43 replies to this topic

[DarkKnight7]

Has anyone had Christo do custom printing for them? I live in the U. S. and would consider it for a few designs that are sellable but, I'd like to hear others experiences using Christo for his services. Any info would be greatly appreciated!

[Praiter Yed]

nemesis4670, on 16 June 2012 - 05:42 AM, said:

I don't know if this is any help with the guys who have knowledge on this subject but Christo told me that he has to create a printing press for every unique design.  So he's claiming even if it's multiple LEGO heads if they all have a different design printed on them he needs to make a separate printing press and that each press holds about 50 parts.

If this sounds familiar to you and you can better narrow down what he's using that would be cool.

That doesn't quite make sense, a 'printing press' would be the actual print machine. Assuming Christo is using a pad printer and that the process is similar to screen print, I would guess that what he has to do is create a new pad for each colour he has to print (you would create a 'screen' for each colour in screen printing) and that his jig holds 50 parts. Therefore, printing black only, just needs one new pad - printing 3 colours, needs 3 new pads, 1 for each colour and so on...

Edit: Again making a big assumption on how pad printing works; sounds like a pad, rather than printing 50 items at once, prints one-at-a-time and that's why he would need a new pad for each individual design.

Edited by Praiter Yed, 14 July 2012 - 11:32 PM.

[Bilbo Baggins]

The more I think about it the more possible it looks, you can sell printed minifigs and in long terms you will gain back your money, for example this guy Christo is selling a Flash minifig for $100

[Spider-Man]

He is an exception though I think. His work is absolutely incredible! Also his prices are based on consumer want considering it is all on the Ebay bidders. His last Flash sold for over $250!!

[Darthkostis]

nemesis4670, on 29 May 2012 - 11:11 PM, said:

But here's some information for you guys... Christo actually offers custom printing services.  You send him the parts and the design you want printed and he sends them back.  He said that it's 50 cents per color per print.  But that it'll be more expensive if you don't buy an entire jigs worth of printed parts.  Meaning if you just want a single head printed it'll be more expensive per part.  

Maybe we can all chip in and get a bunch of our stuff made?  I sent him an e-mail back asking how many minifigures fit in a jig so I know how many to buy to keep the 50 cent price.  But it looks like if you wanted a simple minifigure with 2-3 colors it would be around $2 per minifig.   So if a jig holds 50 minifigs you're looking at $100 which is definitely a GOOD deal.

But he's extremely hard to get a hold of for obvious reasons and he's all the way in South Africa.  It took about 2 weeks to get the minifigs I bought from him.  So if you don't mind waiting 2 weeks and have $100 to spare you could probably get like 50 custom printed minifigs from him.   Not bad.

I didn't get this last part (i'm new here).So if i send him the parts he can print for me 50 figures (head,torso,legs,arms) from whatever licence i want for only 100$?

[Henchmen4Hire]

That 50 custom figs for $100 sounds too good to be true, but what an amazing deal if it is! I wouldn't mind designing a bunch of torsos and exchanging the designs for free quality prints instead though.

$50 for just one printed minifig is insanity, no other way to put it. I used to sculpt and paint entire quality custom action figures and statues and would be lucky to get $50 lol. Making custom minifigures or action figures of popular/trendy characters is where all the money is. A quality Creeper or Darkhawk custom will get you like $20 bucks if you're lucky, but make a quality Black Widow custom and it's pretty much a guaranteed $70+ every time.

You never have to worry about copyrights. Pretty much every customizer has made at least a million Wolverine and Batman customs to sell, and publicly displayed their work, and they never get bothered by the companies.

Totally agree with your statement about never getting replies. I tried it too and didn't get anywhere, I guess they're just sick of answering the same question over and over, and why would they help out potential competition anyway, right?

I feel like waiting until the printing technology gets minituarized and easily affordable by hobbyists before diving into it, but I'm sure by then either it wouldn't be profitable anymore, I won't give a crap about LEGO, or I'll be dead. If I had a quality printer right now and if it were financially feasible, I would give everyone a free torso print just so they could see first-hand the quality of the print (have them pay all shipping charges of course). Hopefully that would get them hooked and would gladly pay for more, as well as tell their friends.

