Mount Up! - The Elusive Chobo

[mccoyed]

Pictured: The Elusive Chobo With Rider, near a Wintergreen Tree circa Spring Thaw

Being a flightless bird of prodigious size prized for its great speed and endurance as a riding animal. Known for its distinctive "wark" vocalization, its fondness for certain greens, and its tendency to shed its trademark yellow plumage in favor of coloring complementary to its surroundings.

Habitat and Ecology

The chobo favors the weather-locked valleys of south-east Mitgardia where the mountains protect slivers of green, rich land from the worst of the harsh climate. The chobo is an amazingly hardy beast, however, and is able to survive the harshest climates though breeding seems to become more difficult outside of the chobo's natural valley habitat. Some have speculated that this is due to the lack of a special root vegetable that seems to be heavily consumed by chobo during their breeding season.

The primary diet of Mitgardian chobo is the leaves of the Wintergreen Tree. These trees are plentiful, reaching heights amenable to the reach of the chobo's long neck.

Traditional Historican Usage

The chobo lacks the agrarian temperament. Ranchers and farmers find them difficult to use as beasts of burden. The chobo is too hyper, furtive, and skittish about weight. However, they make superior racing mounts and are also used extensively by light cavalry, mounted scouts, and couriers.

Chobo meat is considered a delicacy by some, though its eggs are inedible to most humanoids. The chobos feathers are prized writing quills, but often too large to be turned to this purpose. Their feathers are occasionally considered lucky or prized by southerners for their decorative qualities.

Legends and some scholarly documentation exist to suggest that the chobo was once far more widespread in Historica. However, due to over-hunting or the delicacy of their breeding, the chobo has become rare and vulnerable. Some conservation-minded Mitgardians have attempted to promote the chobo to secure territory in warmer, more hospitable areas so that they can be bred. Some interest has been generated for the chobo's potential as a warfare mount, particularly some early evidence that they can be bred and trained for heavy, fast-moving cavalry of a caliber beyond the horse-mounted units favored throughout Historica. In Kaliphlin, chobo are highly prized for racing but do not seem able to breed in most of the region due to its arid, dry climate.

Plumage Variations

Chobo tend to be a bright yellow but one of their most legendary attributes is their tendency to breed offspring with different plumage when bred in a region of Historica outside their native north. In Nocturnus, red and black chobo have been seen. In Avalonia, green and blue. In Mitgardia, there have long been legends of white chobo adapted to the snow but a specimen has never been confirmed by the natural philosophers of the University of Petraeus.

[Lord Vladivus]

Nice creature, great posing! It's great to see some wacky creations coming out! I'm a fan of the feet! The new mixel joints are a great tool I think!

[WhiteFang]

This is nice, really nice! And, it just put a smile on me! What a way to revive the memories of FF.

Well done to incorporate it in this built.

[Tomsche]

That is so nice! Great work matey, though I never imagined oversized yellow chickens running around in our icey lands ;-)

[Torgar]

Cool mount, great use of the ball and socket parts!

[Mutant Orc]

very very nice!!! It has a slightly quirky cute look to it!

[Scaevola]

Nice, I like the head of the chobo, as well as the wings and the way you incorporated the mixel joints. Great work with the tree and snowy landscape too :thumbup:

[-Carson Haupt-]

This is pretty awesome! Love the write up.

[ZCerberus]

Excellent build! Any more photos of this creature?

[mccoyed]

Thanks everybody!

Excellent build! Any more photos of this creature?

If you want to see more of how it was constructed, I can do more photos to show that. I haven't dismantled the chobo yet. I am thinking of doing a couple of freebuilds with it to show other ways it is used.

[mrcp6d]

Bwahahaha! This is awesome! I agree with the other comments about the Mixel joints, the angles in the legs look really good with them, and using that weird yellow as a second color is really effective here.

[Yooha]

The fact that this creature is balanced is a miracle to me. Nice work!

[mccoyed]

Bwahahaha! This is awesome! I agree with the other comments about the Mixel joints, the angles in the legs look really good with them, and using that weird yellow as a second color is really effective here.

Heh, thanks! I only wish I had more of that mustard yellow!

The fact that this creature is balanced is a miracle to me. Nice work!

It does balance, but if you look close you can see that in this picture I've attached it's left foot to the base for convenience while I was moving the build around to take pictures and show my household. :P

If you go to my my flickr (signature!), you can see pics of it without the base! Those mixel ball joints are super sturdy. They will revolutionize several styles of builds when they're fully adopted. I can't wait to see what they do to Mobile Frame Zero, where my AFOL bug started.

Edited July 7, 2014 by mccoyed

[MassEditor]

Very cool Mccoyed, great entry! I'm enjoying all the attention to detail in this like the tail plumage and the nicely done head. The landscaping and border are sweet too. Awesome work man!

[mccoyed]

Thanks ME. I'm glad so many people are commenting on the head as it was by far the biggest pain to figure out. I made something like 5 versions and they were all WAY too big. The key here was how I did the beak, once that made sense everything else fell into place but our "chobo" bird is still an order of magnitude larger than I'd like. Chocobos are usally around the size of a camel and this is more like a dinosaur or something. Which is, I guess, appropriate. :P

[MassEditor]

Haha yes I figured this was perhaps a war variety! I definitely understand some of your troubles. I built a skeleton dragon type thing for one of my past mocs and the head was a really pain. I would like to know, did you start with the head and then build the rest of the critter?

[mccoyed]

I did. Not sure if it was the right way to go, in retrospect, but I'd hate to build a body and limbs and then have a mismatched, bad looking head. The head, in many ways, informed the rest of the build.

[MKJoshA]

Oh the fond memories of riding these around the overworld maps of FF. Good times. You have captured the look perfectly in Lego. Incredible job!

[mccoyed]

Aww thanks, MKJoshA!

[Jorrith]

Almost went all in on FF14, but left it where the beta ended. (maybe for the better) Instantly recognisable though, nice build! Also if anyone knows about Nausicaä, that story also has bird mounts.

[Emma]

Cute creature! It's got some really nice shaping and I especially like how the minifig fits snugly on it between the wings. The one thing that would make this a bit better would be some colour balancing (making those whites look white).

[mccoyed]

Thanks Emma. RE: whites looking white... you mean my photography and lighting yes? I have a thread posted about that and have received some help/ideas but I still have an inadequate lighting setup. This is the result.

[Emma]

Have you played around with the settings on your Samsung? My familiarity with what it is capable of is only based on a quick google search, so not sure if this is helpful or not (and you may already know/have tried these) but fiddling around with these settings might be helpful:

- Exposure value: increase this to make the image brighter

- White balance: see which setting makes the white parts look the most white (most of the shots in your WoN stuff look great regarding the white balance, but this one seemed to turn out a bit 'yellow-y')

- ISO: increasing this value might help brighten things up a bit, but too high and you might start seeing some graininess/noise

...of course then there is always working on the lighting setup and then getting into photo-editing software to get the best possible pictures...but maybe this will help a bit... regardless the build is really great

[soccerkid6]

I think this is my favorite build from you yet! The Chobo is really neat and well sculpted

And your landscape is excellent, I like the slight rise to where the tree is and the snow drifts look good

[Gideon]

Very nice creature! My favorite parts are the wings and the head