Week TechVideo, 2014 #24 - Kinetic horse sculpture

Jason Allemann (JK Brickworks) who uses to build some very creative MOCs, just presented his latest creation - Shadowfax, the LEGO horse. It is a kinetic sculpture inspired by the Middle-earth horse in the Tolkien epic fantasy novel, who is ridden by Gandalf the Grey.

According to the author, who apparently spent hours watching horse videos, and not surprisingly it was quite a challenge to reproduce the fluid motion of a galloping horse. The objective was to capture some of the other subtle involved movements as well,  like the slight rocking of the body, the forward thrust of the head and a little flick of the tail, and no one can say this was not perfectly achieved.
You must watch the video below and Jason explanations, to understand the genius, the combination of complex bar linkages and subtle mechanisms behind this stunning result.

All the visible motion is driven through a single axle in the base, which can be cranked by hand or via a LEGO motor.

It is fairly mesmerizing to watch and as an added bonus even sounds a little like a galloping horse.

If nothing was so perfect in this creation I'd say that at least the element chosen for the Shadowfax hoofs, was brilliant, at the minimum!

Something tells me that sooner or later, this model will gallop till the 10.000 votes at LEGO Ideas, quite fast.



Disclaimer:

Please avoid sending requests to post specific models on this TBs section.

We understand some of you would enjoy to see your creations featured here, but please understand that because only one video gets highlighted per week, it is impossible to accommodate all the great MOCs continuously build by the Technic builders out there. They simply won't fit all and that's also not the purpose of this blog (see the header statement).

Many of your MOCs are scanned anyway and listed for later publication when they do not fit immediately. However some remain in the backlog queue just for too long and eventually loose the relevance or the publication opportunity window. As a rule of thumb, we also avoid publishing MOCs that have been featured by their authors or other fans at some other great web places dedicated to the Technic community out there. It doesn't mean that occasionally some won't get published here anyway.


Thanks for your understanding!