Urban Jungle - LEGO MOC

A wild contest entry!

Minifigures Plus is a great resource for recent Collectible Minifigures, and the best way I've found to get a complete set of CMFs (as I did with Series 28 and the Spider-Man set as well). They also have started to host photography contests (the previous one being the artwork-recreation contest mentioned in my post about 8x8 dioramas).

To celebrate the launch of CMF 28, Minifigures Plus set up a new contest with the constraint that the entries should use "at least one Series 28 Minifigure." After finishing my review and thereby getting familiar with the minifigures, I immediately started sketching out ideas, then refined the best one:

This was going to be a big build, but I felt like it really showed a sense of humor and story, with lots of details to be played with. Some MOCs start with an interesting part combination that sparks ideas, while others start with a goal and get changed as mental images butt up against the realities of building or part limitations; this build was definitely the latter, so I decided to start with the most concrete details: the furniture.

I found some different designs online for office copiers, and designed my own, leveraging the pieces I had and trying to keep it both as small as possible (since it wasn't supposed to be the focus of the design) but also recognizable. I ended up building it twice, once in modern greys, and once in vintage 90s tan and blueish grey.

The desks were simple, using window frames for the legs and a combination of printed and jumper tiles for the desktop. The computers are the health charts from Set 60459. Just as with the copier, my goal was to build these as a caricature, recognizable but not elaborate. I realized that the screen pieces were designed to be readable even when inverted, which is a great touch. Utilizing that, I set them up differently for each desk. You can also see that one monitor stand is in grey (to match with the grey copier) and the other black (to match the screen's unprinted color); this is so that I could see them both in situ as I continued to build the setting around them, and I'd decide on one later.

I also started inserting the little story elements, having the gator be studiously taking notes on business things (later I decided it would be even funnier to have her chewing on her pen instead) while her monkey coworker is having a bit more fun.

 The next big step was a proof of concept: in order to know how many pieces I'd need and what proportions looked good, I built a little slice of the office space I'd envisioned, including a dark brown plate for moulding, reddish orange masonry bricks for the wainscoting, and sand green for the wall color. As a further nod to the CMF 28 theme, I wanted to make sure that the 3x4 base plates that came with the minifigs were in the main section of the flooring, to make it look like grass. I also attempted to incorporate 2x4 white tiles (since I had a ton of them after my MarBRRRRle Run build) on a hinge as an office drop ceiling. It worked well-enough in the small slice, but I could tell it wouldn't work as well to cover the full space without either falling apart, making it too dark, or looking weird because of the perspective. So I tried placing them on Technic pins to act as louvers and hopefully let more light in. I also added in the next member of the office team: the lion boss, using a torso I got on my birthday minifig from the LEGO store last year.

This also allowed me to get an idea of the amount of space that would be required, and therefore the number of bricks that would be needed. I'm so used to making builds that look good in the round, or that fit within physical constraints (my 8x8 dioramas), but since this was for a photography contest, I knew I had to keep the focus on a single point of view. So I sketched out a floor plan, with tick marks on the walls to denote 6-stud segments, circles and rectangles to denote the chairs and desks, and scribbles for the foliage. I also collected all of the pieces I had that I had, organized by color and type, so I'd be able to calculate how much more I'd need.

With all my raw materials together, I started building. The wall went together first, and I used the plan I'd drafted to determine where to put the SNOT bricks for the artwork and plants. Then it was a matter of assembling the grassy floor, piecing it together like a mosaic. At first I'd staggered the placement of the 3x4 base plates, but then I realized that this randomness wouldn't be visible behind the other set pieces, and that it would be better to keep things simple. I also determined that while the view from the left—effectively over the explorer's shoulder—looked good in a drawing, where everything is at the focus that I draw it at, it wouldn't read well in a photograph. So I switched to the wider front side, basically turning this into a sort of stage play. A view from above also ensured that the details on the desktops would also be visible. Throughout this process, I only slid the plates around, not pressing them into place until I had a final decision (given how otherwise it'd be a pain to remove and re-place them over and over).

I decided to put the photocopier in the back corner, keeping the lion in the foreground and making him the focus of the build. Stacks of 2x2 jumper plates make for good piles of plain and printed paper. It was at this point that I decided that the ceiling tile louvers just weren't working, and that the black computer stands stood out too much.

Now it was time to tackle the (pun intended) most organic part of the build. I had accumulated quite a collection of plant parts and whole plants (many of which were originally from the Tropical Forest Diorama set) so I laid things out and started putting things together to see what worked where. Below are some specific sub-builds, including potted hibiscus (inspired by that same set) and a topiary I designed, using the drooping layered leaves piece (inverted) from the Axolotl Adventure set.

There was a lot of trial and error, making it difficult to photograph the process, but over the course of an hour I went from bare grass to a full forest.

As I worked, I kept in mind the set design tricks I'd noticed on family trips to Disneyland and Walt Disney World and the techniques of tunnel books. You can see this in the very fragile stack of palm fronds in the bottom-left corner, which stick up into the final frame and break the foreground line. I also paid attention to colors, making sure that the different elements tied together and set up a counterpoint: the red flowers and red parrot, the brown monkey and explorer's leathers, the bright yellow sign and the lion's fur, the grey koala and grey office equipment.

This is the final result, which earned me 3rd place in the Minifigures Plus contest. 

To accompany the picture, I wrote the following little story:

Our intrepid explorer is delving into the urban jungle, intent on observing the local wildlife's behavior. The king of these animals seems to have noticed some mistake in the quarterly reports, and is roaring his displeasure to the rest of the team (mimicked by Polly, currently manning the photocopier). The office jokester is upset about being distracted from his game of solitaire, while his cold-blooded coworker seems about to bite her pen in two. Still, not even the loudest roars can disturb the sound sleep of Slackerus No-Workerus, who has found a cozy spot for his extended lunch break. The only question is: will our explorer survive to report back on what he's seen, or will he too be roped into a desk job like the rest of us?

Rawk! Like the rest of us!

I was so pleased with how the build turned out, that I decided to distill it down into an 8x8 diorama. This way I could keep a memento of the project and the result, dust-free, but also free up the majority of parts for use in other builds. To fit as much in as possible, I had to build the desk into the wall and otherwise minimize and rearrange the various elements. It worked well, and I was even able to add some of those ceiling tiles back in!