ColdGoldLazarus' Overdesigned MoCs

Thank you!

Why was I not aware this topic existed?

Looks aight from what I can see. I’ll go into it in more detail when I get the chance.

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It looks like a red bigger Roodaka . It is a good MOC. Good work!

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Neat NPC, especially w/ the torso.

(More System maybe? It’s good as it is but hey- you can never have too much detail. Well, besides BayFormers… ;{)

(and yes i still exist to the bane of myself and the universe)

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Thanks!

Are you asking me to add system to the build, or build more things with system?
In either case, I’ll admit my collection is very heavily technic/constraction oriented, so that… may be a bit hard.

Really depends on the 'bot in question. :wink:

Glad to hear. ^_^

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Yeah, more system to the build. It helps that LEGO’s made a lot more curves and greebles that lend themselves to more varied and detailed humanoids.

And thanks for acknowledging!

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It’s been a hot minute since I’ve posted here. Dunno how soon I can make this happen, but hopefully sooner rather than later I do plan to post the last few Slizer MOCs and one other titan build from my pre-G2 days, so I can finally pull them all apart and build something new. I also think that once that’s done I’ll leave this topic behind, and post any new MOCs in their own thread like I did with Umarak The Scorched. Either way, I still have unfinished business here that I intend to finally complete!

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Well, good luck!

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hi coldgoldlazarus

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Can’t wait to see them

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Okay, before we jump into the last few Slizers, there is one other MOC I forgot about. Do you remember my Vamprah Revamp? This one here was intended as a companion, but I’ve come to realize it just doesn’t stack up. Still, for the historical record, I now present…

Antroz


Ultimately, he’s not the worst MOC I’ve ever made, far from. But in comparison to Vamprah he falls short, and he doesn’t even hold a candle to Chirox. (Who I have decided warrants a seperate topic, one of these days.) I do intend to give him another try at some point, to bring him up to standard, but in order to do that I need to first disassemble this awkward prototype.

Side and Nyran shots, of course. For all that I’m unhappy with the actual execution of his design, I will say that as a prototype, this does at least serve well to illustrate the general idea I’m aiming for. Where Vamprah and Chirox are fairly batlike, Antroz always struck me as much more demonic, thus my addition here of a barbed tail and expanding on his shoulder wings. Again though, it’s the execution where this idea falls apart.

I think the wings are what suffer the most clearly in this design; part of it is admittedly that I was running low on ideal pieces thanks to the Slizer revamps already hogging a massive chunk of my collection, but even aside from that I feel like there should be better ways to portray my intentions here. The original set’s wing pieces awkwardly stacked on top doesn’t do any favors either, and the disparity in scale and aesthetic is odd enough even if the lower part of the wing didn’t look like junk.

I have mixed feelings on his body, here. On one hand, while it’s built around a standard Inika torso setup, I’ve managed to give it a more involved build than is typical, closer in complexity to the likes of Axonn and Brutaka in some ways. On the other hand, it still is an Inika torso, and a lot of the other pieces go more toward covering up that fact rather than giving him a more unique, aesthetically interesting presence to match my other two Phantoka revamps. Additionally, the way the wings are attached limits their outward movement, only making the aforementioned awkwardness in their design even worse.

It does have waist articulation like the other two, but while it’s less obvious and more balanced than Vamprah’s, allowing for backward tilt as well as forward crunch, it’s still not pretty, and lacks much in the way of friction control; it would also look a lot worse if I hadn’t gone to so much trouble to try to hide it.

Taking off his wings for a moment, I also wanted to talk about his other limbs. They’re alright enough, innoffensive and basic, though the lower thighs suffer greatly from lack of something to fill them out. The upper arms look better, but have unfortunately fallen prey to cracked pieces in spots. And the tail is quite long, enough to hover over his shoulder like a scorpion, but also kinda basic, without any taper, leaving it to feel as tacked-on as it actually is. Fun fact; while I was taking these pictures the tail fell off about seven different times. Nothing wrong with the socket itself, even, but rather the hand piece kept sliding off the axle attaching it to the back of his waist. I can at least say I’m reasonably pleased with the color scheme, a decently even blend of Metru Red, Black, and Trans-Orange, with Mata Red and Burnt Orange as minor accents, but I think if/when I redo this, I’ll likely cut out the Burnt Orange at the very least.

