here, the spheres are classic designs which I tweaked a little, the arms are quite simple, the scarf has nothing complicated either; the only interesting bit might be the hat, because I used a really old technic piece — can’t find its id on bricklink… — with some other gears and such.

Anyway, merry Christmas to those who celebrate, and good day to everyone else !

Also, sorry for the terrible pic quality, I don’t have any proper set up; and I know I have a few things sitting in my inbox, I’ll get to it I swear.

✨Bile titan✨

Or the fact that I don’t have access to real legos anymore will not stop me from making mocs (more on that under the cut).

I’ve really enjoyed Helldivers and I’ve been meaning to make one of those for some time, now. And I think it turned out quite alright, all things considered. It’s a shame this happened he will never physically be on my shelf, but it’s better than nothing~

Anyway, details and rumbling under the cut, as always.

Here are more viewpoints :

Most of the parts here are articulated, although the head barely moved, and the second joint of each leg is fixed, because making it movable with this size would have been a hassle.

Though, it still has a lot of posability (even the small pincers move !).

The bottom is not really detailed, because it won’t be seen much, but I’ve still added a few things, including the protuberant bile sack underneath, because it gave me a great excuse to use an alien egg, which used to be an incredible piece.

Now though, let’s deal with what this isn’t : real.

It’s fully made with Bricklink’s Studio, which is a free computer software giving one access to pretty much all the bricks you can think of, without limitations on colour (this is great, because 99% of the pieces I use here do not exist in the colour scheme I used). It also comes with a part designer, to create custom prints and/or bricks. There aren’t any prints here, but I am working on something else which uses them.

The only down part is that I can’t use any illegal technic, which is a shame since I usually rely on those a lot (check my post about the Citadel and you’ll understand~). It does make sense, though, and custom rotations are allowed, so it’s not all bad.

Also, if you’ve read until there, congrats ! I do have one more thing to say, though. Given that I know have access to an infinite amount of bricks, I can take requests, if you ever have an idea you’d want to see realised (albeit note it might take a while !).

So, uhm. I wanted to post something a bit different here today. Behold a short thing I did a while ago (I'm actually posting it because I found it while cleaning some files). I'll admit, the quality of both the image and whatever I was trying to tell is pretty low. But I think overall, it's still surprisingly decent, for what it's supposed to be.

I did a lot of these some time ago, but it's terribly time-consuming, so I've had to stop. Hopefully, next break, I'll have the occasion to do these again (now with better image quality, and even proper MOCs to use). I miss doing stop-motion a lot-

I sadly don't have much of that project left (images, bits of the background...), though strangely enough, I still have some of the characters. Though I know why the lighting is so bad : at that point, I only had a set of blue lights, which caused this blue filter all over it (it looked really nice, though. Without any camera...)

I won't point out all of the weird details, but I am still quite proud of that odd use of a hair piece as a broom. Some pieces certainly have some unexpected uses.

✨Custom water Toa !✨

Another one ! (Slightly less giant)

Details below the cut !

Front/back views

That one, too, is experimental, albeit in another style. I tried to remain closer to actual Bionicle size this time. Many fun details and technics here, so we’ll go from the feet all the way toward the head.

So, starting with the feet ! I have a complex of normal feet and Visorak legs held by a single connector. They have a wide angular range, but given that the connector connecting the socket to the feet is alone, a foot can also have a 360 rotation angle horizontally (not natural-)

The legs don’t have much special traits, except the upper legs using two socket with axle holes on top and a silver foot as armor on the side.

The body is where things get interesting. The Rahkshi silver shell is held by the silver claw above it at a chest plate, while part of the back is hidden behind a Rahkshi foot. The body is very triangular because it’s framed by these sockets with a silver piece in the middle, which gives it a nice aesthetic. The arms are an equivalent, with some tubes directly in the shoulders to offer a flexible piece which also limits the movements.

Finally, the head is not a head. I’ve made it like that because of the translucent Kanohi, that way it looks brighter, the inconvenient being that the backside of the head is quite literally an empty shell.

Now for the lower part of the arms : no socketed hand because who needs hands when you have a trident (bident ?) ! The main piece obviously comes from a Rahkshi, and the magic is wishing the silver connector. It used to be a lightsaber hilt from the larger Star Wars figs, but it looks good practically everywhere, including here !

Also, here below is a picture of the angle range of the arms (not much, oops).

✨Kamino’s citadel challenge !✨

I am…very excited about this one. I’ve had this vision for a long time, and I’m so happy it’s ended up looking like that.

Now, there are a lot of things I’ll go into details along close ups under the cut; the only thing I’ll mention above is that I’m very grateful for TCW’s episode guides’ artworks, without which this would have been quite a hassle.

Okay ! Before diving into all the details and things, here is a view from above, to really display how big it is. Dimension-wise, the plank I built it on is around 110*70cm.

Now of course, the first detail which is noticeable is the floor, because, well, it’s everywhere.

This was probably the most challenging part of the build, because making a grid out of Lego is tough. Most of it is rows and rows of dark square, light lines, separated by 1*n tiles. It was the easiest way to get this pattern with as if it were just tiles; because this is one of the objectives I had here : most of this MOC is smooth, except for a few zones (usually voluntarily).

