Remnants
Part 4D: Procyon
(Blaster)
Relevant Music: 1, 2
Story: ^ Since the start, Procyon was Millennium’s polar opposite. Afflicted with gigantism, he wound up needing heavy modifications and implants at an early age to support him through his abnormal growth, which left him nearly destitute. After some time living in the streets he was finally able to join the army, where he met Rigel and Deneb. Though his size and strength made him both a dangerously heavy hitter and a powerful defender for his fellow soldiers, it unfortunately left him an easy target, and he was honorably discharged after taking extensive injuries in a patrol gone wrong.
Moving on quickly, he decided to ■■■■■ his attention to politics, where he blamed the Polar City’s inefficient government for his early homelessness, and preached an ideology of unregulated anarchism and strong individualism. This quickly brought him into conflict with Millennium’s goals of cold logical collectivism and streamlining of authority, and the two quickly amassed widespread cults of personality as they offered compelling yet incompatible ideas on how to improve the world. Procyon in turn became more and more obsessed with victory as tensions between the factions grew, and despite his injuries stepped quite smoothly back into the role of soldier when outright civil war began. His mental state began to decline as well, growing unstable and bloodthirsty, and his rhetoric shifting towards an extreme ideal of ‘survival of the fittest,’ but nobody close to him paid it much mind until it was too late. Like Rigel, Deneb, and Millennium, he vanished mysteriously right before the end of the Cataclysmic conflict.
So here he is, the big guy himself. And my goodness is he big. I think he was one of the earliest ones I built, second or third after Archernar, and is probably singlehandedly responsible for half of the piece shortage I’ve been dealing with since then.
Side view, with and without his arm
And of course, the Nyran Shot.
Also, just to give you an idea of how obnoxiously huge he is, here’s a ruler. He’s somewhere in the range of fifteen inches tall, and the average Inika build probably goes no further than the top of his legs. It’s honestly absurd.
One tidbit of note is that I actually wound up getting Blaster twice, once back in 2000 (alongside Millennia) when I was small, and then a second one in 2010 when I ordered all of the others online. So here’s a mostly-complete Blaster (some pieces got donated to one of the other revamps, I believe) for comparison.
His shield is a perfect mirror of Rigel’s, so if you saw that post, you know what’s happening with this one. His sword, meanwhile, is… interesting conceptually, but incredibly flimsy in practice; I lost count of how many times it fell apart while I was taking some of the later photos. An easy fix would of course be to use system bricks with axle-holes for a more stable build, but again, since I never fixed it in the past eight or so years, I’m leaving it this way for now, for the sake of historical accuracy and whatnot.
I’m going to do something a little bit different this time and isolate chunks of his body to talk about. First up is the arms, which are decidedly thin and simple, despite my awkward efforts to add something resembling actual bulk. I also made the biceps significantly longer than the forearms in an attempt to mimic the orientation of the original set’s arms, but in hindsight I don’t think it worked as well as I’d intended. At least I got some use out of those giant rubber band holder pieces, though.
Meanwhile, I actually vividly recall that his feet were where I originally started the build. I wanted to make it resemble the original set’s setup while making them more closely resemble the somewhat frog-like structure of the other Slizers’ feet, thus the large toes beneath a layer of armor. I also made them able to fold down for some reason, though due to the way the rest of the build worked out, I haven’t gotten much use out of this particular bit of articulation.
His legs are a bit of a mixed bag, for me; while strong aesthetically in some ways, and certainly more solid than the originals, they also wound up being rather stiff and tree-trunk-like. Given the lack of friction pieces in the knees, it’s a minor miracle that he’s able to stand up at all, but as I’ll discuss later, he also suffers greatly in other ways from the loose ball-joints and his overall weight.
And then there’s the main torso, and I have quite the love-hate relationship with this part of the build. His upper body and chest area, I’m honestly quite fond of, evoking the structure of the original set with the yellow diagonal hoses surrounded by black, the gaps filled in with gunmetal armor, and the overall nice-looking structure.
His head also fits quite nicely between the side panels, not something I’d intentionally aimed for, but a nice side-effect of the build nonetheless.
…But then there’s his waist, which just looks kinda like a giant diaper. :/
I left the big gaps around the joints to allow his legs a better range of motion, but I’m not sure if the visual tradeoff is really worth it. Even setting that aside, the structure of this area is just a giant block of technic liftarms bundled awkwardly together, and it doesn’t look good. Not to mention that the build seems to be putting some strain on certain pieces; it’s overall just a huge clunky blob of awful.
His back isn’t much better; despite my best efforts with the top half, and the admittedly cool-looking spine bit down the middle, that doesn’t change how much of a featureless flat plane most of it is.
Plus, the features that are there on the top half don’t amount to much beyond an awkward and loose-fitting cover tacked on over the blank surface. At least it isn’t too obvious from most angles, only really apparent when looked at from straight down.
Obligatory disk shot! Nice thing about having the throwing arms built into the sword like this, is I don’t have to cheat like with all the others!
And in case you hadn’t already guessed, the disks can also store in the middle of his torso like with the original. Theoretically both can fit in there this time, but doing so resulted in the cracked yellow t-joints on the side, so since then I’ve kept it to just the one.
His poseability is… odd. While his torso is actually surprisingly lightweight, (likely due to the mostly-hollow interior construction) he still weights a considerable amount when taken all together, so while he can stand upright on his own without any problems, trying to make nearly any other sort of pose happen is a daunting proposition. Not helping matters are his arms, which flop down to his sides almost without exception, aside from if you angle them outward like shown here. Even then, it’s still not great. I managed to make the following photos happen despite that, but for the vast majority of them, I had to keep an iron grip on his legs while adjusting the camera, and hoping his arms wouldn’t fall back down before I could snap a pic. So if some of these don’t look the greatest, sorry about that.
Sitting. Again, the gaps between his legs and his waist allow them to bend forward by a lot, but I’m still not sure it’s worth the visual awkwardness otherwise.
In theory his sword can spin and fling the disks away, but in practice, it didn’t quite work out as intended. Still, here’s a cool shot.
Tried to recreate the pose from his boxart, but due to the aforementioned issues, it doesn’t quite look like what I was hoping for.
At least this one, though, I was able to get him to hold unsupported.
Procyon, for better or worse, is something of a monument to excess. Imposingly huge, using I don’t even know how many pieces, and despite the problems with his waist, arms, and back, overall he came out looking pretty good even after all these years. Still, like a monument, if he’s not standing perfectly upright then he’s crumbling to the ground, and so I feel he more than anyone else would benefit from either a somewhat smaller size next time, a more stable build, or most likely both. Still, despite his flaws, I feel a lot better about him than I thought I would, so I can only hope that another take will improve further on what I liked from this, while fixing the less ideal elements.
^ Once again, this story stuff is no longer something I’m pleased with; leaving it for historical reference, but feel free to ignore it. I thought I had politics figured out at 15, and I… very much did not. I don’t know why I tried to make Slizers a political thriller, but it definitely wasn’t the right direction to go.
Next Time: The Finale. Everyone together all at once, for one last time before I tear them all apart. It’s been a long time coming, and I can’t wait to finally have it done.