Tempura Dragon
My first MOC for 2024! This build is based on the artwork by おまる丸, which I had come across on Pinterest last year. With the release of the new dragon head piece (3770) in Bright Light-Orange from the Rising Dragon Strike Ninjago sets, I was finally able to make this idea a reality.
While this build is pretty much part-spamming leaves to achieve the fried, tempura look, my main focus was on the shaping. I'm particularly happy with how the tapering in the neck and the curvature of the body turned out. The neck takes advantage of the relatively new Sonic ring piece (3917), which is slightly smaller in diameter to the older octagon bar (30033). We haven't really had a part like this (the old life buoy piece is too restrictive). The rest of the body has a CCBS/Technic core, with a flex tube running on the underside of the body. The CCBS/Technic core eventually ends with a flex tube for the tail, where CCBS shells are used for the shrimp tail texture.
I finished building the dragon just in time for Atlanta Brick Con 2024, but when I returned home, I decided to add some scenery. The goal of the scenery was to make the dragon more 'alive' - as if it would be something you would find in the wild similar to the card artwork of food-like Pokémon. I debated on making a daikon radish as the side build, but trying to get the white to lime green gradient proved difficult at this scale. Instead, I went with some bamboo trees. The scenery piece runs a gradient of lime green to bright green to green - this is intentional as having only one shade of green, particularly regular green, would be too strong in the final composition.
