Oni Lloyd
The preliminary theme for Bio-Cup 2023 was "Villain". As per usual, the Bio-Cup themes tend to be very broad and open to interpretation, so I decided to take Oni Lloyd from Ninjago, who wasn't exactly a villain, and re-imagine him as a full fledged demon.
I had recently finished my playthrough of Octopath Traveler 2, and one of the bosses (minor spoilers), the Enshrouded King, really caught my attention. In game, he wields the six weapon types and slowly uses each one, eventually culminating in a turn where he uses all at once unless you break or defeat him in time.
Anyway, taking the idea of a multi-armed oni, which is also a common motif for Ninjago, I decided to make a version of Oni Lloyd where he wields the four classic Weapons of Spinjitzu. This would also give me another chance to make another oni, something I had not done since my Oni and Dragon MOC from 2021.
As a result of working in dark tan, the face ends up using an unusual combination of parts. Looking back at my 2021 oni, I had used handcuffs to hold up the fangs. However, from Oni Lloyd's minifigure design, the fangs were on the top rather than bottom. Also, the color of the teeth on the minifigure was gold. White, which I had used in 2021, would not work as well with dark tan. After looking for clip connections in tan, I ended up using an unconventional piece - a crab (33121). The main reason I selected was that it had the perfect spacing I needed for the fangs. Furthermore, it boasts a bar hole connection on it's antistud. With the top layer of teeth solved, I needed something for the bottom layer. Initially, the solution was to use a technic gear (6589), but the bevel gave off the wrong facial expression. Instead, I used the Ice Fisherman's hood (95678pb02) from CMF series 5. The fun part about this piece is that it is dual-molded, with a tan fur portion for the hood tip and a smooth dark tan portion for the rest of the hood. The texture of the tan fur perfectly resembled teeth with it's vertical lining. As a result, with it's unique dual-molding and textures, I was able to exploit this as the perfect lower jaw and chin for the entire face.
In my opinion, the torso for this build was a bit questionable, but I'll chalk it up to being on a limited build time for Bio-Cup. I ended up using technic ratchet joints for the abs. Is it the right texture? In hindsight, no. It was a bit too greebly and unnatural looking. However, dark tan was a difficult color to work with, so I was really reaching for straws when selecting parts for this area. Looking back, I think boat studs would have made a better ab design. I am particularly happy about the zipline part of the torso though. It's nothing ground-breaking, but the square hitch for the zipline belt is one of my favorite details in the model.
Lastly, I want to talk about the weapon designs a bit because these were very fun to make. Taking inspiration from the original designs, I incorporated dragon heads into each of the weapons, with the exception of the shuriken. Instead, I decided to consolidate the traditionally two smaller shurikens into one giant shuriken. The other weapons, however, each feature a slightly different dragon head design and infinity stones are used for the eyes. The color is respective to the element of the weapons. The inclusion of black as the handles for each of the weapons was an effort to further distinguish the dragon heads of the weapons. The original weapons were completely gold, which I don't think would have worked for these upscaled weapons.