✨Brick Separators !✨

✨ Custom AT-TEs ! ✨

(Not entirely custom, actually, but more like a custom paint job / some tweaks)

These two pieces are part of a larger custom clone battalion, the 284th, that I’ll explain in detail in another post. In the mean time, these are already in use on a larger mix that doesn’t exactly fit in my small studio right now (I’m talking BIG moc)

Individual views :

The stickered plate, stolen from a Ninjago set, was awfully convenient, you may understand why here (not posted yet)

✨41st Recon Squad Camp Site ! ✨

Closeups and other stuffs under the cut !

Backside :

Right scene closeup :

Campfire scene closeup :

Tomb scene closeup :

And finally, my personal favourite :

New lights, new camera settings, and a larger space…because this one didn’t fit the other one…Indeed, using shelves as a photo studio is not my brightest idea, but in my defence, it works.

This MOC has entirely been made because of the camouflage cloak I found in the bottom of a box. I don’t know where it’s from, but it looked very cool with that particular trooper, and thus I needed to show it off.

It was also helped because the large amount of olive green plants I received recently (those that are all over the place).

I tried something new, which is that I have not a rectangular base, but rather, three trapezoidal ones linked together to play with the shapes a little. Some parts were a pain to link together, but some tricks can help with that. The crates, for instance, are on top of a hole I couldn’t fill because of the odd shape.

The tombstone was actually the best idea I could get because I’m missing a trooper torso ! I can’t find it, and a pair of legs and a helmet are all I have left, and I might have watched Tales of the Jedi again recently, so that ended up being here.

The tent itself is made thanks to a fun discovery of mine, combining nets and my recent shipment of plants. I put a plant every three holes, in one line, and continue the pattern diagonally. In the back, to hold them in place, I used 1/2 technic bushes, which are quite convenient. And of course, this part is not connected to the poles at all, I case I want to add something in the tent.

Finally, some will notice the main incoherence of the thing : all the smaller wooden poles (tent and fire pit) are not birch-coloured. That’s mainly because finding the good pieces would have been a terrible hassle, and also because the campfire would really look weird in white.

Also, I might have spent an entire night on these trees to find what the colour balance and shape would look the more natural, I hope these are good.

✨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~).

✨Santa’s sleigh !✨

I showed last week the Christmas tree I made last year, now is time for what I did for 2023 !

Closeups and commentaries beneath the cut !

Sleigh closeups :

Reindeers closeups :

Santa :

SO. Had a lot of fun with that one. The sleigh doesn’t have much exciting parts, except the blades, which are actual blades (Ninjago sabers, to be precise). The back is filled with presents from top to bottom, so they can be rearranged to give a different look each time it’s put together.

The part connecting the sledge to the reindeers probably could use the help of an iron wire to keep its shape (a neath technique I’ve used for a flower in another one of my builds to make the bendable pieces stronger), and the threads between the reindeers is a very cheap finition, but in my defence, I was on a time limit.

Reindeer-wise, I’ve hesitated whether to give them all a red nose, but they didn’t look nearly as cute without. And the antlers, I must admit, are very unsteady, because they’re illegally connected, but this was the best way to keep a small overall shape.

Finally, the Santa minifig was probably, and surprisingly, one of the hardest parts of this MOC, because the parts I stole borrowed to other minifigs were spread in multiple places, and I didn’t have one of the official Santa minifigs. So most of the piece come from different Star Wars advent calendars (mostly Darth Vader and C-3PO).

✨Custom earth Toa !✨

It’s spiky ! And we’re now at 5/6 !

More below !

Front/back :

He’s spiky ! Some might have already noticed I took for base the old Von Nebula set, because I acquired it recently and it worked well, plus the joints are interesting. Pretty much everything else was change, though I kept the mask, sphere, and spiky plates. These were nice, and even if stone colours are usually black and purple, but blue works well too.

I relocated the sphere directly in the thorax so that it looks like some kind of core. The back is mostly composed of two large car pieces.

The hands are using black pieces to make them larger, which works well with the blue blades (which supposedly come from either Chima or Hero Factory, I can’t remember).

Leg :

Another type of Bohrok piece to act as feet ? Yes. These are the head pieces, and they work well with a classic foot as a back piece. The piston in the leg was there originally, but I covered it with these large technic panels and some other technic pieces.

There is also an interesting mechanism to stop the legs from doing too odd moves on top, which can have some interesting applications. Here, I’m wondering about removing them to gain a larger range of movements though.

Head :

Kept the original mask and teeth, but with a cable and a spider’s claw to elongate it.

This picture also allows for a clear view of how much dust has accumulated. Don’t judge me, these are on a top shelf which isn’t the easiest to clean…

Also, my project is now finished (officially) ! I went to a small exhibition with it this weekend actually, and…a recruiter from a much larger exhibition found it good enough to offer me a place next month (I’ll post it here once the bionicle series is done) ! I also brought some of my pride flags, which seemed to be doing their effect, so I’ll bring more next time. So overall, yay !

✨Neon and its pilot !✨

Combat mech again ! Wew ! (See other works here)

Closeups and lore under the cut !

Mech :

Pilot :

Lore ! (Check the previous posts of this series if you want to find out more)

So, if Artefact was a first-gen, this mech, called Neon (for obvious reasons), is from the last gen of mass-product combat mechs. It isn’t really meant to get to high level competition, simply for amateurs wanting to give the sport a try. Yet, this pilot made it further than most. Just like their mech, they are one of the youngest in this tournament, but both mech and pilots already have claimed multiple battles.

