Ozumo by Nelson Yrizarry

Nelson’s new vignette Ozumo seems the perfect transition from posts over at Pan-Pacific Bricks back here to my original blog. He’s Photoshopped a very nice magazine cover to showcase his yokozuna:

Chiyonofuji (千代の富士) was one of the greatest yokozunas of recent history. (A yokozuna is the top-ranked wrestler, followed by ozeki.) Chiyonofuji was active throughout the 70’s and 80’s, along with the Hawaiian wrestler Konishiki (小錦), who became an ozeki and paved the way for many of the current wrestlers from outside Japan — including Akebono (曙), the first foreign-born yokozuna.

Nelson’s action scenes are also great:

Finally, another shot of the yokozuna without the magazine text, showing how he created the kesho-mawashi, or ceremonial belt:

Incidentally, the building technique Nelson uses for his sumo wrestlers is called BrickFa, a building style recently developed by Mike “Count Blockula” Crowley. Between this technique and the technique developed by Moko, we’re really starting to see some interesting designs that add additional posability to the traditional minifig.