Hell, if I had a bunch of money to throw away I would just print free stuff for everyone, maybe ask them to donate some money to charity or whatever but not require it. I believe every kid and AFOL out there should have at least one kickass custom minifig they absolutely love without having to pay $50 for it (hey, it's great publicity! haha).

Anyway, good luck with this venture!

Edited by DrNightmare, 10 September 2012 - 10:09 AM.

[Tim13]

These are good ideas, but how many of you a really going to go through with it. I'm 1/3rd done saving up for one of these printers. Like Christo, I don't want to say the one I will be using. I have about 40 designs right now that I'm waiting for the printer on. I believe in waterslide decals but definitely not paper or paint. I only like to do high quality things for designs ,so this is the only option for me.

The only problem with pd printing is that each part gets a new design. Let's take Red Robin for example. You have to stamp the black curved part on his torso first. Then you do the abs. then the harness. With all this the machine can miss. In printing, you can just screen one image over and have an exact copy of how you intended it to be. The pad thing is why you see LEGO faces with aligned lips but thou mouth line is off. Also if any of you saw the BrickQueen Video of Hulk, you will see that the face is not center.

[Omicron]

Bilbo Baggins, on 10 September 2012 - 12:51 AM, said:

The more I think about it the more possible it looks, you can sell printed minifigs and in long terms you will gain back your money, for example this guy Christo is selling a Flash minifig for $100

He's not selling it for a $100. The auction bid is going for that amount ATM. Ideally he would sell the fig for $30 dollars, which is cheap given the fact the fig printing is high quality as Lego's, and the helmet is custom made and casted by him.

-Omi

[Mutemonster]

Brand new to this  fourum this is allso my first post
Iv been obsessed with superheroes for as long as I remember, I collected and customised egalmoss lead superhero. Figurines for years and made some
Nice custom figurines.
Iv recently got obsessed with  lego iv bought most of the DC and Marvel sets and collected loads of the mini figs in blind packs my thirst has not been quenched as the
Figs that can be bought are so limiting. So iv been looking in to how to get hold of quality mini figs of the comics I love.

Lego have licences for both DC  and Marvel I'm hoping they will relice blind packs like they did with mega blocks to cover the characters that may be a littel more obscure
Or won't get a set dedicated to them but there will always be ones never Made!

But I will never get hellboy figs or judge Dread as carnt see lego seeing the licence attractive enough

ID Love a good custom Dread mini figurine that is of the same quality as that green lantern with a Anderson and judge death fig to accompany them and plus
So if you guys can machine a good dread costume and helmet.

Iv done some plastic moulding in the past so may try and custom make the helmet and shoulder pads that give dread that look but that's gonna be a while in the future
As I'd have to set up a work space again.

[Spider-Man]

Welcome to Eurobricks! It's nice to see another fan of comics on the forum   Sadly thought this thread is not for requesting people to machine print things for you. The closest we have to that is that you can request decals in the Decal Request thread, and if another member has time and thinks it's doable will post back there when they have finished it!  Again welcome to the forum!

[Mutemonster]

And you happen to be my favourite hero of all mr Spider-Man
Love the scarlet spider and the FF Spider-Man btw

Cheers yer found this thread as I'm particularly interested in machine print mini figurines.after reading the posts on hear I know I won't bet setting up with a printer any time soon
But I do have skills so hoping I may be able to trade my way to getting  a decent dred figure so was just really wanting to know how far the guy had got with his printing ;)

[Spider-Man]

Mutemonster, on 01 October 2012 - 07:59 PM, said:

But I do have skills so hoping I may be able to trade my way to getting  a decent dred figure so was just really wanting to know how far the guy had got with his printing ;)

Ah well there are a few places on the internet that you can send art and pieces to that will print them for you, however it is incredibly expensive! Good luck with what ever you plan to do and I hope it works out for you!  

[Tim13]

Praiter Yed, on 31 May 2012 - 11:47 PM, said:

I don't own any Christo customs but I have admired them from afar. Given what you say about the quality of them I would guess that they are pad printed. I still stand by what I said earlier in this thread, that digital flat-bed printers are the most accessible to customisers (although still prohibitive on cost), but if you aim to get a similar quality to Christo I don't think a digital flat-bed printer is going to achieve that - I suppose you'd need to get a trial print from the suppliers prior to committing to buy.