Indeed, if one pays close attention, it’s easy to notice that some of the claws were replaced, and scratches can be founded in multiple places. The base mech has also been modified a bit, mostly with the addition of electric arc creators (at the top of the mech).

What’s more surprising is how powerful this 'beginner' mech is. Because it’s meant for amateurs, it is extremely sturdy, to make things interesting (because breaking down after only one hit would make a lot of people abandon immediately, which isn’t the point).

Last but not least, the large and broken metal beam carried Neon is a piece which belonged to the first mech which was defeated in a qualification match. The mech was so wrecked only beams were lefts.

Building notes ? Building notes.

The feet were a pain to make, and may fall apart at any moment. But it is necessary to get this shape without being very bulky. All of the joints on that one are small ball and sockets joints, appart from the waist one, which is a turntable. Pragmatically, the three 'replaced' claws are actually just me missing blue pieces. Moreover, the broken beam I had no idea how to use. I acquired it twisted, and it would hardly be used anywhere, and this mech didn’t really have any aggressive stance, so this did the trick.

The sticker plate in the middle is of Nexo Knight origine, and so are probably all the 'shield' pentagonal pieces (which are really good, I might be in love with these). It was also originally all solid blue and grey, but as I added the figure, I realised it needed a bit more energy, so I added the amber and neon pink pieces to give some sparkly accents, which somehow worked in the end

Finally, the (blurry) pilot : most of the pieces come from my random character mix, except the torso (minus the arms) which come from a funky Ninjago character sold in a polybag, and the helmet, which comes from Power Miners (hopefully I’ll have enough time to make a diorama for that theme one day~)

Also, I’m not sure what happened with these pictures, they’re more blurry than usual, yet they all were taken in a batch with previous pictures. I’m hoping the next one isn’t gonna be as blurry, or I’ll have to look into things further. I only have one more builds of these, but another idea is there, so maybe it won’t end with the next one. Who knows, really ?

✨Aroaceage pride flag !✨

Another one to my collection ! (see the previous one here). I don’t even understand how I had never even heard of it before, but now that I know it exists, it is now comfortably sitting with all the others.

Like this and don’t see your flag among the ones I made ? I’m open to requests in my ask box !

Additional note : I made a matching bracelet ! (Shades of blue slightly different because of the colours I had available).

✨ Lego enby flag ! ✨

Happy non-binary awareness week :}

✨Custom stone Toa !✨

Yay ! It’s so big there are shadows on the top of my shelf studio.

Also, we’re already at 4/6 for these, isn’t that crazy ? I think it is.

Details below the cut !

Front/back :

I had some kind of vision with this one. As I started messaging by around with pieces, my brain said 'scorpion'. So mandibles and tail (and that’s about where the scorpion resemblance ends). Of course, I had to keep an element of Pohatu, so his foot is the end of the tail (which is quite wobbly-).

I tried to vary shapes from what I had previously, so I made some big shoulder parts, which look okay and offer some interesting movements, but are pretty weird if you think about it too hard.

The body-legs connection is a bit thin, but it still kind of work with the overall design, so I left it that way (that, and I am running out of brown pieces…)

The weapon are simple sticks with harpoons (?), nothing too complicated, though it was meant to be a single stick originally, it was waaaay to long for the photos. Also, has anyone any idea of which set these harpoons (still '?') come from ? I can’t seem to find it, apparently.

Side shot :

As you may see, I’ve made all the limbs quite thick, because it fitted what I had in mind well, and I messed with a bunch of old pieces for the legs (mostly the sand pieces). There is also have a Bohrok’s body for each foot, because these work surprisingly well, and the middle segment of the leg is backward to give some hypothetical springiness to the legs. Also, Rahkshi feet as armor, that’s always a good recipe.

Head shot ! (Ah, that’s funny.)

Look at how dark that shot is ! If only I had taller shelves…

Anyway, the head is a mix of Rahkshi and Vahki heads, which mix well (there is also a gear underneath. Don’t ask me why. It just exists.)

All of that makes it looks like a V2 Rahkshi (when there is a single stick) which was pretty much on purpose.

On a side note, I’m pretty much done with my big project (which is good, I’m meant to expose it this weekend. Whoops, that’s suddenly very close.)

And, yes, I finally added the #moc, thank you for reminding me every time, I’ll add it from now on :}

✨Yet another combat mech !✨

A bit of laziness here, I couldn’t bring myself to get proper pictures, so I got old ones from when one of my LEDs broke, hence the blueish lighting-

Lore and closeups below, and previous work here !

Mech closeups :

Pilot closeup :

Lore time (world explanation in previous works..) !

So, Scorcher (the mech) is terrifyingly large, next to most others, which is already impressive, but it’s also one of the most equipped ones on the field : large circular saw, flamethrower, integrated calculation computer, you named it. The only real weak point is the reservoir in the back, which is what the flamethrower is powered by, and it’s hard to reach because one has to get behind Scorcher to get it.

The pilot is well equipped too, with last gen holographic equipment and a powerful high resolution display helmet, under which he somehow manages to fit all his hair. But he’s not alone, since he also have an entire team behind him (called Dragon, for obvious reasons), which helps him during and outside of combats, making this make one of the bests there are.

Unrelated to the lore, the large dome used for the head falls off every time I try to move something. It may have plot armor in the lore, but in real life I think a fly could beat it. Most of these joints are rigid, except at the waist, which is a mistake I probably won’t make ever again, it’s terrible. I’m also glad I stole the arms of another minifig for this one, because it was quite bland with purely red arms.