Lily: Princess of the Dark

[dviddy]

 

Okay so this was my last-minute entry to that whole "battle for the Gold Mask" thing. I didn't quite have time for anything intense, but I felt with all the help Julie and the CEE team had been to us with the NYCC stuff and the parts and all, that I should at least build something! So this is what I came up with.

 

It's not an intense MOC by any means, but I'm pretty dang proud of how she turned out. I've been having a lot of fun with character design work, and I think this is one of the best MOCs in that regard I've done. I like it a lot, and I hope you do too! And if you don't, that's chill, but I do so I'm not worried.

 

For some reason this is the only photo I took? I think because of the mad rush to get it in before the deadline. Oh well.

[Tesseract]

I love the feet and torso here. Clearly I need to play with CCBS more. The torso in particular just flows like... well, a torso should flow. The feet remind me of the old 2001 Toa feet, but not as empty. Very nice!

 

I do have to say the gaps in the knees and sides of the calves bug me a bit, but from the angle of the picture they're not too noticeable. Those kinds of gaps seem to be CCBS's biggest weakness, though.

 

I really wish you had more shots, if only so I could see more of the claw; it looks vicious, but I haven't the slightest clue what the back of it is. I'd also like to see more of that head; as I look closer, it feels like it'd be rather exciting.

 

The upper arms are precariously balanced between too slim and just right... Adding normal CCBS armor pieces would've likely made them feel too bulky. I think the tires do just enough to make it work.

 

The whole build feels... agile, I think that's the word I want to use. The only part that detracts from that is the lower legs, I think. Everything else seems more sleek.

 

All in all another excellent build from DeeVee. Really has personality, more than just a humanoid figure in armor. Love it!

 

~Tesser

[socketball]

MMMnNMMNMnnnnMNMNM dat torso shaping... legs are a little weak, but the rest makes up for that pretty well.

 

 

I wish that they had the other masks be winnable by contests also, I was out of Bionicle and Lego in general and didn't get back into it until around the semi-finals...

Edited April 8, 2015 by novuscarpus

[Cwog]

Absolutely amazing. One question though: Why don't the hands match?

[dviddy]

I love the feet and torso here. Clearly I need to play with CCBS more. The torso in particular just flows like... well, a torso should flow. The feet remind me of the old 2001 Toa feet, but not as empty. Very nice!

 

I do have to say the gaps in the knees and sides of the calves bug me a bit, but from the angle of the picture they're not too noticeable. Those kinds of gaps seem to be CCBS's biggest weakness, though.

 

I really wish you had more shots, if only so I could see more of the claw; it looks vicious, but I haven't the slightest clue what the back of it is. I'd also like to see more of that head; as I look closer, it feels like it'd be rather exciting.

 

The upper arms are precariously balanced between too slim and just right... Adding normal CCBS armor pieces would've likely made them feel too bulky. I think the tires do just enough to make it work.

 

The whole build feels... agile, I think that's the word I want to use. The only part that detracts from that is the lower legs, I think. Everything else seems more sleek.

 

All in all another excellent build from DeeVee. Really has personality, more than just a humanoid figure in armor. Love it!

 

~Tesser

Be careful- the more you play around with CCBS the less you'll want to play around with other parts. I used to build with so much system, but I find all the textures and curvature I used to use literally dozens of fragile system parts and system connections for can be replicated with CCBS parts. And not only can they be replaced with CCBS parts, but I can now use three parts where I would use twenty. It's a sudden and jarring change for a lot of folks, but I almost find it freeing. Instead of saying "I already used this as an arm, maybe I need some new designs?" I just use shells and focus instead on what defines the character I'm building. It's a focus on depiction over technique in a lot of ways, but I think the two feed into one another in a lot of ways.

 

In a weird way, though they have almost gotten simpler, my MOCs currently feel like more of an embodiment of that "perfect action figure design" Jinzo was always on about.

 

/digression

 

All of that said, there was a little flair-up on my Flickr over these "gaps" on the calves and knees you mention here. A few folks mentioned them as well as detriments, but as I said there, I literally don't see them. The "empty space" between the sides of the shells and the sockets doesn't exist to me. Curves flow into one another, the parts flow solidly into the ones below. Obviously you can't see the sides of the legs since this is the only photo I currently have, but there are shells on the lower legs (that the new add-on attaches to) that help finish the leg's simple flow. I just don't see these gaps as a thing, and I think maybe we as a community might have to untrain ourselves to stop seeing "gaps" or empty connections as detriments, because the CCBS system is the future. It's not going away, you know? And the technic-heavy, "custom everything" builds look so unsightly and unwieldy 98% of the time compared to CCBS builds. I don't know. I'm drifting from the point again.

 

The back of the arm is the brain attack HF torso with a red boat stud attached via minifig clip through the chest section of the torso shell (where the HF "H" round part would go). Simple but I wanted something detailed and bigger to help set the two arms apart from one another.

 

You can zoom in on the head on my Flickr photo.

 

The "has more personality" thing is really the thing I want to hone in on. This is the entire point of why I do what I do. I want to bring characters to life. In a way, all of these MOCs are little OCs with backstories and personalities that are all told solely through their visual presentation. I don't want to just build another cool humanoid warrior thing- I want to build a person. Something you could look at and say "this MOC looks like it would like rock music" or "I bet this guy tells bad jokes but doesn't care". Things like that. When you're in such a visual medium, there's no other way to tell the story properly. You can say in your description "this MOC is a super magical girl who hates fighting, she's not a physical fighter" but if you've build a giant, buff-as-rocks woman, does the story fit the build? Is that really who you built?

 

Man you made me go and right several treatises on building. For shame Tess!

 

Absolutely amazing. One question though: Why don't the hands match?

Well, in the elaborate backstory I built for her in my head whilst I built her, she's a demon princess (hence the horns) from a kingdom of darkness. Her regular skin is white (hence the face and the white fingers on the normal hand), but she's a warrior princess in a demon regime, so her other hand is a corrupted claw covered in armour. Something to make her look a little less cutesy and a little more monstrous. I was also sort of worried that she'd end up looking too adorable and perfect and not "villain" enough in the eyes of a lot of people. So, claw hand! Plus I wanted to use some of the literally hundreds of dark grey skull spider legs I own.

[Cwog]

 

Absolutely amazing. One question though: Why don't the hands match?

Well, in the elaborate backstory I built for her in my head whilst I built her, she's a demon princess (hence the horns) from a kingdom of darkness. Her regular skin is white (hence the face and the white fingers on the normal hand), but she's a warrior princess in a demon regime, so her other hand is a corrupted claw covered in armour. Something to make her look a little less cutesy and a little more monstrous. I was also sort of worried that she'd end up looking too adorable and perfect and not "villain" enough in the eyes of a lot of people. So, claw hand! Plus I wanted to use some of the literally hundreds of dark grey skull spider legs I own.

 

Oh, alright. Looks great!

[CrashDummy]

truly, backstories are great fun to write.