Arealight Soft Mold

[Confuzzledapples]

Hey there!

I don't post here often, but I thought you all might like an over view of the new Arealight soft mold.

First off, here’s an overview of all the new pieces in all of the colors:

There are seven new items (Top to bottom: One sided Pauldron, Shawl, Cape, Waist Cape, Two sided Pauldron, Loin cloth, and hood) in four different colors (Left to right: Reddish Brown, Black, White, and Dark Red). Now before we discuss anything, let’s go ahead and get price out of the way. Each of these pieces ranges from $1.00 USD to $2.00 USD. Here’s a quick list of prices:

• Loin Cloth : $1.00
  
• One-Sided Pauldron : $1.50
  
• Two-Sided Pauldron : $1.50
  
• Shawl : $1.50
  
• Hood : $1.50
  
• Waist Cape : $1.50
  
• Cape : $2.00
  

As I said earlier, these are soft pieces. They are made of soft plastic as opposed to rubber so the finish is much shinier than the soft pieces that Lego produces.

Comparison of Lego’s soft pieces and arealight’s soft pieces

The pieces are also quite durable and flexible. The flexibility is great since it will allow you to use the pieces and not have to worry too much about them getting in the way or impeding movement.

Stress test

So what about the colors? I personally feel the current palette of colors is a pretty good starting point. Hopefully there will be more variety in the future though. Over all they are pretty good matches.

The Dark Red is a very close match. It’s just very very slightly darker, but it still works very well.

The reddish brown is basically exactly the same. Although it sometimes seems a bit darker when compared to some pieces. But I believe that’s just my eyes.

The white is very close as well, the only difference is that it seems a bit more vibrant than the Lego white.

Black is an exact match to the regular ABS Lego pieces.

Over all, the material is fantastic. It is both flexible and durable, which means you won’t have to worry too much about it breaking. The color matches are almost perfect and beyond that, it is also soft so it cuts easily if you want to modify the pieces (even plain old scissors will cut through the pieces with ease). I, for one, am excited to see the future applications of the material. As for printing onto the pieces, I believe Arealight is currently sorting that out as I write this review.

So then, you’re probably thinking “cool plastic, what about the actual parts?”

Well~ I feel the actual parts are fantastic. We’ll start off with an old favorite: the cape.

For any long time Arealight fans, these capes are about the same design. They are, for all intents and purposes, the same. They are still the same beautifully designed piece with that flowing in the wind look that we all loved.

The cape itself is useable with a variety of hoods and head gears due to its flexibility and snugly fits on the top of the torso due to a small indentation on the underside of the cape.

Next up we have the shawl:

The shawl is another piece based off of cloth. It has the same fabric like design that the cape has and fits with a variety of headgears, just like the cape.

Just like the cape, it fits snugly over the torso.I personally think this piece has tons of potential applications and am really excited to see what the minifigure customization community uses it for. Something to note is that if you want to put a cloth piece underneath it, the cloth piece must be modified slightly.

Staying with our theme of “cloth”, next up we have the loin cloth.

Each loin cloth is double sided so that you can choice which side you want. Since the plastic is soft, if you really want, you can also cut off the side you don’t want. As for the design, Arealight did a fantastic job of showing the folds in the cloth on the more flowing side and the reverse side has a much more official look about it. This is another piece I’m quite fond of for the possible applications. The fact that you can easily overlay it onto cloth pieces easily opens so many options.

If the loin cloth is a little bit too risque for you, Arealight is also releasing a waist cape with this mold:

The waist cape is a personal favorite of mine just because of the sheer number of possibilities and the fact it fits in so many themes. And just like the regular cape, Arealight also gave it that “flowing” look. One of the things I really really love about this piece though is the fact that it is very low profile and adds very little bulk around the waist.

Our next piece is another “cloth” piece.

This hood works quite well with Arealight’s shawl and cape. It is also a bit more tight fitting than most hoods and sits closer to the face, rather than cover it.

The hood also has a small area that goes down below the minifigure’s neckline to give the illusion of it being attached closer to the bones rather than at the neck.

I’m not as big of a fan of the hood as other parts in this mold, but I still really love the cloth folds that Arealight gave it. It is also still a fantastic part.

Finally we have some pieces that aren’t usually considered “cloth”

These two parts are two different versions of the Pauldron. One is two sided and the other is one sided. As for the parts themselves, I feel it is a pretty good representation of the reference material. It may be extremely simplified, but I personally like that about it.

That wraps it up for the pieces. As for my final thoughts on this mold, I personally love it. The material it is molded in is phenomenal, the parts are beautifully designed and as a customizer, I like how easy the pieces are to modify (should you want to) and the fact that they can be used in such a broad range of themes even if you don’t want to modify them.

You can find the pieces at various arealight resellers and on the Arealight home store.

Happy customizing

-Apples

[Wardancer]

Thanks for the Info.I like the waistcape. Color range could be bigger, but its ok, we can paint.

[Confuzzledapples]

Thanks for the Info.I like the waistcape. Color range could be bigger, but its ok, we can paint.

Arealight plans on releasing more colors in the future, he's just figuring out which colors he wants to run first.

[Cloveapple]

I've seen pictures of Arealight's older, retired resin capes, and was sad that they no longer made them. This news makes everything better.

[MAB]

Another +1 for the capes. I wish there were official capes like that.

[AmperZand]

Some soft plastics become brittle and eventually crack over time. Some of my rubbery BrickForge parts have done that for example. How durable are Arealight's soft plastic parts?

[blarghiflargh]

Wow, these actually fulfill a few wants of mine. Love Arealight, definitely in for a bunch of these.

[Cloveapple]

For those in the United States, reseller AFK My Homework (on Bricklink) has the new capes, shawls, and hoods in stock. I ordered some and now I'm like a kid waiting for Christmas. (I've always ordered direct from Arealight in the past, but they are temporarily closed for a local holiday, and I was much too impatient to wait.)

[jFox]

Some of these look pretty interesting, I may have to try them out. I wonder about the cloth pieces around the legs; how much range of motion is there? With a lot of custom pieces, putting anything around a figure's legs means they'll be standing upright at all times. It looks like some of these pieces are designed with a bit of space in them to allow for motion, but still not a whole lot.

[Confuzzledapples]

Sorry about the late replies, got abit busy this past week.

@jFox, the range of motion for the leg waist capes is pretty good. They can't sit, but they can still be in a "running" pose. As for the pauldrons and such, you can't rotate the arms in a 360 motion, but you still have a pretty decent range.

@AmperZand, these are the first soft plastic pieces Arealight has released outside of the resin parts. So far I have had no issues with them and they have been pretty durable.

@Cloverapple: Yeah~ You don't know the half of it. Knowing about these things being processed like a year in advance was killer. We had been talking about bringing them back for a while, but Arealight had some issues finding the perfect material for them.

[obsidianheart]

Man. I have one of those capes from the first time around, 4 or 5 years ago? Really looking forward to grabbing some of these. I'll have to make sure I have all the colors of Breezy hair and Mullet hair while I'm at it!

[FrozenNature]

These look wonderful! I really like the sheen.