The fact I used this technic means that the floor in most place isn’t very stable, but it actually holds up pretty well because of some hidden connection points with the foundations underneath, which are mostly hidden under the cover blocks.

Here for instance, I’m using modified 1*2 bricks with a Technic hole : it hold the cover block, and it also attaches the floor to the foundation.

Of course, another problem I ran into were slopes. Much harder to get a smooth effect with the technic I’ve used, so it’s a bit wonky and unstable. Also, most them are not aligned properly, which is visible in the picture above (and some area have some really big misalignments because of a few problems I probably won’t bore anyone reading this with).

Now, since they’re also here, I can deal with the cover blocks. These were, among the details, the hardest to figure out, to get a good size while keeping some texture. Eventually I came up with this design, which, ironically enough, uses the same technic the floor uses, in a different orientation.

Another detail : the miradors :

This is one of the first elements I had in place, because I needed them to get a good sense of scale (and was made better by an existing concept art of a tower alone). Most of it does not have anything noteworthy, except for one illegal technic I used (can you spot it ?)

The pillar holding the roof of the mirador is using a technic I had in my toolbox for a long time, but had never had the occasion to use : if you take two 'brick' bricks and attach them perpendicularly on a snot brick, the small space separating the lines of 'bricks' align to let a 1*n tile in. It’s somewhat reliable (for an illegal technic) and an easy way to get octogonal shapes.

Now, before looking at the Citadel itself, let’s turn around for a minute.

This point of view obviously isn’t the intended one, but it’s still worth noting, if only for some composition.

Notice that the wall here is quite small (smaller than the miradors, even), and light gray; it’s in contrast with the towering dark gray wall on the other side, behind the citadel, which technically should give at least some impressions even to the people who never saw TCW.

Anyway, it’s also on this view that we can see most of my slope struggles, including the central one, which is the biggest I had to do.

And I can’t not mention the most important element :

What would be the challenge without a squad of clones to take it on ? These clones (4 privates and a sergent) are ready to fight ! Well. Kinda. I wish I could have actual cadets, but they are not part of the Lego universe (and the floor was enough of a fee, I can’t afford to get customs figures too). I wish I had the Dominos though. I have TBB Echo, and I plan to get my hands on Fives at some point, but they wouldn’t fit here, sadly, so instead I used some movie accurate clones (because all the others are used for a project I still haven’t posted..maybe later…)

Notably, I at some point tried to get the elevator to work - needless to say it was a disaster (it’s too close to the plate underneath to make something working).

Now, without further ado. The citadel.

I’m very proud of it. I got the proportions just right (I actually made some measurements to make sure of it), and there is just enough texture to not make it bland while leaving it as artificial. This alone took roughly 8-10h (which were all spent during an accidental all nighter, whoops), but it was worth it. It’s completely empty inside, and, in fact, the wall behind it isn’t full as well, anything behind the citadel is opened. The spikes are simple 1*3 angle plates illegally connected, and the walls’ small details were made with a bunch of modified 1*2 plates, there isn’t anything really special in it.

The only really complicated zone was the middle tower, because I had to put all the cannons while keeping it clean and smooth, and including the vertical lime lines. It was a fun challenge. And I included the 'flag' At the top, too, just a red transparent cone on a stick (there’s no need for more), which peeks above the gray wall (for composition and because of a lack of pieces).

Anyway, such a long project deserves one behind the scene photo :

Yes, my desk is messy (and include my mandatory tea cup).

On the left, you can see my remaining floor tiles, which have not been used yet; and just under the citadel, you might notice the foundations visible; it’s a checker of 2*2 tiles which gives my floor a good base to be fixed on. There are also some slopes which haven’t been placed yet (in front of the background miradors), and at this steps, there were no cover blocks or walls yet.

As far as my tools go, you might notice brick separators scattered all around my work environment (I never have enough of those), as well as a tablet in the bottom right hand corner (which i use to check and measure concept arts), and in the middle, the red triangle is an official (albeit old) Lego measurement tool which counts in stud, Lego bar holes and axe length.

Also visible, finally, is the bottom of the foundations, which are stacks of 1*2 bricks (each of the three floor layer is separated by a height of 3 bricks), which means that looking directly under it can lead to watching the dark basement of my build (which isn’t aesthetic…).

Anyway, if you read until here, thanks, I guess ? I still have a few TCW related stuff (a small one next week, some other in the foreseeable feature), so feel free to stick around and maybe leave a note, if you feel like it ? That’s it, bye !

✨Assault on the droid factory (P1) !✨

A decently-sized MOC I've been working on for the past few weeks. These is the landing platform of the factory, and, hopefully, I will take some time to make the actual factory inside, which is nothing more than an idea, at the moment.

Closeups and details under the cut !

The door :

I have a lot of fun with the mountainside of this MOC : It's been a while since I last did rocky terrain (or any terrain at all), and it is an enjoyable process. Most of the bottom is supported by large rock pieces (for structural integrity), but anything around and above the door is meticulously hand crafted from slopes. I also added some little plants here and there to break the dull grey, including some weird spiralling plants, because alien environment.

