Dragonflies are cool. I’ve had a fascination with them ever since I got one to land on my finger about five years ago. I’m not generally fond of a blue and green color scheme, but that’s how most dragonflies look in my area, so that’s what I decided to use when I built the NUI-KAPOWAI. Incidentally, it was while I was starting to design this dragonfly that I was inspired to build the DRAGON OF FIRE . (Hey, it makes sense in my universe…)

Unlike other insects, they are completely incapable of walking. Their legs are only able to clutch whatever they land on, so I attached the legs using the same sort of joint that I used to make the tail on LEWA KINO.

The wings on a dragonfly are long, skinny, and nearly identical in size, so the thing that immediately leapt to mind was the larger wing from the INSECTOIDS line. They look much better as diaphanous wings than a hollow framework.

The hardest part of the physical design was mounting the eyes. The eyes on a real dragonfly angle up and back, and I went through close to a dozen different head configurations before I found one that put them at the right angle and allowed me to attach the mouth and body without being too large. I used the trans-blue RURU because it’s the only one that really looks like an insect’s eye, but I would much prefer to get my hands on a pair of prototype trans-blue RAU.

I considered the possibility of building an attack feature in, so that the NUI-KAPOWAI could start preying upon unsuspecting NUI-RAMA, but I decided to go for form over function, so it ended up somewhat more of a semi-articulated sculpture.

While I didn’t build in an attack mechanism, I did want to make the mouth articulated, so I settled for a pair of simple pin-jointed mandibles.