The third installment in mine and Bartu’s Amazon collaboration: Destruction.

There are many threats to the Amazon forest, one of them being small illegal gold mines that both destroys and poisons the forest by destroying the soil and dumping mercury waste. This build portrays such a mine.

This is a more somber theme than the previous two, as is the intention. Colors are more muted, with more olive and dark green. The dark tan ground is mostly exposed with vegetation struggling.

The whole setup is very makeshift and temporary, and nothing here is made to last. People are here to get what they can and then move on, giving no care to what state they leave things in. I tried to portray this by making things rather messy and cluttered.

One of the things I was pondering for a while was the inclusion of minifigs in the build. I’ve had many interesting conversation with many of you on whether it’s wise to include them or not. It was important for the build that the issues were not trivialised by making it childish or less natural. With a medium that is often seen as a toy this can sometimes be tricky. For this purpose I went with flesh heads rather than yellow ones, and made sure to avoid any polarising facial expressions, like the standard “bad guy” faces.

Though certainly not innocent, the workers are not the main culprits in this, but rather other people who are far away from what is actually happening, bear the biggest blame. Often these people who are the main cause of this are not even found in South America, but may reside in Europe, Asia or North America, and this was something that was unfortunately not possible to portray in this build.

When it comes to Lego techniques, much of the focus here was on the man-made parts, which I don’t build that often. The nature is not really something new, but I do like the staggered wedge plates technique for a varied incline.

Hope you like the build, and that you feel this issue has been properly portrayed.