[MOC] 21st Century Man

[Roses]

You should be so happy. You should be so glad.

 

I was inspired by Electric Light Orchestra's Time album to make a humanoid character with a computer monitor in place of a head. I wanted to make the character fully-clothed, even if the first idea was to give it a sleek, cyberpunk bodysuit. After making the boots, though, and adding a pair of jeans, I stuck to the idea of just contemporary-looking clothes.

I got the idea of a semi-open leather jacket from combining minifigure roller- and ice-skates to make a zipper. I'm really happy with the final look and I'm glad that the character displays different layers of clothing - I think it gives it a realistic amount of depth.

I knew I wanted the character to be leaning against something for the main pose - to take advantage of the slight knee articulation, for increased stability, and just to have him look cool in a more playful way than my Dragon Hunter character, which is just mean and sassy. I would have loved to make the baseball bat in metallic silver with the Hubble Telescope's 2x2 curved slopes, but attempts with those pieces ended up looking too bulky and sloppy. The 2x2-round-bricks solution is super simple, but for this scale I think it's perfect.

I spent a good couple hours posing the guy and taking pictures. There are more poses and close-ups on my Flickr and on Instagram!

This one also has a backside! I'm learning to keep inner structures very compact to make characters displayable from any angle. It was fun imitating present-day clothes. I wish tires came in different colours, though, even if there aren't really any official sets for them to justifiably be any other colour than black. They're just so versatile for characters!

[jp-30]

Love this! Nice technique for the hands too. :) 

[Roses]

18 hours ago, jp-30 said:

Love this! Nice technique for the hands too. :) 

Thank you! It's the same technique I used for the Fly Samurai. It makes for pretty solid, posable & easy-to-build hands, and there's the possibility of customization like with the ring on the left hand.

[Killian]

So awesome! Love the little details with the roller skate and handcuff pieces. Is his belt a bracelet from Lego Dots?

[Roses]

1 hour ago, Killian said:

So awesome! Love the little details with the roller skate and handcuff pieces. Is his belt a bracelet from Lego Dots?

Thank you - Yes! I had to resort to an illegal technique with a drill to be able to tighten the bracelet enough to properly fit the character's waist size.

[gotoAndLego]

Great job on the jacket zipper.

[Jerac]

I like him a lot! The pose is great, but most notably the expressions, which are achieved by more than just the "face", also the rest of the pose, how the head is tilted. This all matches and I know since I started building characters myself, how hard it is to achieve.

Now... I almost feel wrong to complain about something, but just for sake of constructive criticism. So right below the knees, the boots start. But where are the calves? The character seems to be missing them, which is messing overall proportions a bit! Maybe some white tyres (I am sure there were small white tyres!) could be useful to cover the knee mixel joint and lengthen the leg a bit? 

I'd also like to notice that the baseball bat is leaning onto the character, not the other way around :D

Edited May 15, 2022 by Jerac

[Roses]

10 hours ago, gotoAndLego said:

Great job on the jacket zipper.

Thank you - it was a bit trickier than I thought lining up all the roller skates, since they leave a noticeable gap when placed at half-stud widths apart. They're connected to 1x1 clips, which are then spaced out freely on a 4L bar.

1 hour ago, Jerac said:

I like him a lot! The pose is great, but most notably the expressions, which are achieved by more than just the "face", also the rest of the pose, how the head is tilted. This all matches and I know since I started building characters myself, how hard it is to achieve.

Now... I almost feel wrong to complain about something, but just for sake of constructive criticism. So right below the knees, the boots start. But where are the calves? The character seems to be missing them, which is messing overall proportions a bit! Maybe some white tyres (I am sure there were small white tyres!) could be useful to cover the knee mixel joint and lengthen the leg a bit? 

I'd also like to notice that the baseball bat is leaning onto the character, not the other way around :D

Thank you! Good eye , I was noticing some possibly weird proportions at the legs while taking pictures of the character. I see the boots as being knee-high, so the calves never really worried me, but I'm not 100% happy with the way the hips turned out - since I see those as being a couple studs too tall. I tried for a while to have the crotch end two studs higher than it is now, but that left a very noticeable gap just above it that was particularly tricky to cover up, so I left the 2x4 wedge in and added the two 2x2 curved slopes to make it seem like the thighs are taller, elongating the legs a bit.

I was also thinking about the who's-leaning-on-whom aspect while taking pics! I have the character displayed on a shelf with the stud at the butt-end of the bat connected to the 2x2 plate with holes on the elbows, giving it increased stability and a more realistic leaning pose. The bat is posed like it is to be able to give the forearm a downward angle in the pictures, otherwise the arm would bend into itself and mess around with the silhouette. In hindsight, it could be fixed by making the bat one worm-gear shorter - I'd rather shorten the grip than the barrel to avoid a stubby look. It should be an easy fix... mmmmh... be right back

[Jerac]

The boots are definitely too short to be knee-high, and they also don't look like they are proportioned to be so. That said, I am curious what will you end up with if you happen to change it ^^

[_TLG_]

Cool idea, and very cool build!

[LEGO Train 12 Volts]

Wow, another masterpiece!
It's amazing how you manage to get a glimpse of the final result using pieces that would say nothing to normal people
The use of roller skates for the zip is brilliant, both for the part that is already closed and for the part that is still open.
The slider of the zipper made with the key of the spring mechanisms ... the use of the cuffs for the laces of the boots ...every detail is extraordinary!
You are a genius!

[Roses]

On 5/16/2022 at 5:03 AM, _TLG_ said:

Cool idea, and very cool build!

Thank you!

On 5/17/2022 at 5:37 PM, LEGO Train 12 Volts said:

Wow, another masterpiece!
It's amazing how you manage to get a glimpse of the final result using pieces that would say nothing to normal people
The use of roller skates for the zip is brilliant, both for the part that is already closed and for the part that is still open.
The slider of the zipper made with the key of the spring mechanisms ... the use of the cuffs for the laces of the boots ...every detail is extraordinary!
You are a genius!

Thank you - I almost always start off with looking for seed parts that'll make for nice piece usage on a character build. I have a bit of a limited parts selection, but there are a few sets from the early 2000s that use highly specialized pieces that sometimes strike a chord to build a certain kind of character, for example. It sometimes sucks to have to ditch a preconceived character concept because the pieces one has in hand don't work for it, but I think it's worth it if it's in favor of using pieces in a different, weird and interesting way. If I had stuck to this character's original idea, it would have been wearing much simpler, sleeker clothes!

[Peppermint_M]

A cool character and you are quoting my favourite album ever? Excellent! Interesting techniques there, that zipper is genius. All over, a great MOC. Thanks for sharing.