(Sidenote, as you can see here his weapons are also not implemented too well; unless I push in the grey pins hard to force friction, they fall down easily. And trying to force that friction wound up breaking one of the hand pieces, making me swap it out for one of the ones in his ankles, so whoooops. Not a recommended method of building either.)

Fun? With Posing


In terms of articulation he’s not too shabby, with seeeeveral balljoints to work with, but when his wings are extended in any way balance becomes a huge issue; this was the only pose I was able to get him in that looked halfway decent and didn’t rely on my hands to maintain. Again, his waist crunch is nice in some ways, but the lack of friction is a problem; this doesn’t even show it off as well as I wanted due to the wings pulling his upper torso back.

Conclusion


Ultimately, like I said at the start; as a prototype for what I want out of him, he’s alright enough, but putting him next to my Vamprah and Chirox revamps, he is easily the weakest of the three. And on his own, in the light of day, he just looks…

Kinda mediocre.

“Why, CGL, why have you forsaken me?”
I intend to pull him apart as soon as I’ve posted this, along with a few other MOCs I’ve posted previously and never gotten around to tearing apart. However, I do intend to at some point re-revamp him to better match up to the other two, and hopefully once I’ve done the same to all my Slizers, there will be a better pool of pieces to work with to that end. I don’t know if it will happen anytime soon, given just how long it’s already taken me to get back to this, but it will be happening eventually. Wish me luck; in the meantime RIP this guy.


Next Time: What is a man without a motorcycle? Not a whole lot, actually.

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This is one of those MOCs where the color scheme and placement isn’t necessarily bad, but it does make me uneasy.

I Imagine the visual of peanut butter mixed with salsa.

Requisite additional critiques: Torso is quite blocky (but without being too rigid in its blockiness, sans that technic piece in his stomach), Bohrok eyes don’t really work as armor; exposed ball sockets, wings might benefit from being all black for the limb pieces; silver is out of place when only on the foreclaws.

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Yeah, think I’ll definitely leave the burnt-orange stuff out when I re-revamp him.

Eh, personally I really like them. I mean, they aren’t really used that well here, but on Vamprah and to a lesser extent on Chirox I’ve used them a lot to fill in gaps and create specific shaping. They’re one of my favorite pieces for aesthetics.

We’ll have to agree to disagree there; the silver is literally just in his weapons, so there isn’t really a need to force it into the rest of his color scheme IMO.

Still, I do agree with your other critiques, so I’ll try to keep that stuff in mind whenever I get around to rebuilding him. Thank you!

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Yeah, they can be quite useful to fill gaps.[quote=“ColdGoldLazarus, post:297, topic:5519”]
the silver is literally just in his weapons
[/quote]

I always saw the Makuta’s blades as an extension of their bodies, since they had similar silver elements in their wings and Tridax pods.

Speaking of, any reason he doesn’t have a Tridax pod?

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Fair enough. I’ve always seen them as just weapons, though, so that’s reflected in the design here. Vamprah and Chirox have still have silver since it was a part of their color schemes outside of just three pieces, but for Antroz I decided to cut it out rather than add more. Tbh I don’t think it goes that well with Metru Red anyway. ^_^;

Laziness, I guess? Vamprah was the first one I made and I tried to do the Tridax pod there, but I was unable to get the look and proportions I wanted, so eventually I gave up on that. Since Vamprah didn’t have it, it would look weird if the others did, so I didn’t even bother when I made them. With Antroz a case can be made that I should have tried it again, since he’s more broad-shouldered and bulky, but I think Chirox definitely benefitted from not having that concern to get in the way of what I was doing.

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Remnants
Part 4A: Millennium
(Millennia)

Relevant Music: 1, 2

Story:^ Born at the very turn of the century, Millennium was named for that unique twist of probability rather than according to usual conventions. His parents were influential yet rather infamous politicians, and so perhaps inevitably, his privileged upbringing was cut short quite brutally by a mysterious new assassin calling themselves Rex. Millennium went on to become an influential up-and-coming leader in his own right, touting an elitist meritocratic ideology that prized efficiency and cold logic over all else. He was surprisingly popular despite that, with his intentions to streamline the city’s bloated and inefficient governance. Though quite austere in lifestyle, one luxury he afforded himself was a custom-built motorcycle like those of the mythic Riders, that could transform into a mechsuit to make up for his stunted stature. He eventually led one of the two primary factions in civil war, though vanished mysteriously shortly before the end.

