Melody in Bloom

The only prompts to begin with this build were "My melody" and "Cherry blossoms". With that in mind various designs were prototyped and colour selection was surprisingly one of the greater challenges.

It took several iterations to find a soft 6 colour pallete which was maintained through most aspects of this build. Since props and materials are harder to source with a particular colour scheme, the stickers were first designed in illustrator and tested for colour accuracy on both glossy and matte vinyl prints. Ultimately it was clear that gloss stickers better represented that bright yet soft vibe one might associate with My melody characters.

Excess of 20 vinyl sheets would be trashed after it proved very complex to cut the stickers, map the stickers to wrap the case and even most challenging: application. Gloss paper would not play well with application tape.

Props were easy to source however not so easy to place. Barely visible are transparent tiered model displays which hold a minfig and an assembled 200 piece sakura tree building block set (yes this was an unnecessary and time consuming challenge - and for good measure most blocks were glued together for futureproofing).

The build of course physically started with components before any prop placement. It was actually possibly an easier decision not to vertically mount the graphics card as this would have allowed more real-estate for minifigs. However that intuitively felt wrong, I wanted this to feel more alive and after testing both it was clear to me it would just feel too much like every other custom PC. I wanted more flow, more variation in elevation, and more life.

Branching off this (yes we will cover the sakura soon), I didnt want to mount the radiator or fans so they were visible behind the scene. Less of that typical PC look more focus on the forefront.

So, and this isn't something I learned I just did, fans mounted through the back of the case, radiator on the front. Why not on the back? I don't know; it felt right. I wanted the backdrop even, I didn't feel that extra depth would help me. Then it looked funky. So, I ordered pink cotton hankerchiefs. Breathable, but firm enough to maintain shape. Then I printed cherry blossoms onto transfer paper and ironed away. Not even slightly visible are flower petals also fixed at the edges of this fabric after it was cut and attached to cover the length of the entire radiator.

The other components? Honestly there's a lot of detail I'm going to overlook since I do it by habit now. The fans are orientated to essentially be hidden. However I always plan intakes and outtakes so the hot air is pulled through the bottom and rises out the top. I chose non rgb ram because this wasn't ever going to be an LED build. I installed a custom white SSD cooler because it looked nicer and would provide a nice backlight on the centrepiece character. I installed an argb strip at 45% between the radiator and the mobo to fill the gap and hide any cables peeking behind the case. I felt the light it provided also gave a little chaotic and mysterious perspective. Don't ask me to explain.

So all in all skipping the software and firmware stuff and the fan curve setup, everything was pretty much in place. I had a scene. As was always the plan I put in some synthetic fabric to simulate clouds and cover basic boring things that might make someone think it's just a computer. But even then it was 90% my melody 10% cherry blossoms and it still looked like a computer build and not a world. So in came a 2 meter sakura branch with led blossoms. And it came in aggressively. It was hard to tame, and things got messy. But I sort of let it be because that's life, right?

Fin

Not pictured are several props and materials which were not utilised in this build. Also not pictured are the peripherals, monitor and mouse pad which were all selected to thematically match for the client.

Posted 15/11/2025