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I recently made 20 centaurs for a Narnia layout. (Narnia is the land from the
story of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.)
I’ve seen many kinds of LEGO centaurs on Brickshelf. The main difference between them is the legs. Here’s a list of
the types of LEGO centaur legs I’ve seen and why I didn’t use that method:
2
Pirate peg legs on 1 waist - legs look to thin
2 pairs of minifig legs - looks
unhorse like, too much like a Shpleem
1X1 round bricks - 2 round bricks are too
tall, and 1 isn’t enough
At first I tried making the centaurs’ legs out of
1X1 round bricks with 1X1 round plates towards the bottom of the legs with a
black 1X1 round plate on the very bottom for the hoof. I could achieve the
exact height I wanted by this method, but the 1X1 plates made the legs have
weird looking ridges. Also I wanted the horse part of the centaurs to be brown,
and while brown 1X1 round bricks are fairly cheap and easy to come by, 1X1 round
plates in brown are not.
I knew that I wanted the legs to be 2 bricks (6
plates) tall. Using 2 round 1X1 bricks meant that I either had to leave the
centaur hoofless or add hooves and make it look a little too tall. Then I
remembered that those Technic pin joiners that are completely smooth inside and
out are exactly 2 & 2/3rds bricks (5 plates) tall when placed upright. If I
used those as legs, I could use the black 1X1 round plates as hooves and achieve
the exact height I wanted while creating a very smooth and thus aesthetically
pleasing horse leg.
I had known that I wanted to use the
2X3 curved slope (2X2 studs,
curved at one end) as the centaur’s body for quite a while. Just as I’ve seen
many centaur leg types, I’ve also seen many centaur body lengths. There are
some who use only the 2X3
curved slope as the body, making it 3 studs long. I think that this makes it
too short, and then the centaur looks sort of top heavy. I’ve also seen centaur
bodies that are 5 or 6 studs long. I think these look like wiener dogs (which I
have coined “centaurpedes”). I think that a centaur body of 4 stud’s length
gives just the right visual ratio so that it looks like a...um, well... like a
real centaur.
To make the centaur body, I put a 1X2 brick in front of the 2X3
curved slope and attached them by a 2X2 plate from above. (All of this is in
brown.) Then I placed whatever torso I wanted on the 2X2 plate, above where the
1X2 brick is. This left an unused 1X2 plate portion just behind the base of the
torso, but I figured that it could just be where the human back slopes into the
horse back. (I always wondered if centaurs would have severe back trouble in
that spot, since the human and horse spines would meet at 90°.) As it turns
out, that 1X2 section of studs turned out to be really useful with the female
centaurs who I made into archers. If you put long hair on your female LEGO
people, then they’re going to have to learn to live without a quiver on their
back. For a humanoid minifig who’s an archer this could be a problem...but not
with a centaur! The quiver fits perfectly behind the human back and puts the
arrows in easy reach (assuming that your archer centaur is right-handed).
Feel like making your own centaur? Here’s what you’ll need:
·
One 2X3 curved slope (back of
horse body)
· One 1X2 brick
(front of horse body)
· One 2X2 plate (holds 2 horse body pieces together)
·
Four Smooth Technic pin
joiners (legs)
· Four 1X1
round plates (hooves)
· Four ½ Technic pins (connects legs to underside of body)
· One minifig torso &
head
Brown isn’t the easiest color to get these parts in, but black, white or
shades of gray would be fine for horse bodies.
To see the whole gallery,
click here.
The
picture of all of the
centaurs together is with Aslan and the lamppost.
These centaurs, along with
a hoard of other mythical creatures, will be on display in the castle section of
IndyLUG’s layout at the
Children and
Parents’ Expo held at the Indiana State Fairgrounds on February 25 and 26.
Enjoy!
David “Fuzzy” Gregory
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