customminifig.co.uk

(Custom Minifigs by Legohaulic)

Look at all these custom minifigs made of offical lego parts, this shows how much fun you can have with the new space police three minifigs. My favorite must be the punisher, now you can make a punisher minifig with offical lego parts, lovely! The yellow minifig in the background is photoshopped, just so you know.

(by Kurasaybo)

A very inpressive pic of a bunch of custom minifigs, all by one man, this must have taken ages. This is a good idea, take 18 of  the new power miners minifigures, paint them , add some custom accesories and you have your own little custom army. This is only a WIP, they will probaly have a bunch of weapons in the finish, it’s only 75% now, can’t wait to see 100%.

(image by unknown)

check out this custom minifig mod idea, by using the single horn lego piece in the torso of the minifig, you can attach robot or skeletor minifig arms to a normal minifig torso, this would be great for those of you looking to creat zombies or terminator cyborgs! It looks pretty easy and darn effective!

(how to make a lego wood cylinder by 2muchcaffeine)

If you’re making Lego custom minifigs, you’ll probably be wanting to make vignettes of these custom minifigs as well, and this is something customminifig.co.uk will be considering covering soon. In the mean time heres a useful tip to make cylinders from a Lego rail and several smooth plates. Very simple but looks great, and could be altered for all sorts of things, such as the lining on a dock by the ships.

Whilst for most of use who make custom minifigs the dream would be either Lego actually make military collections, or we can get our hands on some durable minifigs with custom decals, the reality is getting decent military themed minifigs is quite difficult, you need to really plan out what you want to acheive, since the Indiana Jones collection does have some Lego minifigs with a Military theme, and StarWars has a whole range of storm troopers, its not so difficult for sci-fi or WWII custom minifig makers. But if you’re hopeing to make something modern, get ready to do some serious hunting.

so Lets take a look a the themes that work for military vignettes:

Cowboys – Lego Cowboy theme

Knights and castles – Lego theme

WWII – Indiana Jones Russian and German soldier minifigs

Modern – Dino Attack (these are now out of production so you’re going to need to source these), Power Miners Lego themes.

Sci-fi – Lego Starwars theme.

You’ll find that in order to build up a large army of minifigs, you’ll either need to buy loads of sets of Lego, leaving you with plenty of potentially useless spare parts and costing you an arm and a leg, or, you’ll need to search on the second hand Lego community to find individual parts, in this instance you’ll need to potentially  buy the minifig in seperate parts, ie legs seperate from arms, torso seperate from head etc, this can add to the cost, but you’ll be able to get exactly what you need.

In other instances you might have designed a custom decal for your Lego minifigs, your best bet here is to source the lego minifig whos plastic is as close to the base colour you want, then, using brasso remove the existing decal and apply your own one instead, this might take longer and costa bit, but the results are supurb.

Whilst Lego minifigs come in all sorts of colours, if you want to add your own decals you have two choices, one, is to use stickers which is pretty straight forwards and keeps the existing lego decal on the minifigs.

The better, or at least more professional looking way, is to use water slide decals, however because most Lego minifigs now have decals printed on their torsos, you’ll need to first remove this.

Here’s how to remove decals from a Lego minifig:

What you’ll need:

1. Brasso
2. water
3. cloth – eg the type you use to clean glasses with
4. Q tip
5. tooth pick.
6. soap

Brasso is a Micro abrasive cleaner, usually used to polish silver, so the usual precautions apply, make sure you read the instructions before using it on your minifigs, and make sure you clean your minifigs afterwards.

1. use a small quantity of Brasso (about the size of a coin) on to your paper towel or cloth.
2. Rub Lego element or minifig part vigorously against cloth containing the Brasso.  Apply more
Brasso if necessary.  Removing the printing from a torso should take 15 seconds to 1 minute depending on how much elbow grease one uses.
3. Once the original print has been removed, wash the piece with soap and water, making sure to
remove any residual Brasso, and then allow the part to dry.
4. smaller parts us can use a toth pick or qtip to apply the brasso.

If you’ve ever wanted to know jsut how jasbrick come up and creates his Brickviet custom minifigs, you are in for a surprise. This image is the first page of Jasbricks custom minifig manual to how to make custom Lego minifig Brickviet troopers.

You can see Jasbrick’s Brickviet custom minifigs here.

Hazel Fantasy is one of the most respected and innovative custom minifig sculptors in the Lego community, his work has gains noteriety with in custom minifig circles for his innovation and attention to detail, personally I’m a massive fan, especially as his work is purist and involve lots of sculpting, sanding and drilling, it’s more like modelling than minifig customization, but thats the point behind Hazel Fantasy’s work, its an art, its not bound by rules or strict guidelines, its fun, innovative and above all, cool.

So, after weeks of trying to hunt down the elusive Hazel Fantasy not just to do an interview for custom minifig, but also to get ahold of some of the brilliant custom minifig accessories he’s produced, in particular his Gears of War 2 stuff (you can see what else I wrote about these here and here), I’m finally managed to find out where you can get some of Hazels custom minifig accessories (you can get then at AMazing Armory) AND we got an exclusive interview with Hazel Fantasy!

Here are some of the Links relating to Hazel Fantasy and his custom minifig accessories:

Hazel Fantasy on Flickr

Hazel Fantasy on Brickshelf

AMazing Armory on Flickr

AMazing Armory on Bricklink

Here is the unedited interview (you have to forgive some of the responses, but I’d rather present something unaltered)

1. Hi Hazel, I’m a really big fan of your work and you’ve made a really big name for yourself as one of the greats in Lego Minifig customization, ow did you first get in to Lego minifig customization?