As you can see, he’s pretty simple. In some ways he averts the terrible case of “Titan-itis” that has affected all of the other MOCs in this series and from this time period, but I wouldn’t necessarily consider him an ideal build, simpler than the others but no less inelegant. There’s also the matter of the missing motorcycle, but I’ll get more into that at the end. I will say now, though, that the lack of red to offset his duller greys and blacks, while faithful to the original set, definitely hurts him here.

It’s not all bad, though. One thing I did that isn’t necessarily the most faithful but that I do like is this staff here. The head isn’t necessarily the best-looking, but on the whole I like what I was going for here, with the spiraling hose and use of Kopaka Phantoka’s bayonet. (Reclaimed after a certain other MOC was recently disassembled.)

Playing off the original’s huge shoulder wing/fin/thingies, I used the same pieces to give him a similar look; however the original ones were somewhat restrictive on the articulation, so I tried to avert that here, with… mixed results? Also there’s the gear, but it’s as useless as with all my other Slizer MOCs.

Front, back, and Nyran shots of the actual torso. It essentially boils down to some gears and technic stuff awkwardly sandwiched between two big plate pieces; (originally from Roboriders, but these specific ones were from the Exo-Toa) it’s the most ‘complex’ and interesting part of the build, but it also gives him an extraordinarily boxlike figure from the front or back. There were also a pair of axles sticking out weirdly from the sides that parts of the motorcycle transformation were meant to slip over to lock him in place, but again, that part of the build just never came to pass… I don’t even need to talk about the limbs, since they’re fairly self-evident here.

Another somewhat quirky element of his design is the way his head articulation got impacted; while it now has great side-to-side motion unlike the original, the up-and-down is extremely limited, without the sort of extended neck many of my other Slizer revamps had to offset the socket shape/orientation. Another consequence of his small size, for better or worse.

I do feel his staff makes a good accessory, though, with the bayonet piece providing a third potential point to carry it by. The longer handles in the middle were meant to allow it to hang from the side of the Motorcycle, but do admittedly look awkward when it’s just him.

Like Judge he has two disk arms, so two disk arms he has. YMMV on whether this pose looks as cool as I intended, but ah well. Think of it like he’s T-posing to assert his dominance.

I feel the lack of gold outside his head, while forgivable in the original set, is a much bigger problem here, and only the disk really offsets that by any amount. Though it does show him with the motorcycle he doesn’t have, so I guess here’s as good a place as any to address that…

Long story short, while I was able to build it once back in 2012, it wasn’t able to transform like I wanted, so got scrapped. Some time later, I’ve realized that without buying significantly more Technic sets than I own, and getting ahold of more of those stiff ratchet joints from the Exo-Toa, I just plain am unable to build the full-scale, properly transforming version within my current means. I think downscaling could help with that, but it would also mean downscaling all my other Slizers to match - which I do plan on doing once I’ve finished these last few posts. They’ve clogged up my parts inventory and shelf space for far too long now, so once I’m done documenting 2012’s Slizers, I want to pull them all apart and start fresh with my modern MOCcing prowess, resist the idea that ‘bigger is better’ and just focus on making them look good and re-revamp them at a more reasonable scale. But I digress. Long story short, I can’t make a motorcycle to fit with this Millenium, but I hope a fresher, smaller take could bring that goal into the range of viability.

In the end, I feel like Millennium, while not as egregious as some of the others, is still not the best he could be, and without the big accessory alongside him, he feels bland and underwhelming.

And yet, I don’t want to be too down on it either. This was built eight years ago, and for all his clunkiness, he’s still at least more consistent than some of the others. And from the right angle, he still can seem pretty good; I can only hope that if and when I give him another revision, it will look even better, perhaps a bit more grand…


^ (I’m still gonna write up these bios according to my original ideas at the time, but note that I’m not really that fond of them nowadays, and so they’re not really relevant anymore beyond being flavor text; were I to try to write a story for Slizers now it would probably only share vague similarities with the version that was in my head in 2011. Millennia here is likely one of the bigger points of difference in how I would handle things, dropping the whole politician angle in favor of something far more interesting.)


Next Time: It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s… a bird that’s aflame!

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Nice MOC. Though it could definitely be improved, I still think it’s nice. I especially like the proportions and how they’re very similar to a Slizer’s proportions.

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make a g1 arcee moc

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Mmm, nah

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i wasnt asking

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