Iron Builder IX: Bird of Paradise

 This one has rather different backstory. I was discussing the possible uses of the Dublo grass piece with my friends at school, probably while sculpting plaster (my sculpture ended up being titled "Siperian rata", Siberian railway, and featured a mammoth and a locomotive; most students made something abstract but that's not my way). Ideas that turned up were either colourful bird... or a pineapple, cruel and ambitious fruit (or, at least, painful and delicious). I rather preferred the bird, as it would have been hard to make decent pineapple with leaves four bricks high and eight studs wide (maybe in 2D). But the bird was an excellent idea; Thanks!

The colours were based on wedge slopes that were available. It is not based on any particular species of bird but the colour scheme is rather common and similar to, for example, Olive-headed lorikeet and Fischer's Lovebird. There had to be green, of course, and dark red was an obvious choice as I had plenty of 4x12 wedge slopes (in both right and left versions). Yellow and lime looked rather nice with them, giving some jungle freshness to the bird, plus I had lime green wedges and even some feather-like parts for the tail.

The building process was quite straightforward, divided in three sessions. I began with the wings to get the seed part out of the way, and then advanced into the body, using TECHNIC friction pins to get the wings to the right angle. The head was interesting, featuring life-buoy eyes, white nostril section and big red beak. The shape of the neck is somewhat based on old good LEGO parrot, as I had some nearby. Adding the legs deemed some changes in the inner structure, as they had to be sturdily connected and I had to move weight forward. This made building the support structure challenging, too: It had to bear the parrot without breaking, and I wanted it to look like wood. In the end the shape ended up very finger-like and I wonder if I should have build it in tan. The base features geometric pattern done using reddish brown, old brown and dark brown. The tail feathers were the last part added here - I quite like how the angle of the lime green one gives some sense of gravity to the MOC. This is, I think, my first realistically sized animal build and among my favourite entries for this contest.

-Eero.