Year of the Dragon: December

The 12th and final build in my Year of the Dragon series!

This month is based on a deer, more specifically takes inspiration from fallow and sika deer with their more reddish nougat coloured fur and white spots/underbellies. My initial idea however was to make a reindeer dragon, but real-life reindeer have very dark and muted colours, so I decided this approach would be more fun.

The actual bodyplan for the moc is very inspired by more eastern dragon interpretations, with a more mamalian face, bird like feet and a long slender body. Which I find lends itself very well to the deer theming.

I'm very happy with how this one turned out, and I adore how fluffy it looks with all these fur parts (quickly becoming a favourite part of mine) I'd also like to point out one of my favourite parts of the moc, the eyes, which use a technic towball inserted into a grey mixel socket, which I think makes for pretty convincing eyelids. I'm also very happy with the ears, which use wing pieces that only ever appeared in one set from the Unikitty line!

I really hope you've all enjoyed this series, as I certainly have. And you can look forward to a recap post and group shot of all 12 coming soon!

Photo edited by the wonderful loafbuilds

Tags:   lego dragon moc reindeer deer

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Year of the Dragon: November

This month is based on a jellyfish! Super weird creatures that I got really inspired by when visiting an aquarium in Kyoto.

Unfortunately though, I had quite a bit of creative block this month, It happens! And at 10 dragons in, I'm honestly surprised it didn't happen earlier.
Wasn't until fairly late into the build for this one that it finally started shaping up into something I was happy with. Turns out relying on big clear parts as key shaping elements presented a lot of challenges.

I think the final effect is really cool though! It looks appropriately jelly like and I had a lot of fun playing with different textures for the various tendrils and such. Also I'm well aware that jellyfish don't have brains, but I couldn't resist including the new brain creature piece from the Mindflayer DnD minifig 😁

Only one dragon left now! Stay tuned...

Photo edited by the wonderful loafbuilds

Tags:   lego jellyfish moc dragon

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Year of the Dragon: October

I had to do a spooky pumpkin dragon for October! This one was definitely a quicker build than most of the others. I spent the majority of October in Japan, so I only had a few days to put this one together, but I'm pretty pleased with the result!

I find pumpkins fun subject matter to build out of lego, and its always interesting to see how many different approaches people can take when making them. These big macaroni parts do a pretty good job if you ask me!

Only two dragons left now, I can't believe it's almost the end of the year! Happy Halloween to everyone and I hope you've all been enjoying this series, I certainly have been 😊

Tags:   lego pumpkin halloween dragon moc

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Year of the Dragon: September

This month's dragon is inspired by the very iconic fly agaric mushroom! 🍄

I've always been fascinated by the way so many mushrooms grow from fallen trees giving them new life. So I thought it would be a really cool idea to make the whole dragon as a group of mushrooms growing out of the same log.

This was a great opportunity to try out a hydra bodyplan, and I think it works super well for this concept. The hardest part was coming up with a head design that blends dragon and mushroom, so it was cool being able to use that head design 3 times once i finally got it right 😁

Photo edited by the wonderful loafbuilds

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Year of the Dragon: August

Just a lil guy. This month I took inspiration from something far less obscure than my usual subject matter - a bumblebee! They're super cute and fluffy which i thought would be a fun challenge to try and translate into a more draconic form (Also hadn't used any yellow until now!)

This one went through some pretty drastic changes and iterations throughout the build process, I might post a few of the dead ends at some point if people are interested.

Was still a fun challenge and I'm particularly proud of the amount of detail I got in the face, despite the whole head being the size of my thumb!

Photo edited by the wonderful Loafbuilds

Tags:   lego dragon moc insect bee bumblebee

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