I love watching baby pandas play together — they are so carefree and adorable, and remind me of the playfulness of human babies.  I wanted to capture this aspect of their personalities in this sculpture.

The sculpture features five life-size baby pandas playing and climbing logs, rocks (and each other!)  The entire sculpture measures over 8 feet long and took 9 months to design and construct.

Building it

This sculpture took over 9 months to design and construct by my assistants Brett, Geoffrey, Valerie, and Luis.

We started by watching lots of videos of Pandas playing together, and made conceptual design sketches like this one that created the overall feel of the sculpture:

Brett’s conceptual design

Luis, Geoffrey, and Valerie spent a lot of time designing the faces and expressions.  Each individual bear has its own expression, pose, and personality.

Various eyeball prototypes built with tires, radar dishes, and other circular LEGO elements