Answer :
In lego Lego Minifig , is not my first time , scene 2004 i have already start my
custom in LEGO minifigs , i remember my first custom is star wars Series.
At that time, only wanted to think of what to do, did not expect, it is becoming my job now, haha .

2. I love the custom GOW2 armour and weapons you made, and I understand these were some of the most well publicised pieces you made, how long did it take you to make them and how did you transfer the design from the game into Lego scale?

Answer:
well.. i remember when i was stop build lego moc at 7 years before , i have work
is taiwan doing my design works ,Figures works 12″, 3.5″ ,guns parts too , that’s start me up thinking how to custom lego minifigs gears or something for they can use in , you know , lego.com did have much guns style ,armor ..even a hans mobil phone..haha .. i addiction in  TV game , PS3 ,Xbox ,PSP too ,like all the characters in game，When I started playing my favorite TV game, I want to have income in the hands of characters…
So i custom it ,Sometimes done when the 12 “may be too much , I found a lego size to begin!

3. I’ve seen some of your other work, in particular you Aliens MOCs and you samurai MOCs, how do you come up with ideas and plan out your MOCs? Is it just a case of having an idea and making it or is there a long planning process?

Answer:
Oh . about samurai MOCs , is helping my friends to create them out ,they always using lego minifigs to create custom lego story , & i helping them to create some special,unique minifigs just for their own story `~~
& about  Aliens MOCs ,yes ~ that a long planning process ,for 2 years about ,
i always check out brickshelf.com at some Aliens fan’s gallery , very nice !!
so we want to create a Aliens video in lego scale , haha!
For Details situation is still planning now,until when those moc in lego are all finish ~

4. I understand you are from Japan/Hong Kong (i’m also from Hong Kong), what is the Lego scene like out there?

Answer:
That’s happy to hear that !  (i’m also from Hong Kong) <—[笑]
i just work’n in japan work shop ~ oh HK lego scene is very good in here !
when , whatever lego.com got new set , lego fan’s becoming crazy for that !!
lego never die !!!!

5. what sort of tools and material do you use for your prototypes and how do you transform these into mass production pieces?

Answer:
I have been using silicone molds and then vacuum-like pieces of copy machines. Each mold can be replicated 30-60 pieces, materials include: ABS, PU, transparent PU, Soft PU.Before me and my friends at their own expense, two controllers,2D CAD or 3D graphics establish a solid model.3D or 2D CAD archives archives, and then the use of rapid prototyping machine manufacturer ABS module was first introduced, after the completion of the first run after the deal can be polished, the fuel injectors. Finalization of the model shape.
About mass production pieces , now i have just create my own custom works then [AMazing armory] put these into mass production,because time & of the limited detail. Size limited … not the volume of production, can be used only for processing in me ..now they team handle that all !

6. Whats your favorite Lego series?

Answer:
by the numbers …haha ~!!  Star Wars ,Pirates ,Rock Riders ,Racer

7. If Lego could create one thing for you, what would it be?

Answer:
Build a real House for myself `~ even Big Pirates ship , wish my dreams come true ~~~

8. Do you have any advice for beginners going into Lego minifig customization? Is there anything that you have learnt about the Lego customization community?

Answer:
Um .thinking , planning ,make a prototypes first before going into Lego minifig customization.If advice for beginners ,to carry out preliminary planning and preparation must be try & try many time in custom ,enjoyable learning experience,and explore the interest of custom,custom more effective use of design,According to the planned implementation of the program, the implementation of concrete progress, and regularly review the progress of the effectiveness of, in case of any early completion, will increase the target, if there is a lag, we must immediately work to increase the content of the amendment and the feasibility of the project too..~!
As long as they can do a good job in setting goals for themselves, for their own time and space planning for their commitment to work hard in practice and accountable for their own plan to guarantee its performance, enhance their knowledge in this field, successful and creative experience, this down, you challenging the work of [Custom] will be the most meaningful ! :]

9. Do you have any new and exciting products that we can all wait for? Any new upcoming projects that will be out soon?

Answer:
Um ..new and exciting products .??
Now i just finish all of my G.O.W minifigs ..starting up my Final Fantasy characters , next will be [ The Lord of the Rings ]

Thank you for this interview !!
keep in touch ~
Happy New Years to all lego fan’s

Hazel Fantasy

So there you have it the first ever exclusive interview with the master of minifig customization – Hazel Fantasy

 

(lego brick timeline by unknown)

This wonderful timeline tracks the progression of Lego from its initial inception in 1932 as a Business concept to the 1958 invention of the Lego brick with it unique and patented Stud and Tube coupling system. Along the way Is the 1978 invention of the first Lego Minifig which eventually spawned the custom minifig movement and the 1999 launch of the Lego Star Wars range, possibly one of the most successful Lego ranges.

Making Lego is fun, and building custom minifigs is great, but to truly harness the power of Lego, more sophisticated Lego building techniques need to be used. These techniques allow Lego builders to create far more dynamic and interesting models, and some of these Lego building techniques related to custom minifigs as well. Here’s a few useful Links relating to advanced Lego building techniques.

• Didier Enjary’s Unofficial LEGO Advanced Building Techniques Guide (click Télécharger document)
• Flickr LEGO techniques pool
• LEGO Techniques library
• ILTCO library (contains links to a number of train specific and more general technical guides)