I designed this 1:2-scale pair of Cavalier King Charles Spaniels on commission. They’re some of the first pet builds I’ve ever designed, and I feel quite proud with how they turned out.
Let me introduce you to two sweet dogs: Indigo (the “Tri-Color” Cavalier, with black, white, and brown coloration) and Harmony (the “Blenheim” Cavalier, with white and reddish coloration). Like most pet owners, my client loves and treasures his dogs. Out of respect for his adoration, I sought to recreate Harmony and Indigo as faithfully as possible, and to make the pair complement one another just like their real-life counterparts do.
However, I wasn’t always slated to build both Indigo and Harmony. Initially, my client approached me seeking just a 1:1 replica of Harmony, and I signed on to the project intending to produce a model in that size. So, why did I change scales?
Indigo, the Tri-Color Cavalier King Charles Spaniel
Harmony, the Blenheim Cavalier King Charles Spaniel
Ultimately, shortly after beginning my initial design process, I realized that the engineering and textural considerations inherent in fabricating a life-size LEGO animal might actually stunt the expressiveness and liveliness of the finished model. Here’s why:
In models above a certain size, concerns of structural integrity trump all else. The techniques used to give a model of that size stability—which has to be tremendous, more akin to a piece of architecture than a playable toy—can enforce inorganic linearity, and thus limit the range of possible poses and finishing touches on a creature. In other words, going too large can preclude the use of subtler shapes and textures. I felt that, if I wanted to accurately capture Harmony’s spirit and feel, I’d need access to these subtleties.
LEGO bricks—especially the curved ones, which I hoped to use for the Cavalier King Charles’ silky fur—are inflexible shapes. The constrained set of concave and convex curves available in LEGO are much easier to employ towards an elegant finish within a certain size window. Outside that window, they lose some of their potency, feeling less like sculptural choices and more like greebling.
After some cursory attempts at building in a smaller scale produced far better results than my 1:1 forays had yielded, I knew that 1:2 scale would be a better direction for the project. So, with my client’s blessing, I pivoted from a single life-size model to a pair of half-size of models with the same budget. Frankly, I’m extremely pleased we agreed upon this change, as I think the resulting models are far more graceful, clever, and adorable than any 1:1 build could have been.
Now, let’s look at some of the design choices behind these poochies!
Indigo: Blenheim Champion
I designed Harmony first because, as she was my initial subject, my client had already supplied me with plenty of images of her! I feel lucky to have had such a wealth of reference materials during this project. The abundance of pictures and video footage my client passed over to me allowed me to become quite familiar with the dogs and “check my work” constantly in terms of their colors, fur patterns, and shapes.
Harmony’s coat is simply gorgeous in life, and I was glad to replicate her colors here. I’m particularly fond of the combination of dark orange and medium nougat… and yes, there were no other colors I really could have used on an accurate model, but that doesn’t mean I’m not happy with how they look in LEGO form! Pretty as they are, these hues did constrain my palate of bricks a bit, since neither dark orange nor medium nougat is as common a color as, say, white or even normal orange.
The process of designing these dogs was not dissimilar to the process of creating my version of Salesforce’s mascot bear Codey. Codey was my first large-scale sculptural animal model. During that project, I learned how to devise internal lattice structures, and then sculpt over them with curving SNOT (studs not on top) or, rather, “SOAS” (studs on all sides) surfaces. Harmony and Indigo’s bodies follow the same basic premise: a hollow, boxy skeleton, clad in carefully shaped panels. Harmony happens to have studs facing up, sideways, and down on her torso.
The panels provide additional structural support to the model. In the dogs’ limbs, the support skeletons are much narrower than those of the torso, but they’re still there, mostly 2-stud-wide structures covered completely with brackets. The curved slopes, plates and tiles that comprise the external surfaces of the dogs’ legs actually hold these structures together like an exoskeleton.
I designed Harmony’s face before the rest of her body, because—as I often believe to be the case for an animal model—it was vital to get right in order to capture her character. I’m glad I invested so much time in crafting the head design properly, because both of these dogs look so darn cute! The bits that took the most revision were the mouth and muzzle. I had to try myriad solutions before I came up with the dogs’ characteristic droopy-jowled overbite.
The most emotive bits of the dogs’ faces are their eyes. I chose to use Technic ball joints because they were the right size, but also because they reflect light exceptionally well, contributing a spark of life and a certain je-ne-sais-quoi to the models (this is another trick I discovered while building Codey, whose eyes are the same bricks). Once I realized I could nestle the Technic ball joints into bricks with sockets, and then turn those sockets 90 degrees, I found the look I wanted.
Indigo: Tri-Color Queen
I opted to make Indigo in a different position than Harmony for variety’s sake. While parts of the two dogs are almost identical in construction, such as much of the face, the back legs, and the torso framework, I wanted them to look distinct from one another, rather than too perfectly matched. In some respects, Indigo was the easier dog to design: in her pose of repose, Indigo’s legs don’t have to support her weight, and she has no “belly” panel to speak of.
For shipping purposes, I designed Harmony and Indigo to separate into large, sturdy chunks. Their heads, limbs, and tails detach easily, being held by single Technic click joints. However, save in a few cases—like Harmony’s tilting head, or Indigo’s turning one—these joints aren’t meant to be movable. The shaping of the “fur” of the dogs’ legs and bodies helps them maintain their postures, ensuring that their legs don’t pivot, abduct, or twist in any direction. This breaks from the philosophy of play inherent in many of my creature models, but at this scale, I decided that masking joints and favoring stability was far more important than maintaining mobility.
One of my goals for these models was to create a silky-looking fur texture, which I balanced against my client’s desire to have some “LEGO DNA,”—i.e., studded surfaces—visible, too. I utilized slopes and curved slopes a lot, especially in areas where the dogs’ fur fans out, like on the bottoms of their limbs, their soft tails, and their bellies. Indigo in particular makes use of these types of parts, as her “belly fur” and “forearm fur” flare out dramatically from the core of her body.
In building the dogs’ fur, I found it challenging to recreate the necessary shapes without giving a sense of density. While this breed of dog has a lot of fur, making it appear voluminous, the animal underneath isn’t rotund; rather, the fur tends to poof and spread out when pressed upon, like the bristles of an old toothbrush. I feel I did a decent job in creating an impression of lightness and insubstantiality, given that I was working with rigid plastic blocks!
When I happened upon the idea of using a LEGO DOTS bracelet as a collar, it really “sealed the deal” for me in terms of switching the models from life-size to half-size. The elements felt well-suited to the job, were pretty perfectly scaled, and I’d not yet seen them employed this way by another LEGO artist, which made this particular use all but irresistible. It’s probably my favorite technique used in the whole project! The collars’ colors and their heart-shaped dog tags are accurate to those worn by the real Harmony and Indigo.
On Indigo, I had to leave a narrow slit at the back of her neck to accomodate the collar piece. The “fur” at the nape of her neck covers this up and makes it a bit less glaring, luckily.
Thanks for reading! If you have any other questions or thoughts about this model, feel free to leave them in the comments below. And, if you’re interested in getting a model like this yourself, reach out to me about commissioning one of your own!