"Giratina is filled with terrible might!"
This is an entry in the LEGO Ideas Pokemon Trading Card Game Challenge, which tasked builders to not just create a Pokemon, but a Pokemon from a short curated list, and framed as full-art card, even to the tune of having a required footprint of the card frame, coming in at 37 x 26 studs! Quite a specified task, I must say. As luck would have it, Giratina Origin Forme, one of my favorite Pokemon and more importantly one that I had in the back of my mind to try building one day, was on the list -- so, I resolved myself to enter.
The full art card design I opted for was to have Giratina snaking out of a portal into our dimension, appearing over the ruins of the Temple of Sinnoh, just as it appears in its origin forme at the climax of Legends Arceus. The scenery in the foreground, which also gives a base of support to the entire build, is a faithful recreation of the dais at the temple's peak, particularly the triangular-tiled region where Dialga or Palkia appears in the original games. We then have some layers of the mountains of Hisui behind it, adding depth, and then a dark night sky where Giratina floats above.
I don't think I realized what I'd be getting into with a card design of, at minimum, an area footprint of over 900 studs! This is certainly my most System-heavy build to date. And while much of that is straightforward -- especially the stacking of many dark blue bricks and plates for the sky, there were certainly some fun spots of System math to get it all to work. Most notably, in the SNOT-work at the corners at the top of the stairs, the white bottom corners, and connecting the stair-steps. Not to mention, resolving the pernicious half-plate gap between the top and bottom parts of the background at the eleventh hour, when I thought everything just needed to be snapped together... (My best answer to that one ultimately came from D-SNOT bricks.)
Let's say a bit about Giratina itself. Its very recognizable head has many concave edges, for which two types of Batarang piece stood out as the immediate solution. A pricey new corner cheese slope fills in the middle of its face, and its curved gold horns are set low over its deep-set eyes to give more gravitas as a heavy browline. I, of course, wanted to capture the serpentine flow of its body, but also needed that to include the black-and-red stripes down the front of its chest. This was one of the most iterated-upon parts of the build. Large D-shaped liftarms gave the right framing, and ring-pops were crucial for letting the curved slopes attach at varying angles, to make the tiled chest scales. A basic 1x2 hinge brick pair attaches the top stack of tiles, similarly to how a key piece of the underside of Charizard's neck was done. Further down, a shoulder pad from Reinhardt's mech was just right for the larger grey section of body after the stripes end.
And of course, can't forget to talk about those tentacles! That's many maxaroni of course, tapering at their bases with the newer large horn element. But the biggest issue with this part of the build was supporting the weight of six long tentacles, and from behind as well. A Bionicle titan socket, into Technic bricks in the card, is right behind the tentacles, while the end of Giratina's body, hidden behind the portal energy effects, is the newly reinforced mold variant of the socket brick.
In total, my hope was for the build to capture some of the ominousness and power of Giratina's emergence. The legend floats high over the Spear Pillar, with long tendrils outstretched, ready to drag a victim into its realm... "Can’t you feel it? The eldritch presence icing your heart?"
