I won't be updating the topic when I've done the others - I know the rules, and I expect the topic will be long gone anyway by the time the next is finished. Anyway, on to the MOC:
IIYou can TL;DR this bit. It's the background of the build
A while ago, I built an LDD Toa Nuara to my dimensions measured in lego. It was pretty much a total failure. The limbs took ages to pose 'cause of the really incredible lag LDD generates trying to rotate body-sized lego structures, added to the difficulties of posing ball joints as opposed to hinges. On top of that, the limbs were stick-thin (I'm not exactly muscular, you see. I made the mistake of forgetting Toa are clad in quite significant armour), the... rear padding... was ridiculously disproportioned 'cause I'd estimated it and the mask (the one part I was pleased with) looked huge on top of the rest of the body, though actually the "head" it was built over was quite pleasingly proportional.
I really wanted something to show for the many hours of effort I put into it, but the MOC itself was pretty much a washout. I could have revamped it (in fact, I still want to, but that's a pipe dream as of now), but I didn't want to invest that much time into building the same thing again, especially so soon. So I decided on one of the many Bionicle based Toa teams I've built over the years, and went for one I felt I wouldn't be tempted to put the same stick-thin proportions on: This one. Using what I'd learned not to do with the one failed MOC, I'd build three others.II
And this is what I've built
The joints are, I admit, very gappy. In order to allow the limbs to move with a near-natural range of positions, I think it's neccessary. I replaced as many of the ball-jointed sections as I could with hinge arrays - the neck, fingers and wrists are the only joints that use the ball bearing method, which suffer heavily from lag when they're posed.
The picture's not all that clear at this distance, so here's a range of pictures that cover pretty much all the surfaces in recognisable detail:
Front of feet and shins
Back of feet and shins
Front of thighs, pelvis and lower arms
Back of thighs, pelvis and lower arms
Front of torso
Back of torso
Kanohi Ruru
(It's not actually supposed to be a Ruru, but that's not the topic, here)
And yeah... Full body Articulation. (edited to right pic) Counting the three-hinge arrays replacing the ball joints as one joint, he has 43 points of articulation, while in practice it's 55.
If you want the file to play around with, it's here. Bear in mind it's a huge, laggy model. It might not be supportable on some computers, and it'll appear to freeze whenever you edit an angle, change the group of bricks you're changing the angles around, switch the angle tool (after it's been used) for any other tool, when you load it or when you save it. These are all temporary effects, though. In the most severe cases (on this computer), they'll last three minutes at most (doing things like rotating the whole body around an extremity like a foot or a knuckle).
So, comments? If you have any ideas, I'd really appreciate feedback on ideas to make the others less gappy, while still mobile. I don't think I'll be editing this one, though.
Edited by Takal, Nov 09 2012 - 01:56 PM.
