Eurasian Pygmy Owl

Phew, all the Parts Festival things are now posted. It's time for MOC Wars, which means that the creations posted are freshly baked! This little bird of prey is only one week and two days old!

This is my entry for category "large small animal" as a member of the House team. The category description goes as following: "Build a non-fictional small animal at a large scale. Does not have to be 1:1." I chose Eurasian Pygmy Owl, Glaucidium passerinum, as I quite like owls and this one felt small enough for a small animal. It's a very tiny bird, the smallest owl in Europe, and hunts bigger birds than itself. Some of these have been causing panic among the tits at the bird feeder on my childhood home.

This is not completelu realistic rendition, though - this owl's eyes are not quite that big, and the black area should be smaller. I tried many things with it, but this was the best I ended up with it; quite stylised, even chibi-thingy, but decent composition anyway. Those white "eyebrows" were challenging, too, as there isn't too much space to work with. I'm very happy with the Bohrok eye beak though - the colour seems to be quite perfect.

Otherwise, most of the owl is white and dark ran plates. The sides of the head are slighly angles, connected to stud-on-a-bar pieces with 1x2 round plates. This animal's feathers are very fluffy, as it's adapted into cold climate. On the back, the big wing weathers are smoother, consisting of curved wedges; it uses all dark tan wedge slopes I had left. I've been using plenty of dark tan lately, and much of it went to Master Yupa. The tail uses dinosaur tails - lack of dark tan forced me to improvise a bit, but they work quite nicely.  The head turns, of course - it's a simple function to include and, hell, a turning head is one of the main owl gimmicks.

The pygmy owl stands on a branch of a tree with some moss growing on; it's dark bley, which is quite common colour for a branch, despite everyone knowing that tree bark is brown, which is never isn't. Varnished wood might be brown, but things you find in the woods are sort of mossy greenish-grey. The branch is angled to give some dynamics to the creation; both it and the bird sitting on are connected via usual hinge plates. The simple black base has some boat weight parts on it, making the whole very stable.

Not much more to say about this, as it's a small animal. Slightly bigger than 1:1, actually. The MOC Wars lasts little less than three week still, so expect five more MOCs until then; Some of them are already finished. And some more builds, too, that are to be posted after the war has been fought.

-Eero.