A closer look at LEGO Icons 10331 Kingfisher Bird has got some members of the LEGO community questioning its authenticity – so we dug into a comparison.
Some amateur ornithologists among the LEGO community who love kingfishers were waiting with bated breath for the official reveal of LEGO Icons 10331 Kingfisher Bird, but not all of them are pleased with the result, judging from some comments over on reddit.
"The location of the eyes is completely wrong. Why is it so far away from the beak and near the top of the head? It makes the bird looks so derpy," commented one person, while another added: "There are a lot of anatomical details that are very off and could be improved (feather shape/quantity/angle, shoulder location, eye location, toe arrangement)."
The eyes appear to be a major point of contention for most people who aren't happy with the design of the upcoming LEGO Icons set. With that in mind, we thought we'd do a closer comparison of the brick-built 10331 Kingfisher Bird and its feather counterpart.
As noted above, the biggest gripe that many appear to have is the placement of the eye on the head and the size of the eyeball itself. The LEGO eye is made from a microphone element that barely takes up a stud's worth of space, positioned half a stud under the top of the head and several studs removed from the beak. When compared to the placement of the eye on the real bird, it does admittedly look too high and small, with the eye itself almost as wide as the middle section of the kingfisher's beak.
Other than the eye, however, the proportions of the body and most of the features are fairly spot on, with a compact body and head paired with fluttering wings. The orange tummy and blue wings and head are also included, with a muted colour palette that the LEGO Icons designers have already addressed.
However, choosing to portray 10331 Kingfisher Bird about to take off means that there's a lot of attention on the individual feathers. It's an impressive pose but it does give away another area that isn't quite true to life: the size of the feathers. Where the real-life bird is held aloft on a number of thin, delicate feathers on its wings, the brick-built ones are much thicker, with only the thin feathers at the base of the wings coming close to the actual width of the feathers. The decreasing size of the feathers also isn't quite accurate, when you look at the fan of feathers on the actual bird below.
Still, it would be unrealistic to expect a brick-built bird to have the same amount of feathers to the same delicate degree as the real kingfisher, not least because of the number of parts required, but also because it would presumably make for a highly unstable build. All in all, the sacrifices in authenticity have resulted in an impressive final build that offers the same vibrant impression as the real-life bird.
Featured image: Unsplash
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