Yellowfoots

Or yellowfeet? These delicious Craterellus Tubaeformis mushrooms aka funnel chanterelles were built for Palikkatakomo's autumn contest with a theme of 1:1 model of some real-life non-Lego object. It was the season and I bloody well like yellowfoots so I built a bunch. My score (of five judges) was mid-tier, which I think is decent for my three-hour model; there were far more ambitious entries by my LUG-mates.

There are no two identical yellowfoots so I took an approach of making several with different techniques. They are not all that polished, and some have more emphasis on the top of the cap whereas others are focused on the underside and the foot. The one with "geometrical" cap with 3x3 dish and boat studs on octagonal frame is a "top mushroom", while the big one with 8x8 dish cap is "bottom mushroom" - the cap itself is not very realistic (it's not tubular, that is). I'm rather happy with its foot, made with macoroni tubes connected to each other with 2L bar with middle ring; a stolen technique from some Bonkle builder, but can't recall who, bummer.

The colours were a challenge - the real ones are mostly watery yellowish with yellow-brown caps. On the first version I tried pearl gold, as the hue was quite close, and the pearl effect seemed accurate. On the other hand, it was too shiny, and with brown cap it looked like some mysterious steampunk artifact - not a thing grown in the forest. I ended up using lot of yellow, as it's beautiful and cheerful colour and the bunch benefitted from some unity of colours. The reddish brown of the hats is not perfect, but sometimes yellowfoot caps are very brown - just not the ones I have in the mandatory comparison pictures! Dark tan worked alright too. I only with they'd make a new ochre colour, something like mustard yellow. That would be very useful in buildings in addition to some 1:1 mushrooms MOCs.

-Eero.