[MOD] 76177 - Battle at the Ancient Village - Great Protector overhaul

[lego_guyon02]

Hello there!

Thank you for taking a look at the modifications I made to the Great Protector build from set 76177 - Battle at the Ancient Village. I personally find 76177 to be one of the most unique sets LEGO Marvel Superheroes has produced in the last few years and had a lot of fun building it. I did however think the Great Protector build could've been done better, which is why I decided to jump into Stud.io and take a crack at modifying this fantastic looking dragon. 

I started with the most important and defining part of the Great Protector's design: her head. I tried to make it a little bit bigger, give it more shape, add more (dark) red, show more teeth, have more prominent horns and make sure there are visible nostrils. Here is the end result: 

 

After completing the head it was time to continue with her body, I had originally planned to build this part of the model from scratch as well but as I actually quite liked the organic looking shape of the original model I decided to use it as a blueprint for some (occasionally heavy) modding. I tried to do the following: 
- Keep the basic shape the same. 
- Make the body a lot smoother. 
- Remove gaps between body-sections wherever possible.
- Redesign the claws. 
- Redesign the lower section of the tail.
- Keep the colorscheme to white, dark red and light aqua and cover up the "ugly" colors where possible. 

And this is the final model: 

 

And finally a comparison to the original set, alongside some images I used as reference during the design/modification process: 

 

Thanks for reading! Thoughts and feedback are more then welcome so feel free to leave them down below 

 

NOTE: when build physically the dark red spikes will be swapped out for the ones used in the original set. Those shown above were used because Stud.io hasn't added these fairly new parts yet. 

[Feuer Zug]

Hiding the joints is a significant change for the better. I like your version.

[BlueberryWaffles]

It's great! The smoothed out body feels more organic, and the reworked head shape makes her instantly recognizable compared to the more generic dragon head seen on the original build.

Are there any attachment points to let Shang-Chi ride on her back like in the film?

[lego_guyon02]

Made some small changes to the head and legs: 
- Replaced the 1x1 cheese slope with Yondu's fin to better fit the shape of her "goatee".
- Smoothed out the topmost section of the body to line up better with the shaping of her head.
- Played around with the colors of the claws and legs for better accuracy.

 

7 hours ago, Feuer Zug said:

Hiding the joints is a significant change for the better. I like your version.

Thanks! 

23 minutes ago, BlueberryWaffles said:

It's great! The smoothed out body feels more organic, and the reworked head shape makes her instantly recognizable compared to the more generic dragon head seen on the original build.

Are there any attachment points to let Shang-Chi ride on her back like in the film?

Thank you! There are currently no specific attachment points for Shang-Chi and/or Xialing but they should be very easy to add