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[Mister Phes]

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Is it OK to mix dark skinned mini-figures with yellow mini-figures?
Or should the dark skinned only be seen amongst with flesh tones?

See our new Dark Skinned mini-figure Index

[SlyOwl]

Quote

Is it OK to mix dark skinned mini-figures with yellow mini-figures?
Or should the dark skinned only be seen amongst with flesh tones?

Very good question. TLC did in Cloud City, with Lando. But somehow it didn't look quite right...
However, as TLC don't do many "medium" dark-skinned minifigs (e.g. Chinese, Japanese, mixed race), it is difficult to get a broad spectrum of colours in a crew. Therefore, a dark-skinned minifig would stand out as much in a fleshie crew as a yellow one.
So maybe. Yellows have the advantage of many different expressions (inc. angry+scared) and oriental/native ones too. But fleshies look more realistic when used with dark-skinned figures.

I'm thinking that a crew member like the black helmsman from POTC1 would be awesome! A similar character - Anaconda - also features in Brian Jacques' book The Angel's Command...

[Sandy]

Mister Phes, on Jul 16 2008, 11:59 PM, said:

Is it OK to mix dark skinned mini-figures with yellow mini-figures?
Or should the dark skinned only be seen amongst with flesh tones?

I would use them, if only I had them. As a matter of fact, I'm such a heretic that I would use all skin tones together if I needed to get multiple nationalities together. I think the BrickTestament is a great example of this.

[Mister Phes]

I've decided my question can become the July poll topic so you'll find the
See our new Dark Skinned mini-figure Index is where the original discussion took place.

[Siegfried]

No. Using yellow and only yellow allows you to delude yourself that minifigs are either all the same or whatever you want.... as opposed them all being white-ies. Cloud City was a huge mistake on LEGOs behalf; I bet they got letters galore over that one...

You can however get away with it easier in a made-up space setting; you can say that they are the "aliens"!

[Svelte]

I agree with Sinner - if you have other colours, yellow becomes 'white' by default. That would be fine if there was an equal mix of multi-coloured heads in production, but 99.9% of non-licensed figs are yellow. Any other fig then becomes a token representative of some other group. Not the message of equality that TLG probably wants to promote.

[Sandy]

svelte_corps, on Jul 18 2008, 01:17 PM, said:

I agree with Sinner - if you have other colours, yellow becomes 'white' by default. That would be fine if there was an equal mix of multi-coloured heads in production, but 99.9% of non-licensed figs are yellow. Any other fig then becomes a token representative of some other group. Not the message of equality that TLG probably wants to promote.

But it's a MOC, not an official statement from The Lego Group. If Captain_CreamFields wants a dark-skinned character to his creation, of course he should use a dark-skinned minifig instead of a yellow one. That way anybody can tell the difference. You guys, on the other hand, make it sound like a variety of skin colors is a bad thing.

Anyway, you can ask for opinions, Captain_CreamFields, but ultimately it's your decision. Whatever you decide, I don't think anybody will put your head on a chopping block for it.

Edit: Sorry, name confusion!

This post has been edited by Sandy: 18 July 2008 - 11:35 AM

[Mister Phes]

Errrr... It's supposed to be the monthly poll topic, not a personalised question to assist me with my MOCing... I'm certainly not going to be building anything with tanned mini-figures in the near future.

[Captain Blue Hair]

In my opinion one can make out of lego what ever he or she wants.
I use dark minifigs next to my yellow ones, and i think it looks pretty cool!
I also like the new fleshies, but they are to little present and not many different ones are available, so they can never replace my 500 yellow ones.....

[Sandy]

Mister Phes, on Jul 18 2008, 02:26 PM, said:

Errrr... It's supposed to be the monthly poll topic, not a personalised question to assist me with my MOCing... I'm certainly not going to be building anything with tanned mini-figures in the near future.

Oh, sorry! I didn't realize that the original topic was made my another member!

But that's where this topic all started, really. Captain_CreamFields made a topic about diversifying the minifigs in his pirate crew. So that's what I was referring to.

[Siegfried]

Sandy, on Jul 18 2008, 08:22 PM, said:

You guys, on the other hand, make it sound like a variety of skin colors is a bad thing.

Not at all; in fact quite the reverse. I like the idea that, for example, an asian can see yellow minifigs as asian if he wants too, or a black (with a good imagination ) could do the same. Afterall, no humans have skin that yellow; LEGO just chose that colour as out of their pallette at the time it was the best neutral choice. To think otherwise brands LEGO as being racist... when I don't think they were. I think they were just leaving things to the childs imagination... and trying to save on excess colours.

Why do minifigs need to be of any particular skin colour anyway? They aren't very realistic copies of humans anyway so why make them skin accurate? Is skin colour that big a deal? I don't think so.

But I'm just giving an opinion, as asked. You don't have to agree with me.

Interestingly, as my wife reminded me of, LEGO have really confused the issue with Duplo.

[Captain Blue Hair]

Pretty strange to see flesh and dark skinned figs in that Duplo set, as far as i know the firebrigade aint a licensed theme...

[skelliesgang]

SlyOwl, on Jul 16 2008, 05:55 PM, said:

However, as TLC don't do many "medium" dark-skinned minifigs (e.g. Chinese, Japanese, mixed race), it is difficult to get a broad spectrum of colours in a crew.

just FYI, on the ethnicity "colour scale" yellow is equated to asians. therefore, all yellow minifigs are already asian by default. i suppose that is why the fleshies emerged to assuage the "white" population.

[Siegfried]

skelliesgang, on Jul 18 2008, 09:59 PM, said:

just FYI, on the ethnicity "colour scale" yellow is equated to asians. therefore, all yellow minifigs are already asian by default. i suppose that is why the fleshies emerged to assuage the "white" population.

True, but as I said, no ones skin is that yellow. When you consider the colours LEGO had to choose from at the time (white, black, red, yellow, blue and green... I think), yellow was the best choice.

Captain green hair, on Jul 18 2008, 09:59 PM, said:

Pretty strange to see flesh and dark skinned figs in that Duplo set, as far as i know the firebrigade aint a licensed theme...

My thoughts exactly. Looking at older sets that my kids have, they have been doing it for a while. They also have men with asian looking eyes.

[Sir Dano]

The Simpsons mix dark skinned with yellow.
Thus, I voted yes.

Now if only TLG would make some dark-skinned female heads...

This post has been edited by sir dano: 18 July 2008 - 01:33 PM