Building trees with minifig antlers, Pt. 2: Branching out with Forestmen [Feature]

The last few years have been bountiful for fans of LEGO flora with new elements and recolors vastly expanding the range of plastic plant life. Maybe it’s nostalgia for the oak trees I grew up with on the Central Coast of California, or maybe it’s my love of noodling with the smallest of LEGO elements, but the plant piece I’ve been most excited about lately is the minifig antlers in green, which recently showed up on some pick-a-brick shops. In the first installment of this feature, I explored ways that this element could be used in microscale trees. For part 2, I’ll explore using the part on minifig scale MOCs. As it was the Forestmen sub-theme that launched my love of LEGO trees, what better place to apply this new part than on one of their iconic hideouts?

To jump-start the process, I’ve agreed to help my Forestmen friends remodel the Forest Hideout GWP. The set is itself a remake of the smallest Forestmen tree set, all of which feature a brick-built tree with a thick black trunk and stubby limbs reminiscent of an ancient English Oak (Perhaps one like this). The re-imagined set incorporates curved elements for the branches but sticks with the classic leaf elements, to match the style in the Lion Knights’ Castle. There’s something undeniably pleasing about the bendy trees next to rigid stone walls, but for my remake, I wanted to bring things a little closer to the look of an old oak. But first… we’re going to need a lot more leaves! 100 minifig antlers was barely enough for a micro-scale forest grove. By chance, a group of Black Falcons had just left Ye Olde Pick-a-Brick with a wagon full of antlers that my Forestmen friends were all too happy to liberate.

Before starting on the tree remake, I pulled out all of my assorted black bars and clips to play around with branch configurations. The workhorse parts for playing with these antler elements are the 1×1 round plate with bar and wands. The 1×1 round tile with hole is useful for connecting wands to any stud with plenty of friction.

I also had fun finding novel parts to hide in the branches as easter eggs. Some were just silly fun, but a few proved very useful – like the handcuffs and batarangs.

Here is the updated lower level of the tree. There was only one branch in the orignal, which I expanded on from a simple tail element to thicker cone connected by some SNOT bricks. To make the trunk more gnarly, I also added a witch hat in black as a sort of stump.

The upper floor saw the biggest changes. Again, I replaced the simple tail element branches with 2×2 thicker branches to give it more heft. The castle portion of the original remains untouched, but I did swap in some SNOT bricks and extra supports to the rear of the model to support the larger branches. In arranging the leaves, my goal was to make the foliage as full as possible while avoiding symmetry. I had one of the over-sized acorn hats in my minifig bin, and while the scale is totally off for these oak leaves, I flipped it upside down and hid it in the branches as a nest.

As one last easter egg, I brought in an expert at long, sinewy black tendrils to help with holding up branches.

Now the Forest Hideout is ready for the forest men to move back in. I hope they enjoy the results!  It definitely achieves the look of an ancient oak while keeping the scale and function of the main structure in place. If I continue with the build, I’ll make more drastic changes to the trunk, replacing the straight lines with more texture and moving the branches off the grid. I would also widen the base of lower the top branches for squatter proportions.

Building with antlers as leaves was a lot of fun and it’s a technique I’ll continue playing with. If you’re considering experimenting with the element, be warned that you’ll need a LOT of antlers. The model above has over 200. You’ll also want to load up on wands in whatever tree color you’re working with, as they’re essential for filling out branches thin enough to let the leaves star.

Thanks for joining me for Part 2 on building with minifig antlers. Let me know in the comments if I should continue exploring with a Part 3!

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