Hydralligator
Its heads coordinate their attacks in pairs, delivering massive electrical energy unto its prey.
For Bio-Cup round 1, I was placed in the electrical energy subtheme. Having only a few days to build before Brickworld 2024, I quickly built most of this MOC so that anything I was missing, I could easily order before the trip. After browsing Fakemon, I stumbled across an artpiece featuring an alligator clips dragon, where I was immediately inspired by. Furthermore, I had recently made an order of big macs, so this was the perfect opportunity to try them out.
I first started with the heads. An alligator clip typically only has teeth at the very front, but this proved quite difficult with LEGO, especially since the Technic gear rack only came in 1x4 size (the 1x2 version has towballs connected to it). The only other option would have been 1x1 slopes, which were way too big. Therefore, I decided to deviate from the real life object, and make it a bit more creature-like, yet still try to retain the general shape of an alligator clip. Despite all four heads being the same build, I tried to pose them in the final picture such that they each have their own personality. In particular, the black wired clip looks up as the leader, while the white wired clip has its mouth closed and is glaring.
For the four wires, I went with black, white, red, and yellow, with black being the main body color due to part availability. In doing this, I decided that the black wire would not have a tail but instead terminate at the legs, with it being frayed at the feet to represent claws. On the subject of the legs, I followed general creature/dragon digitigrade legs except adapted to a more wire-like design. Therefore, there is a bit more curvature with the back legs than with the front.
With the main body, I am particularly happy with the shaping of the neck, where a balloon panel meshes with a Bohrok windscreen to provide a clean curve. Color-wise, the body is asymmetric, where the red and yellow are flipped on the opposite side. White is used to break between these colors. Furthermore, there are some finer wiring details in black buried behind the yellow and red. Dino tails are used for these details.
The tail design starts off as tangled, but eventually branches out into three separate wires. I took inspiration from the probes that some alligator clips have.
Overall, this was quite a fun build. The subject matter of having a dragon made of wires allowed me to not have to worry too much about anatomical accuracy, and thus, I was able to mostly finish this build before Brickworld.
