LEGO® Minecraft animals: Horse and Wolf

Jonas Kramm has been examining the LEGO® Minecraft animals and thinking up inspiring ideas as to how they might be used for something other than blocky animals! 

Welcome to the last lesson of Minecraft Anatomy class. Today we will analyse the horse and the wolf to see what can be done with grey Minecraft moulds.

Horse

The horse mould comes in two colours: Dark Stone Grey [TLG]/Dark Bluish Gray [BL] (Animal Head, No. 21|Element ID 6195338|Design ID 34454) released in 2017 and Medium Stone Grey [TLG]/Light Bluish Gray [BL] (Animal Head, No. 29|6218829|37579) from 2018's 21144 The Farm Cottage. I don’t have the darker version for comparison but I assume they have the same mould and merely different printings.

The head’s base is like a 1x2 jumper plate but note the bottom is without tubes, which allows the part to slide on one stud in the same way a 1x2 tile can.

The head section is exactly one brick wide. The front of the snout, the mane and ears are a bit out of System as you can see in the pictures. The thickness of the mane is a bit less than a tile, so you can’t clip it.

When you interlace several copies of the horse heads you immediately get some interesting textures. And if you hide the black eyes, the white printings aren’t that distracting anymore.

Wolf

The wolf head (Animal Head No.15, No. 2|6192716|34042) is the same as the dog from way back in 2015 (Animal Head No.15, "No.1"|6131703|21098) but with different printing and so far is only available in Medium Stone Grey [TLG]/Light Bluish Gray [BL] in 21137 The Mountain Cave.

It connects to the LEGO System by a combination of a 1x2 plate and 1x2 tile on top, but the distance to the bottom of the part is a bit odd – two and a half plates.

Aside from the intended connection points there is an illegal way to connect the heads to each other, as the snout fits perfectly between the ears.

By arranging the wolf heads in the right way, the undersides make a great pattern, which caught my attention and brings us to my final build.

The Shrine of Nature

It all started with the wolf head pattern mentioned above. It reminded me of a scene from the second Hobbit movie where the protagonists climb an enormous dwarf statue by using the massive texture as stairs. I didn’t wanted to build a giant dwarf, but something smaller, so I began building a monument using this texture.

Soon the structure was done and I decided to place it in a jungle scene. This gave me the chance to build some plants, what I really enjoyed, and also gave the scene a bit of a backstory. To give it a mysterious look I filled the negative space behind the wolf heads with Transparent Bright Green [TLG]/ Trans-Bright Green [BL and Transparent Fluorescent Green [TLG]/ Trans-Neon Green [BL] plates and lit it from below, simply with my smartphone flashlight. The wolf moulds are made from rather thick plastic compared to other bricks which prevented the light form shining through the heads. That would have ruined the effect.

I refined the wolf head pattern by using brackets to make the gaps a bit smaller and Technic pins to change the building direction. That allowed me to easily cover the frame with tiles.

Another wolf head can be found at the top of the shrine.

I also used two horse heads in this scene for the two small statues on the left and right. The mould here is upside down as the undersides make great basins.

The small edge of the horse's snout gives it even more texture. Unfortunately I didn’t find a way to connect them properly so they are only held in place by the 1x3 tiles. The minifigure heads are only connected with a Technic pin.

Aside from the two Minecraft seed parts, I want to point out some more interesting part usages.

• Two Bright Orange [TLG]/Orange [BL] flagons (Element ID 4163666) as exotic flowers
• Sand Green Squidward Head (4539400) as a vase
• Bright Green [TLG]/Green [BL] snake (6213761) as a flower stem
• Bright Purple [TLG]/Dark Pink [BL] cup (4618670) as the birds body
• And many more you might spot when exploring the model.

I hope you enjoyed my Anatomy classes and that I managed to inspire you at least a bit.
 Be sure to follow me on the channel of your choice: Instagram, Flickr or Twitter.

And with this tropical build I wish you all a Merry Christmas!

READ MORE:
Jonas explored other Minecraft animals too:

• Part 1 uses the silverfish and chicken elements to make a Harry Potter troll and a microscale hotel
• Part 2 uses the cat and rabbit elements to make a water wheel and a buccaneer 

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