I haven't been writing about builds as much as I would like, so, to tie in with my latest build, I thought it'd be neat to talk about the history of my Cyclops visor builds. It's not as much of a saga as, say, the history behind my mosaic or mask builds, but it does have a fair amount of backstory, one that I hope you'll find interesting. This idea first came to me during 4th Year high school— a good approximation would be around late 2012. Our English department had come up with this thing called Lit Live, where you spend the day essentially cosplaying characters from literature. Lucky for me, comic books counted as literature (as it should), so I immediately started thinking of comic characters who had iconic paraphernalia that I could then turn into a wearable build. I had a bunch of ideas for which comic character to go as, but the Cyclops visor stuck out to me, because a) it was iconic enough that I could get away with making just that and wearing normal clothes, and b) I thought it'd be a cool idea to build it around my glasses so I could have it on the entire day. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to pull off the latter point, so I gave up after a while. Remember, this was in 2012; I don't quite figure out wearable builds (especially ones on my face) until over a year later. Oh, and in case you were wondering, I went as Doctor Octopus during Lit Live. It was a completely half-assed costume— I wore a green shirt, some random jeans, and cobbled together a tentacle build that looked so terrible, I'm not even sure I documented it. I might revisit that idea in the future, just so I can absolve myself of that sin. Almost an entire year after I first came up with it, I took on the Cyclops visor idea again, and I was actually able to figure something out. I had been fiddling with this red hose piece and stumbled upon a weird way to attach it to Bionicle limb pieces. One thing led to another, and eventually, the first Cyclops visor was born. I was pretty proud of myself at the time for coming up with the idea of using the hose piece as the red part of the visor. The big problem I found with this first iteration was that I couldn't see shit through it. I also wasn't too thrilled with how it actually looked, either. The visor itself was razor thin (Cyclops's covers a good amount of his face), and the color scheme (or lack thereof) made it pretty clear that the build was something I jury-rigged as a proof of concept as opposed to a design I deliberated on. Despite this, I was still happy with the build, but it was obvious to me that there was plenty of room for improvement. Mk. 2 of the visor came about a year later after Mk. 1, and it felt like a complete step up. It uses the original idea of the red hose piece made to look like the ruby-quartz component of the visor, but the key change lies in the visor itself. Inspired by how the visor looked in the original X-Men movies, I used slightly larger pieces, and went with an all-black color scheme. Considering how much I stressed out over having the build attach to my glasses the first time, I elected not to worry about that aspect at all in this version. That said, it was something I thought about a lot, especially during the peak of my mask-making days (an issue I didn't think to bring up in the wearable masks blog post). Having the masks I built be glasses-friendly was always something at the back of my mind, but it was never a top priority because it ended up being more trouble than it was worth. Whereas the original limb pieces I used as the length of the visor didn't really provide much in the way of vision, the replacement pieces had convenient spaces in them which worked perfectly as eye holes. I was so thrilled by this discovery that I implemented the design in a few mask builds. Here are a couple of instances where I do so: By this point, however, I felt that the red hose design was rather played out, and I needed a fresh idea to improve upon the Cyclops visor idea. My goal was to use translucent red pieces instead of the bright red that I had been using, which I felt would look a lot better. Unfortunately, I didn't have a lot of translucent red pieces lying around, and the ones I did have were too tiny to work with. I did, however, try out a new visor design on a mask build that showed some promise as part of the Cyclops visor. I never really went anywhere with the design, mostly because it was in translucent orange, and I was adamant about the translucent red thing. Here's the mask in question: I had actually been sitting on a Cyclops visor redesign since early last year, when I acquired a Kylo Ren set from the Lego Star Wars Buildable Figure line. This set naturally had Ren's iconic trisaber, and the main blade of this trisaber was a long, hefty translucent red piece. I recall looking at the piece while I was building the set and thinking, this piece is perfect for what I have in mind. Now that I had the perfect piece, the next challenge was to build the main visor around it. This was quite challenging, because this piece only had one connection point, and due to this, I had to figure out how to attach it to the main assembly while still maintaining a sense of symmetry throughout the build. I also had to think about the color scheme, since I felt like I had to go with something other than black. Ideally, I'd have gone with the classic yellow, but alas, I didn't have enough of those to work with. Instead, I opted for the silver color scheme, which was just as prominent in the comics, and a color which I had no short supply of. With the abundance of silver pieces at my disposal, I was also able to make the visor closer to how large it usually is in the comics. I even tried to capture the visor's more rounded shape, but curves are a little tough to pull off with Lego, so the end result is more of a rough approximation more than anything. Having the translucent red piece that fit my ideal vision of the build and successfully implementing it was satisfying, but I think it only comes second to Mk. 3's other main improvement: it actually attaches to my glasses.
When it came to mask builds and such, wearing them always presented two problems: I can't wear my glasses in them (i.e. I can't see shit), and the ability to wear them relied solely on the backend assembly (which isn't always comfortable/stable to wear, and made transporting the mask cumbersome because it takes up a lot of space). For this version of the visor, I decided to make a focused effort to rectify these issues, and, after overthinking the design for hours, found a stupidly simple solution that worked perfectly. This backend assembly that allows me to wear the visor on top of my glasses isn't elegant by any means, but it gets the job done. The earlier version of Mk. 3, like the previous visors, had the typical Lego-built assembly that went around my ears; thanks to this solution, I was able to get rid of that often unstable and annoying part of the build. This is my first real step in applying glasses-compatible designs in future wearable builds, and I can only hope to improve upon this aspect. With how the build turned out, I ended up making the visor slightly too wide for my face, which kinda looks goofy (that may be more because of my dumbass face than the visor itself), but doesn't bother me overall. My vision is also slightly obstructed by how the assembly came together, but compared to Mk. 1, there's gaps where I can see through, so it isn't much of an issue this time around. Plus, if you look at it from the side, you'd see that the visor is considerably thicker than how it typically looks in the comics, so slimming that down may be a focus of a future redesign. All this said, I'm more than satisfied with this new iteration of the Cyclops visor. I'm now prepared for a costume party in Halloween, or a screening of a new X-Men movie. For the time being, this idea is going on the shelf, but if I ever come across an assortment of yellow pieces that I can use, I'll build a new version. Per usual, keep on the lookout on my Instagram feed for the latest on my build projects. I also do the occasional story (usually on new Lego sets), if you give a shit about that sort of thing. - end -
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June 2024
Derryck
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