With regards to design, if you intend to do the design work yourself that's ideal, but I suppose if you see anything you like by other customisers it could be worth making a freelance/one-off production deal with them. I reckon most customisers would be up for seeing their designs machine printed and earning a bit of cash on the side.

I believe you're mistaken. the flatbeds are actually better than the pad's Christo's prints will look like anyone elses prints because they are small(excluding low quality printers). the smaller an image the better the quality. that's why cropped images start to look bad ; most things will perform like Christo's except for the low quality pads. The flatbeds use the ink that's needed. If you look closely at pad prints you can see the thickness of lines varies and is sometimes smudged. To see the difference in quality(not saying anything is bad or good no opinions) look at Chrito's work and eclipsexgraphics work. Not putting anyone/thing down, just stating the facts of the printers.

Edited by Tim13, 03 October 2012 - 02:45 AM.

[nemesis4670]

I can't say how but I got a Custom Flash for free in exchange for a favor.  It's seriously amazing and that custom helmet just blows my mind.  If you guys want more detailed photos I took some as well as a few to show off my collection of 100% machine printed minifigures.  All of them are either official LEGO or high quality machine printed.  No decals in the bunch.  Then the last photo is one of my new cabinets I'm filling (I have 3 full of minifigures) which has star wars LEGO and some customs made with decals which I will hopefully have as machine printed instead at some point.  Enjoy!






LEGO & MACHINE PRINTED COLLECTION



HERE ARE SOME LEGO & CUSTOMS WITH DECALS (hopefully will have machine printed versions soon)

[LuxorV]

nemesis4670, could you please reduce the pics size to 800 pixels maximum, as per our Member Guidelines? Thank you.

[commodore_legolas]

What was the favor?! Very nice minifig set up. I keep meaning to make something like that, but I havent got around to it.

[DarkKnight7]

Wow! You got one heck of a collection there! Especially of Superheroes...shouldn't be hard for you to come up with a new Superheroes Avatar for the contest ;P

[nemesis4670]

commodore_legolas, on 05 November 2012 - 05:03 PM, said:

What was the favor?! Very nice minifig set up. I keep meaning to make something like that, but I havent got around to it.

He made a mistake on something and needed me to help him with a few shipments.  Something along those lines.  As a thank you he hooked me up with a free one.  Coolest part is that minifig now goes for about $300 on eBay because of the custom made helmet.

My collection of super heroes is even bigger now.    About another 15 extremely awesome minifigs.  I have total OCD when it comes to these things.  No other LEGO theme really intriguies me as much as the DC and Marvel ones do simply because I was a huge comic book geek as a kid first and foremost.   LEGO came second.

The coolest part is that I just got the official 2013 DC Universe Minifigures and the machine printed ones from Christo actually look BETTER than the official LEGO.  For instance Bane,  Aquaman, and Comissioner Gordon are way more detailed and have sharper/higher quality printing.  Christo is seriously a master of his craft and I highly recommend his work.

LuxorV, on 05 November 2012 - 08:41 AM, said:

nemesis4670, could you please reduce the pics size to 800 pixels maximum, as per our Member Guidelines? Thank you.

Hey sorry...  but may I suggest something?  They make many mods for forum scripts like this that will auto-size photos down to whatever pixels you want.  When someone posts an image over 800 pixels it would resize it down to 800 (or whatever you want) and then when a user clicks on it you can have it either expand to the full size,  open in a new window full size,  or create a pop up in full size.

Much easier than members having to constantly resize every image especially if it's one that's not ours and is hosted on another site.  I'm sure a lot of instances pop up where you want to just paste an image from another site and it becomes tedious to have to download it, resize it, and then re-upload it elsewhere just to share it.

They also make mods that implement a tinypic or imgshack upload tool right into the post menu page.  That way you can upload an image and select a resize option and it will even produce a proper BBC code for the forum with the reduced image.

Just some suggestions to make this place better.

Edited by nemesis4670, 31 December 2012 - 08:13 PM.

[LEGODesigner Metro]

Hello i'm new in this thread. Let me introduce my self. I'm LEGODesigner Metro. Maybe some of you has already found me in flickr. I just have to say Christo's is better than LEGO itself. And i'm planning to buy his gorgeous Flash figure Next month. But anyway this is a honor for me to join here Thanks !!