Baku

It's summer again and that means Bio-Cup! The contest is made one round shorter and more competetive this year. It remains to be seen if I'll hang around until the final round this year. My goal is to make myself do some additional nice builds that I wouldn't otherwise do; and use some of these special pieces I've gained since the last year.

 

The theme for this year's prelims is dreams. This was my first idea for it - the Japanese folklore tapir that eats nightmares. When doing my background work I found out (in Wikipedia) that the creature is called Baku and the term also refers to Malayan tapir in Japanese. I also found out that this seems to be due a French misinterpretation of Chinese term Mo that means great panda (which westerners weren't aware of at the time) and mythical chimera Mo that is depicted on having rhino and elephant parts, thus looking like tapir. The French thus assumed that the panda would actually be an tapir; and it is possible that Japanese Baku is also a tapir because it's based on the chimera Mo that was thought to be the animal tapir and... this is something like a fever dream. Check Mo on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mo_(Chinese_zoology) 

 

 It was new to me that Baku is a mostly benevolent being - that's something I like. Especially as tapirs are friendly to start with. Nonetheless, Baku is a creature of night, so I made it somehow demonic (but not in a very serious way). It was also more amusing to build while looking slightly demonic! I began with the eyes (though the tire rims were later addition) and soon continued to the mouth (munching nightmares), snout and the cool mane. I'm very happy with the mane!

 

I wanted to have the colours of Malayan tapir, so this creature has a white "diaper". It's a lot harder to build white Bionicle mass, mostly due to limits in available parts, but also because the mechanical details look so severe on white - all the shadows are visible, and it's harder to build flowing shapes. Nevertheless, it turned out decent - only it isn't very visible in the main photos.