I said last time that I could not imagine this character as being black and gold. After posting a render of his Shiny form at the bottom of that post that went unnoticed, I decided to try making a gold version for real.
Karzahni Gold
Karzahni is made using 154 pieces, 10 of which are in the weapon which I’ll talk about later. For the most part, this moc follows some very simple rules:
- Stay as close to the original construction as possible.
- Green turns to black, purple turns to gold.
- Avoid too many clashing textures.
Like last time, I started with the torso, figuring I had to get the chest right if I had a chance at getting the rest of the moc to work. With purple, I was able to use some Technic panels and a perpendicular connector to get the job done, but exactly zero of those pieces come in gold. I started with an Inika shoulder armor before swapping it to a Hordika foot, but I had so much trouble finding a way to get more gold on the chest without it looking super blocky. I was then informed of these Ninjago blades, which (after some experimentation getting them in the right place) work wonders; some Hero Factory pieces complete the shaping in a way I found too good not to use. I was also able to add in a belt buckle, since that’s something I wasn’t able to clearly do last time.
Gold’s limbs are spiritually identical to Harvester’s, the main differences being that I decided to avoid HF pieces for the most part (as I didn’t want too many clashing aesthetics this time) and the absence of the spikes. There was already some dark grey on the original moc anyway, and using G1 limbs for the biceps gave me an excuse to put a little more in the upper parts of the limbs (the pre-08 version of this piece was never made in black and it still bothers me to this day). I could’ve just used the same hand design I used on Harvester, but I didn’t like how it looked here, so I used this design instead.
The mask, which is a different version from the one I used last time, is the one place where my color rule faltered, but I ultimately went with this scheme instead of its inverse because I thought it looked better this way. Finally, I originally intended to give Gold a black cape again, but then I remembered that my silver and green Artakha uses a purple cape and thought it would be a fun idea to give Karzahni an off-color one as well. I first tried dark red, since the one I used irl was actually produced in that color by Lego; but, ironically, that’s not a color offered by capes4minifigs (which I would recommend over buying actual Lego capes secondhand). Annoyed but not deterred, I tried Mata red instead. Long story short, I love how positively demonic he looks with it.
Let’s finally talk about the weapon. I decided against giving Gold his canon flaming chains because, once again, I didn’t want to deal with posing them in Studio. I also decided against giving him Harvester’s sickles. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s hard for me to imagine Karzahni being gold, and even something as simple as a palette swap makes him feel like a completely different character to the one I picture in my head; so I decided to lean into that by giving him something new. At first I thought about giving him a spear, but then I was introduced to a mancatcher by one of my friends, and I have to agree with her that this is such a fitting weapon for Karzahni. I tried a couple different versions, but this simple design was ultimately the best I can come up with.