The Butterfly

The Butterfly is a steampunk-inspired, massive build, designed in a way so that the process of building would take you to a world full of adventures. With countless small details and quasi-functional mechanical elements, it mixes engineering precision with ornamental design, with a hint of bluish joy in the grand and mighty black-gold-brass ambient.

The model's torso is an homage to the fuselage of the early 20th century airplanes, allowing the model to roll on the ground, keeping a fine but steady balance to the otherwise heavy and wide structure of the wings. Each of the wings are supported by multiple ball joints placed linearly, allowing a limited but satisfying movement and placement. Both layers of wings are built from 3 layers: a black-colored structural layer with countless stud inversions and support for the upper layers; a dominantly blue middle layer for creating connections and adding a vivid vibe to the build; and a fine metallic gold upper layer with ornamental and mechanical elements, providing functionality and a magnificent look for The Butterfly.

The model features a double-seater cockpit and the must-have instruments of the steampunk world, two large propellers for a lift force and countless pipes, gears and cylinders to complete the theme.

Since the early 2000's, I've been in love with steampunk, and the era of industrialization & discovery. As a mechanical engineer, even the greasiest, dustiest machines hit me with awe. Even though I moved to computer science, I still feel at home in large factories, among assembly belts or huge steelworks. This build is an homage to this passion of mine.

As for the LEGO Ideas submission, I also took to chance to dive into my other (new) hobby: computer graphics. With limitless configurations in ray-tracing software and a bit of linear algebra, any build can be transformed to a piece of art, and a butterfly-inspired, metallic golden structure proved to be an ideal model to push the rendering efforts to the limits.

What would make The Butterfly a successful and great LEGO set? With a little over 1500 parts and 250+ unique elements, building this set takes anyone through a journey of LEGO brick ratios and geometries. As the outer layer of the wings is almost exclusively constructed by non-inverted slope elements, finding the right balance of when and how to rotate and invert stud directions has been a fascinating challenge for me, and I am certain that this epiphany would be experienced by anyone, who embarks on this journey.

The set would make a great piece of art in any home, just wide enough to fit in a standard 40x40 cm (15x15 in) bookshelf frame, although fidgeting its small moving parts to enhance creative thinking during a stressful home office day would be also a viable option.

Total parts: 1514

Minifigs: 2

Dimensions (approx): 40 cm (W) x 25 cm (L) x 15 cm (H)

The build has been created in LeoCAD 23.03 with updated LDraw part list as of 2025/03

Rendering: POV-Ray 3.7

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