After creating such a huge Barack Obama mosaic I wanted to build something a little smaller. As always I like to challenge myself to build something I haven’t tried before.
I’d never built a LEGO bird yet (except in Miniland scale) and I thought I’d give it a go. I decided to build a life-size Bald Eagle bust.
The trickiest part was designing the eyes. In both animal and people LEGO models the eyes are the most important part. They are what makes them seem most alive. My solution was to use a 2×2 radar dish (or parabola in the offcial Model Shop terms) in transparent neon yellow. It seems like a strange choice, but bald eagle’s eyes are actually yellow. I thought about trying regular yellow, but it didn’t have the right effect.
Another aspect when designing a real animal is the organic shape. That is sometimes a difficult effect in LEGO — to get the hard, sharp bricks to look like feathers, fur, or hair. Sometimes its a matter of using special elements or specific parts to make the animal more realistic. If you’ll notice, I used tiles on the beak and a 1×1 cheese slope at the tip for that very reason.
Tags: LEGO, Miniland, Model Shop, Mosaic, Sculpture
March 31, 2009 at 8:58 am |
You chose the perfect piece for the eye. The whole thing looks stunning.