Kaukau Rahi

[xccj]

Okay, so I have this new project. Back in 2001, the Toa Kanohi all came in six different colors. I finally completed my collection of the original 36 Toa Mata masks a while back, but what to do with them? Well, I plan to make a MOC for each of the 36 masks. And to give it a theme, I'm going to use the original six masks to recreate the Toa and use the rest to build various Rahi. This is my Thirty-Six Masks Project.I've built all my Rahi now. Sure, some of them could use some tweaking before Convention Season, but I want to post them online now so that I can get feedback and such. There are too many Rahi for one topic, but I don't want to make individual topics for each MOC (especially when some are lackluster). So instead I'm going to group them by the Kanohi mask they use.Today's are the Kaukau Rahi

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I love the Kaukau masks because of their transparencies, but that presented a problem with MOCing... and making other portions of the Rahi go with the transparent color. Some of these turned out brilliantly, while others were not so much.

Silver Dragon

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I'll again start with the worst of the bunch, and also the largest. First off, the Kanohi was the last thing added to the Silver Dragon, which is why it doesn't quite flow as well. This was one of the first models I started to build for this project, with the idea that I could make a cool slanted body using the Hero factory limb pieces. Then I decided to give it a silver color scheme, and started adding silver weapons / armor all over it. It's big and bulky, but lacks a flow and general appeal to it. I certainly got better as I went on.

Lava Dragon

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The next dragon was inversely one of the final Rahi I built... and it went through a couple of major design changes. It uses the orange Kaukau, which was apparently the stand in for a trans-brown Pohatu mask. As such, I wanted to make an orange creature, and perhaps utilize some of the trans orange Hero Factory armor pieces. I built a couple of varieties before I settled for this one, where the simplicity worked better than the other stuff I was doing. My favorite design is the head, which has a mouth that can open and "breathe" fire. The slanted tail is also cool, but a little too large for the rest of this thing. I suppose what really hurt me on this was that I was running low on useful pieces (not to mention useful orange pieces) and as such it's not one of my greatest.

Giant Wasp

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This one just turned out weird. Again, it uses a different color (yellow) because the mask itself is mostly colorless, so I was able to experiment out of the main Toa colors. You can't quite see it in the picture above, but I started on this MOC by designing the clear, round abdomen in the back, made up of two round windscreens from Alien Conquest sets, and then built a small 3D piece that fit perfectly inside. The clearness was supposed to compliment the transparent clear Kaukau mask, and I liked how it turned out. It was always supposed to be a wasp-like model, but I initially planned to make it smaller. I was doing to use streamline Gorast wings... until I realized I only owned one transparent wing piece. The body got expanded, the arms and legs were added, and then the head. It's a far cry from what I was originally aiming for. But... I like it. It has a strong appearance, with a highly technical body with some simplified Hero Factory arms (using the large supply of yellow armor that I collected last year.) The face itself isn't solidly built, but it has character, so I can't say I'm disappointed.

Fire Tarakava

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First of all, I always thought that the Tarakava Rahi should've had Kaukau masks, because they were underwater Rahi. But I guess Lego didn't want to produce more Kaukau masks in new colors for the set. (But think about it... some sort of trans teal Kaukau... that would've owned!) As such, I decided to design a Tarakava to use my trans red Kaukau. First what I did was design the arms to use the ball joints but still have a boxer feel to them like the original set, and I think I pulled it off. (The dark red panels from an Exo Force set also helped.) Since I wasn't in the mood to build treads, I just gave this Tarakava a few wheels to ride around on, and while it's not the most solid design, I like it. I had some trouble getting the face design right, and while it doesn't quite have the same appearance as the original sets, I'm okay with it. The coolest thing about this set is that I utilized the Hero Factory extender joint found on Waspix and Toxic Reapa, among other sets. It allowed for an easy connection for the arms and head, and really worked out.

Green Moose

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Alright, this is one of my favorite Rahi designs... it's just so cute! The design originally started when I got Rocka and got the trans green armor pieces. I initially thought they'd make good wings, so I built a mini-green wasp, but the design was horrible. (Proportions were awful, since I couldn't build a decent body that could match the small wing size.) At some point, I realized that the shield pieces could also look like antlers... and thus the Moose was designed. I tried to use a variety of trans bright green elements, including the launcher piece from Rocka (used as an underbelly), the extender piece from Green Lantern (the tail), the star from Green Lantern (back armor), a round windscreen from the Alien Conquest / Atlantis sets (as a head covering), and the toxic buckets from Meltdown (the legs.) I actually reused the leg design from a turtle MOC I made last year. Then I made the best use of my green connector pieces to build a decent body that connected all these elements together. And somehow it all worked. Proportions are right, mobility is decent, and the flow is great. I suppose I could complain that the trans bright green is different than the trans dark green of the Kaukau, but that couldn't be helped. Overall, I would say this is one of my best, if not the best, Rahi I've made for this collection.Anyway, that's it for now. Comments appreciated. I still have some Rahi left, who used the Pakari and Hau masks, but I'm saving them for the upcoming weeks leading up to Bricks Cascade. Thanks for looking!

Edited May 24, 2012 by xccj

[Dralcax]

Nice job! I especially like the Wasp's abdomen. But a jellyfish would have been perfect, the trans would have fit perfectly.