The door itself is just a bunch of slopes, and then two black sections. It's not moving and will remain in this half-opened state indefinitely.

The bridge :

Really the heart of the MOC, both visually and structurally. While it's covered everywhere, there are technic bars running under the large plates, and that's what allows everything to stay together. Just below the landing platform, you might spot one small antenna acting as a pillar. It's only there to keep the bridge in this position, as most of the charge is held by the mountain. It was a bit dull at first, so I added the cable running under it, and the small barriers, which fit the aesthetic without being overwhelming.

As for the action, here is a brief summary of what story I'm trying to tell : a squad of ARC are infiltrating a droid to destroy it, using a stolen CIS ship. Upon their arrival, they face heavy resistance.

Trying to breath life in these scenes is really fun, and it uses multiple tricks, from the droid falling off the bridge to the one being pushed by the shield, plus the clone jumping on a droid to stab it. Speaking of, here they are !

The clones :

MOC postures :

Rest postures :

Custom clones ! I absolutely love making these, and I still have a lot of similarly customised ones on my shelves. The ARCs from the battle pack look awesome, and even if they all have the same prints and color, it doesn't take much to change their appearance.

Sadly, I couldn't find enough kamas for all of the, so only the first and third ones have one. Same goes for the pauldron, so only the three first have one (plus the fifth, but it's a different kind which, I think, comes from a mando). For visors and rangefinders, the choice was mostly arbitrary, because I have a lot of each, so I tried to guess who of the clones would need them, according to their roles (because they have roles. And names, too ! From left to right : Orders, Surge, Bacta, Gears, and Stalker.) I also used the kneeling posture, which is, essentially, in half my TCW MOCs (just check out this one if you're doubting me. Or if you want to see a really cool thing, too.)

A lot of weapons are at least partially custom too :the left clone's weapon (hands can be attached at the bottom of the weapons as a grip); the Z-6 for the next one (would be better if Lego had black versions of the grey pieces, but alas, they don't exist as of yet), the shield (held together by an actual 2*3 shield piece, and the printed GAR cog is just the perfect piece to go with it), the rocket launcher (as screen accurate as I could do, which is to say not much). I also used a fancy silver knife as a vibroknife, because why not, after all ?

Another worthy addition :

While Lego's default ARC backpacks are pretty cool, I find this technic really nice to add a proper communication antenna : one lever attached to the side of a minifig roller skate piece. The connection is not very secure, but since it's only used for display, it's alright.

The ship :

As some might have seen already, this is a variation of the 8036 separatist shuttle. It is a bit longer than the original, and have more details on top. I changed the original antenna for a fencing sword piece, which looks better, and adjusted the dorsal wing a wing, as well as the side, to add the CIS-stickered pieces.

Mostly, this version has so much more playability than the original : it was only made to accommodate a droid pilot and one passenger. This version can fit : one pilot and one astromech in the front, plus a whole bunch of minifigs in the back; and the two parts are connected. Ironically, it won't ever be seen, but it still is a nice thing to know.

You're still here ? Well, I guess you enjoyed this MOC then. If it is the case, stay tuned, because I still have one big TCW diorama which I need to figure how to showcase, and another one in the making, which will also be terribly hard to showcase, but that will be a problem for later me !

✨The Kraken !✨

I’ve been messing around with water technics recently, and this was born. It certainly could be improved, but I like it like that.

There’s not much to mention about the build itself; except maybe the tentacles, which are only made out of the 1x1 round bricks, and nothing inside : they bend quite well and remain relatively sturdy when doing so.

As for the water technic I mentioned, the goal is to cover everything with tiles of one of two colours; and make a gradient underneath (see below). I also added some dark red into the mix to try and replicate the body of the thing underwater, with mitigated results.

✨ Small lego diorama of some ARFs of the 91st ! ✨

This is of course from the Clone Wars — expect much more of these in the upcoming weeks, it’s one of my favourite themes :}

(Closeups, commentaries and complaints under the cut)

These trees are pretty experimental, I usually use classic leaves rather than plain plates, but these were interesting, and were a pretty fun challenge (I like making trees a lot, so there are usually some in most of my dioramas). This is supposedly based on Kashyyk, but most of the trees there are waaay too big for me; however I found some nice pieces for the roots (the large ones in the middle, which are not really visible, are using Lego Elves’ dragon horns; and there are also some old palm trees trunks, which are really awesome pieces to use.)

This is probably gonna be the only one for the 91st though, because I don’t have much more of these. The only other possibility of that would be Neyo’s execution of o66 (not fun~).

Also, the night effect on the closeups is due purely to one of my led lighting dying in my hands, which wasn’t exactly practical.

✨Aroace Door Tag✨

‘Name' looks really terrible, but couldn’t just put my real name here-

In hindsight, Sample might have been better. Anyway, if you want to get something like that yourself and are struggling with the letters, my dms are open — or asks even, if you’re feeling bold-

And of course, studio closeups bellow the cut

With, and without 'name' (M is really a terrible letter because of how wide it is, though now that I’m writing this, I know how I could have done it better. Well, too late.)