Officially blog happy new year!!

Here's my blog officially saying Happy New year right before the next day comes(which where in my country school starts)! So here's a picture for all of my blog fans!

So, basically, this picture reveals that I will putting up a bunch of my Hero Factory MOCs that I made(well you can see on the left side there's a bunch of Hero Factory MOCs, and at Elder sister penguin's left is another Hero Factory MOC with a mix of Bionicle parts, so you could say that is also a representative of Bionicle MOCs, because I've yet to show 6 that I've built, took a picture of, and disassembled them for other things). Also, there's a chima character that I made called 'Evar' standing at the left side of the Lego letters which read "BYE 2013, HI 2014". Well, he's mentioned in 3 of my 2013 blog posts, and I never really posted an entire post about him alone. Basically, he was my chima online closed beta character(you can't make custom names) and all I remember was that the first part of his name is 'eerie' in chima online. Don't ask why I chose eerie in that game, I just didn't know the meaning of this word at that time(which was last year around the June holidays). So, as per what Google says, it says that 'eerie' means 'strange and frightening' which is absolutely not what I'm looking for in Evar. Maybe I'll choose a better name if I ever get access to chima online in my country again. *Sigh* But anyways let's get back to the happy stuff! :D And with the appearance of Evar that also means more chima MOCs! Also, the red ninja on the brown and orange dragon is Mike from my Ninjago story series: The greater weapons of power! The dragon is also the dragon from that said series as well! And as for my penguin... well, she is my beloved soft toy and I put her in almost all of the pictures involving the blog overall. :P So, I guess hopefully I can put up some normal soft toys talkings and soft toy book chats... it's been, like, 3 months since I posted one(well it would be 4 if you immediately count 1st Jan as another month done already). Well, anyway, happy new year, bye 2013, hi 2014 and look forward to more stuff coming up on the Ace Swan blog! :D

Written by Lynn

Lego Horse MOC(Happy new year!)

Here's my Lego MOC, a horse! Also, today is already 1st January in my country so Happy New Year as well! So, what is so special about this horse? Well, first of all, it isn't a molded horse from Lego, it's my fully custom horse and there are some parts of it that can articulate. Secondly, it matches up with this year's zodiac sign(after Chinese new year, that is): The horse! :D Here are 8 pictures of it.

Normal standing pose

Horse neighing pose

Close up on its head

Horse turns the head to the left and downwards

All of the parts of the horse that are removable

Horse turns its head right and down

Top of the horse's head(the horse is looking down, probably eating grass. :P)

Close up on the horse's tail

Bottom of the horse(I changed the bottom a little bit when I took this picture)

Now, basically all of the sudden I had wanted to search on youtube and google for horse MOCs, but apparently, there weren't many. Youtube only had one proper horse MOC(I didn't want just those horses Lego gave us plus some carriages) and as for google, there were probably only 4 or 5 that I spotted that are Lego Horse MOCs. Well, plus mine, now there are 5 or 6! :D Well, anyway, back to the MOC.
Now, to start off, the hardest part of the MOC for me would be the head. With the nose and hair, it can be quite a challenge. It took me awhile to get the right shape with the head, and make sure it didn't look like a dog instead! :P When I got the head done, I started making the hair. It didn't really take me a long time with the hair though. As for the nose, I did try to replicate the only real Lego horse MOC result on youtube's nose, but I didn't have the right pieces, and I originally put the 1x2x2 slope piece thingy but it wasn't the right colour so I put a 2x2 black brick plus a black 2x2 roof tile onto the 2x2 brick and placed it there for his nose.
The body was really what I started with, except I started the body from the back, where there's the tail. It took me but a few minutes to get the tail into the right length. At first, the legs were actually a 2x2 brick shorter than its current state, but at that time, it wasn't possible for the horse to do the normal horse 'neighing' pose so that's why the 2x2 brick was added.  Also, the reason why the legs can move is because of a brick that is a 2x2 with a pin, and by putting on a 2x2, it causes enough friction for it to not move around too much because of the gravity, yet it can still move when you use your hand to make the legs move. The head can turn side to side with those kind of Lego helicopter lower main propeller thingy and using the tube in the 2x2 brick, like with the legs, it causes enough friction to not let the head move all over the place in gravity but it can still be moved when you use your hands to do so. As for how the head moves up and down(well the maximum up it can go on the head is in the normal horse pose) is just some hinges.
Now, as to what's up with all those yellow parts doing almost all over the horse? Well, I don't really have a lot of white bricks, so I put in some yellow. The yellow on its body is to simulate the cloth put on it. Then, the ones on the front and back legs are armour. Then, the one on the neck is supposed to be like some sort of necklace or something like that. :P Finally, the ones on its head is its head armour. Anyway, here's the profile of this horse.
Gender: Male
Status: Elite Horse
Age: 7
Background: This horse was a regular wild horse from the age of 0 to 4, until a scientist had took it 'captive' to experiment on it and try to make the horse have just as much intelligence as humans, and know how to read and write, and just about every thing humans can do, EXCEPT speaking in the human language. After a year of experimenting, the experiment was a success, and the horse was set free. 
One day, the horse was walking on the street and saw a racing competition for horses. Though, it can't participate by itself, it needs to have an owner. The horse walked down the street even further and saw a banner which read "Horses up for hire's stable!" and it was delighted. It rushed through the door and written on the paper that it wants to be a horse for hire. The horse trainers looked at each other, wondering how come this horse knows how to write, but they still accepted this horse. The horse trainers then led it to its stable, and gave it the name "Mark". Every time the horse trainers tell Mark to train, it will just do it without delay, unlike some of the other horses in the stables. Soon, Mark will just automatically train itself even without the horse trainers' reminders, which they are happy about. Then, the day came, where some horse riders will look for horses that are skillful and will be able to help them win the race. Mark hoped hard. It hoped that it will be chosen for the race because Mark itself wanted to participate in the race. And it was lucky. One of the horse riders chose it! It was extremely happy and started jumping up and down in its stable. The horse trainer opened the door of Mark's and the horse rider climbed onto it. The horse shouted out a "Neigh!" and ran straight to the horse race nearby. After that, the horse rider signed up on the competitor's list for him and the horse. A few days later, the race began, and the horse won. A year later, the horse was crowned as 'Elite horse' and had yellow cloth and armour because of its winning streaks. Ever since then, it was very popular with horse riders because all of them wanted to win.
So, that's it for now and I hoped you liked the MOC and its background!

Written by Lynn