Chima Development Art Posted to LEGO.com

[Hapori Tohu]

The LEGO Legends of Chima website has been posting story summaries of the "Fire vs. Ice" arc on their Explore page for some time now, but the latest update, "Creating Chima", goes back to before the theme began, showcasing behind-the-scenes development art for the theme's overall concept, tribes, minifigures, machines, and landscapes. Whether you follow the Legends of Chima theme with a passion or can't manage to wrap your head around the idea of anthropomorphized fighting animals, there's a lot to learn from this glimpse into the theme's development!

 

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[Rahkshi Lalonde]

omg, this is just... so pretty?

 

like, i always loved chima by concept, and the sets have been pretty great but, in full exicution i feel it lost something that could've made it, possibly, the next BIONICLE for the company...

 

still, this is super neat to look through. o:

[xccj]

This is pretty cool, especially to see how they changed the animal heads over time.  Some of the concept art reminds me of Ogel from Alpha Team (those scorpions) and there was one shot with the two mountains that was totally out of Exo Force.  Cool designs... and quite a lot of them, wow!

 

[Prowl Nightwolf]

So this is cool and makes me wonder what happened to the other tribes...

There are some really nice concepts but it looks as though the original idea was not so much tribes of animals fighting but rather animal totem tribes fighting over the resources. As many of the early concepts have a face under a more helmet/mask style head piece. This could explain why the actual set have animal printed head pieces with the larger actual animal head over it. Also why the show depicted them not as animal-ish with masks but the masks in the sets were their actual heads.

So scrolling down the page one finally gets to more character specific concept art and what looks to be:
maybe a lion; a bear; spotted feline; and finally Eagles concepts for the top row
and an Ape; Scorpion; cobra/snake; and finally the croc tribes on row 2.

I wager that maybe these were the original good Vs bad guy line ups. Though we do see the scorpion further down the line in Season 2 we don't see anything of the snake tribe. Though that could be due to there being a large calling of the species over on the Ninjago story and therefore decided that having two shows with similar creatures may be counter productive.

Scrolling down further I see other plausible tribes including: a nice depiction of a Wolf tribe member and an unused bull tribe. Following that is a Bat and a vulture of what I suspect could be a pre-frozen state of the tribe we got later in season 3. Then we get two additional reptilian/aquatic tribes in the form of some form of sea-monster murloc type tribe and a gecko or chameleon tribe. Neither of these must have made it past the concept stages as we only have the crocs in that species category.

Further on we see Inks of some of the tribes evolution to what we actually get in set including both a possible leopard tribe and further development on the murloc creature tribe. Just below some of this is what I am taking as the first designs of the Phoenix tribe. Then the first set rounds off with some vehicle concepts.

Then it goes into some bad guy concepts including the first wave of frozen zombie tribes. I am saddened at the loss of the Mantis Mosquito, and Rhinoceros Beetle tribes. Though we did get The Spider and Scorpion ones. Did you know we were apparently suppose to get Ice tribe good guys? There are some nice concepts there including a Yak tribe. Though that could just be a frozen bull from the prior concepts. Also I think some of them turned turncoat as they look to be the bad guys instead. I think one of the bad guys was suppose to be a dinosaur not unlike a raptor due to there being a bipedal reptile vehicle concept on the next slide.

To think this was only chapter one and so much information. I am going to keep reading and the rest of you can come along as well. Bye for now.... 

[dotcom]

This is really cool. Lots of great concept work here. It's interesting to see the bats and scorpions were there from the get go, and that the idea for the second year was already forming even back then. Those insect characters look really cool, especially the beetle. And the zombies too, look even cooler than what we got.

[Toa Smoke Monster]

I always like looking at concept art like this, even if its from a theme I never really got into. There are a lot of really cool drawings shown here. Especially the landscape drawings. They are beautifully drawn and colorful. They remind me of some of the levels in Xenoblade Chronicles, and anyone who played that game or at least watched footage of it knows that it has some really cool lands in it. 

[Prowl Nightwolf]

Well I looked through all the chapters and found a several cool concept pics of both accepted and rejected tribes. I picked one such tribe and am now using it as my Avatar. Very cool Scorpion.

[Naota Takizawa]

Someone better archive the pages in case Chima is discontinued and the websites taken down.

[Lyichir]

Someone better archive the pages in case Chima is discontinued and the websites taken down.

The site will likely remain up a good year after the theme's end. Even the Hero Factory site is still active.

[Naota Takizawa]

Well, at least we get plenty of time to archive the sites.

[Prowl Nightwolf]

I saved several of the pictures on my system incase I wanted to use them in part for different avatars. I may switch to one of the other insect tribes soon. maybe the beetle.