Monthly Archives: December 2008

Following on from the overview of how to customize lego minifigs found here Lets go into more concise detail on how to source and find specific elements for a custom minifig. The reason we are focusing on this rather than the concept and design stages is because this part of the process is one which is not reliant on ideas.

Lego has designed hundreds of thousands of different sets, minifigs and decals, however there are also elements that Lego do not produce, publicly Lego have stated for example that you cannot get Lego weapons from Lego, as such you would have to rely on external companies like BrickArms for these.

In order to source Lego parts for your custom minifig, you need to have you idea clear. First you want to break down your custom minifig design in to the individual body parts and accessories. You can find out more about the make up of the minifig here

To save you a degree of time this site has a cool feature that allows you to structure your minifig based on the different combination of elements, its certainly not exhaustive of the entire range of Lego minifigs out there but its pretty close. Additionally other sites such as Brick Link and The Lego pick a Brick and my personal favorite Find my Brick are all great places to source individual Custom minifig torso, arm and leg parts. You can find a full list of custom minifig product suppliers here. You have to get creative here, for example for modern military custom minifigs, Lego do not produce a torso that represents this, however the minfigs from the Dino Attack collection are very SWAT team-esque and could be used as a substitute, but the again the Dino Attack Lego minifigs are no longer made by Lego so you’d either have to find them second hand or produce your own decals for your custom minifig.

As a result of changing Lego stock in the brand new and second hand market as well as the ever increasing demand for certain minifigs, when creating large quantities of custom minifigs, it may cost a lot, or you may have to wait for prolonged periods of time for the right minifig components to appear on the market. In these instances you may well find it easier to use flat colour minifigs and create your own decals, however event these flat colour torsos may be in short supply as well, so you have to be reasonably prepared to removed existing decals, or change the colour template or in extreme circumstances create your own casts and mould your own minifigs from scratch. Regardless of what you do in this context, sourcing the right minifig components can be the longest and most frustrating part of minifig customization, but it can also be very rewarding, just remember your Lego invading army that’s the light at the end of the tunnel.

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