About this creation
Come visit! This sculpture and 26 others are touring the U.S. now through 2014. Over 25 larger-than-life sculptures created with nearly half a million LEGO pieces! Read more and come visit!
The life-sized Bison is nearly 7 feet long and contains 45,143 LEGO pieces. It was built together with Baby Bison ... and of course a cowbird milling about on its back. :)
My assistant Geoffrey (below, left) took the design lead on this sculpture and I built it together with a team of 6 model builders over the course of 6 weeks.
Close-ups
Building it
The entire sculpture took 700 hours to build, together with a team of 6 model builders over the course of 6 weeks.
The legs were surprisingly complicated to build. When we designed the sculpture, the idea of "sort of randomly adding fuzzy texture" seemed like a good idea, but when it came time to build it we were going cross-eyed, It doesn't' help that black doesn't visually read very well, which made it doubly hard to see what the heck we were doing.
Because this sculpture is installed outdoors, it needs to withstand the elements and overly curious visitors. We designed a steel skeleton to reinforce the structure which can additionally be bolted to the ground.
Working around steel can be really tricky, especially when you need to line up four legs and ensure that they're all straight and "on the LEGO grid"… otherwise they won't properly connect up at his belly. Gluing as we go, we don't have the luxury to take things apart and tweak them, so we have to do a lot of drawing, planning, measuring and making-sure-we-get-it-right-the-first-time-ing.
The entire sculpture was assembled in my New York City art studio, then custom-crated in museum-quality exhibition crates for my new show, Nature Connects, which is currently touring the United States.
Moo!
Comments
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June 26, 2012 |
HI! This is a excellent creation. I really like the way of your build. I specially like the bird at the back of the bison! |
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May 9, 2012 |
Great! |
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May 9, 2012 |
I like the studs as well, call me old school, but, sometimes, some pieces do better with than without studs, with pieces that big, we can hardly see them anyways, it s amazing to reproduce a bison FULL size...all hails to the king! lol! |
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May 7, 2012 |
Beautiful! |
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May 5, 2012 |
Fair enough, and in this case it does lend some extra shaggy texture as well. And as you don't work for TLG I guess buying thousands of tiles would be unnecessary expenditure. |
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I made it |
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May 5, 2012 |
Quoting LukeClarenceVan The Revanchist
I notice that none of your creations are tiled. Is this because TLG wants them to be more easily recognized as LEGO, or would tiling just be too much work for too little benefit at this scale?
I don't work for TLG, so who knows? :) I like the studs... it looks more LEGO-ish to me. |
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May 5, 2012 |
I love the bird. Excellent build. |
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May 5, 2012 |
Stunning! I notice that none of your creations are tiled. Is this because TLG wants them to be more easily recognized as LEGO, or would tiling just be too much work for too little benefit at this scale? In any event, phenomenal build! |
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May 5, 2012 |
vary cool I like it |
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May 5, 2012 |
Yet, another great build, keep them coming.
Cow tipping anyone. |
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May 5, 2012 |
Amazing :O!
O.O! |
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May 5, 2012 |
I think this may be my favorite of all your sculptures. Looks fantastic and realistic. |
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May 5, 2012 |
Haha, nice last picture. :) Is the frame on this one scaled to a 4x4 plate? |
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May 5, 2012 |
Very impressive! |
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I made it |
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May 5, 2012 |
Quoting Michael Kringe
Huge and impressive build! The biggest creature I've seen on MOCpages so far!
Then I guess you hadn't seen this polar bear http://www.mocpages.com/moc.php/196103 :) |
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May 5, 2012 |
Magic and beautiful!! |
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May 5, 2012 |
Huge and impressive build! The biggest creature I've seen on MOCpages so far! |
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May 5, 2012 |
Wow, that's incredible! Great job! |
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May 5, 2012 |
Another fantastic sculpture! It really would not have been as amazing without the bird on the back of the Bison. Love that last picture XD |
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May 5, 2012 |
I had first comment.... what happend? |
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May 5, 2012 |
Haha great Sean! |
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May 4, 2012 |
fantastic! lolz at the last pic :D |
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May 4, 2012 |
All... the... black. *shudders* That truly must've been a pain. Especially, like you said, with the hair. Truly a magnificent feat of sculpting out of a bunch of little, black bricks. As always, amazing job, Sean! |
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