Alanyuppie's LEGO Transformers: Video Tutorial: Transformer Falcon from LEGO Ninjago 71718: Wu's Battle Dragon

LEGO set 71718 offered me many claw and sloped parts, so various types of animals can be built with it.

But I'm not keen on mere animals , the most fun of course.. is building Transformer animals from the set.!

This is my third attempt at a Transformer from this set. The first attempt was a Transformer Dragon (last year) , and a Transformer White Lion few months back.

ABOUT THIS PROJECT

The bane of set 71718 is that it contains very little classic LEGO plates, So building the robot legs can be tricky since I must use the plates sparingly.

I started this project by utilizing the awkward A-shaped parts for the legs in the best way possible. From there... I had a revelation (again) about the alternate mode of this robot/Transformer! The rest is history!

Minutes before I started the photo shoot, I experienced problem posing the falcon mode due to small paw prints (below). This flaw was improved immediately.

In this project, I'm trying to wean off the habit of maximizing parts utilization from the LEGO set as this tend to drag the completion time to absurd level. There's still about 30% of parts left overs , with many potentially useful to enhance this creation.

The tails are my favorite part of the design process. They eventually formed a pretty snazzy looking robot chest plate!

Yeah I know. He looked like a lost waddling penguin in the photo above.

No! He's NOT taking a dump!!

TRANSFORMATION

Before we transform him, he must be knocked out cold first.

Straighten the wings to form robot legs.

The robot arms and upper body transformation was inspired by my LEGO Transformer Giraffe built few years ago.

ROBOT MODE

ACTION POSES

The arm articulations implemented is pretty unique compared to many of my earlier LEGO TF. Ball joints on the shoulders is unable to provide adequate range of motion. So a rotating mechanism (which was part of the transformation to bird mode) helped to extend the range (above: left arm extended)

Saturday Night Fever, anyone?

And finally.... attack mode aka "chest cannons" !

CONFESSION!

I made a lil' design blunder after the photos and some vids were shot! The bird head connection could've been improved to allow it be tucked up closer to the robot's butt (below). Dang!