Diorama #8

After three months of work, in November 2017 we finished and installed Diorama #8 in the shop front of the Cucubau Store in Baia Mare.

The project requested by the store was to replicate as much as possible the sets and scenes of the recently released The LEGO Ninjago Movie. After watching the movie at the cinema, I chose to create an Asian city with an area of towering apartment buildings, a traditional Asian port, a jungle area, and a suspension bridge to a castle in the mountains. This was the path that the characters had to take in the course of the movie.

Diorama #8 also entailed a premiere, because I shared the shop front with Horea Nascu, a LEGO train enthusiast, who built a spiral of world record height for the trains crossing Ninjago City.

The 22-level / 2.80-meter-high train spiral enjoyed international success, so much that the renowned LEGO train vlogger, Bananenbuurman came from the Netherlands to Baia Mare exclusively to make a series of videos with it.

Ninjago City comprises 6 apartment buildings of various shapes and heights (the highest having 25 levels). One of these was destroyed on several floors during the fight between the Ninjago heroes and the forces of Garmadon. A huge functional slide for LEGO minifigures descends from the roof of the blue apartment building to a pool.

A suspended train track passes between the apartment buildings and the jungle section.

At the time of creating the diorama, LEGO had not yet released its series of sets with all the villains of the movie, so I mainly used robots, dragons, and the heroes’ aircraft.

The docks of Ninjago City are full of scenes from Asian daily life.

Official LEGO sets unmodified / partly modified:
3221, 30379, 30421, 30426,30427, 30428, 40170, 60134, 70606, 70607, 70608, 70609, 70611, 70612, 70614, 70615, 70617, 70618, 70629.

Motorized train: Official LEGO sets 7938 and 60051.