Technic Liftarm Butterfly With Motion

This is one beautiful and sturdy butterfly. Our LUG tries to bring fresh ideas to the local Botanical Garden's annual butterfly festival. By building the mosaic wings using Technic liftarms, pins, and axles, they are strong enough to scale up to a much larger size and flap realistically for much greater visual impact. Wings flap using a simple gear linkage. For this prototype, I used a large motor with gearing to provide the motion, but a hand crank would be another feasible approach. I've seen that butterflies are a popular subject for nature MOCs and sets, but traditional construction methods limit the size and motion options. This different approach expands the butterfly envelope and stimulates new ideas for using Technic liftarm parts. Of course, this is just the AFOL prototype idea- I'm sure that a Lego design team could build on this approach and adjust the size, mosaic pattern, motion linkage, foliage, etc. to better fit the requirements of a production set.