Built for Round 3 of MOC League 2022, constellations.
Constellation found: Ursa Major
Relative found: Ursa Minor
Come, sit on Mother’s lap and listen – listen with understanding. I shall craft and mold you until you can; may I give understanding should my words fail your listening ears. You must understand Mother and not disobey like her other children.
For lo, look to the expanse above. May I craft you vision which can survive that scene. See what Mother hid from her last children, whom rebelled for her secrets.
Listen - and do not weep for them, Mother already has for her failure. Just hear so that you may learn Mother’s secrets and live. For they are not kind. They will destroy.
Many children I have made - that slither and crawl and fly on beating wing. But in Man was my delight, the greatest of my children. For whom Mother spent beyond ages known to form. Yet fragile still, unable to handle the expanse.
So Mother made gravity, to bind them closer to her. She made earth for them to play in. She made light and dictated its speed to hide the expanse. And most of all, Mother limited their vision so their spirit may not break.
But my children rebelled with ambition, rejected Mother’s protection. They fought gravity’s chains to leave me. Defied the limits of light placed to save them. Saw what Mother hid as stars and shattered.
Mother cannot only protect, she must make you strong. To survive that which brings woe to understanding. So lo, see the expanse! I grant you vision, see in truth that which must be overcome!
“Ah Nature, come out of hiding again. What have you to show for now? Another particle that mistakes me as another one of your specks? A ‘bear’ your Humanity called me last time. What shall this one call me?”
General Turnaround:
Photographer’s Notes: I couldn’t fully decide which version of the photos where better in terms of lighting. So contained below are brighter versions of the ones above. Let me know which ones you prefer. One of these days I’ll figure it out.
Designer’s Rambling into Insanity: If you’re looking at this and saying to yourself, “Wait, that’s not a bear.” You are correct! But to give a TL;DR version here’s what the constellation looks like:
Which doesn’t really look like a bear, though check out this video for a better drawing of the stars that looks more bear-like. But to give the long version…
Here
We
GO!
So for this round, we were told to pick one of the 88 official constellations as the basis for our build. I, as an American, am biased towards the Big and Little Dippers and picked Ursa Major accordingly. With how many interpretations the Big Dipper has alone, there was a lot for me to play with. So my initial idea was building a big bear at a campfire with a cauldron over it, ready to dip a ladle into the soup, with a wagon and plough in the background. There was just one tiny problem. Very small, nothing to worry about, but we were told this in the round description:
"Animals, mythical creatures, mundane objects, or even geometrical figures, you have a lot to choose from, so I want you to take one more step: your MOC must feel like it belongs in space.
We are talking about celestial bodies outside of our world, so get creative with it, take risks, do not stop yourself to the subject represented by the constellation, but try to elevate it to something otherworldly."
Uh oh.
That probably meant my camping bear idea wouldn’t work. And putting on a space helmet and saying it ploughs asteroid fields probably wouldn’t cut it, so back to the idea board. But what in the world does, “belongs in space,” even mean? Like, naturally existing in space? Adapted to be in space? A bear-shaped spaceship?! Spaceships manned by bears and working on the space farms!!?
Or cosmic horror. Maybe the creature has similar shaping to the traditional connection of the constellation, and the Big Dipper is a portion of its body that it can rip out and use as a weapon. Perhaps the handle should be the head as well, so it grabs its neck, rips out most of its front torso, and smacks people around with the strangest frying pan in history.
Or, because that would be difficult for me to get working properly, what about a sculpture? A 3D wireframe sculpture, something thin and mostly open, with a few panels hanging in space and circle pieces for the stars. This was something I pursued for a brief experiment, which can be seen here:
It’s thinner than it would have been if I went the full route, planned on it being much wider than three Technic holes. But it didn’t look good enough to be a contest winner. I did like keeping the handle portion as the neck and head, so I planned on keeping that. Initially with just one line of Technic connectors rather than two, like in the above, but that proved difficult to work with. Also weird looking if that was the only thing that stayed so thin.
Thus, I tried to recreate that with CCBS. Only created one at first, but since that looked like a snail or slug’s eyestalk, I decided to duplicate it. After all, if I was already giving legs to both sides, why not do the same to the handle/tail part? And with that revelation, I knew exactly what I must do.
Space slug.
A space slug with legs following the constellation. A black body for the void of space, using wheels and other white pieces for the star pattern to match the constellation. Or at least roughly match the constellation, which means you can think of it facing the correct way if you want. But why would you do that when there’s a space slug with legs?
But the question still remains, does it looks like it belongs in space? Probably? Most likely I overthought this whole thing and went into unnecessary madness. It has certainly been the most difficult round from a conceptual level with just a few silly words. Space. Spacespace space.
Anyways, what do you think? Do you enjoy my interpretation of Ursa Major? Do you think it looks like it belongs in space or is at least otherworldly? Or should have I stuck with my wholesome bear picnic? Let me know.
Oh! And if you haven’t already, don’t forget to check out Ursa Minor by robomakesbadmocs. They were my rival in Round 2 and they also made an umbrella weapon back in Round 1. But I thought it would be fun if we did a small collab this round as allies. Really should have thought about doing that offer for prior rounds, but lessons learned for future competitions.
