Minfigures: When is there too much detail?

[chris_austin]

Could be a marketing ploy to jack up the price on sets. Extra printing/pieces and they can raise the price

Really? It would cost them money to include an extra piece so the profit gained by adding that piece would be minimal or even negligibile.

I find the waist printing on female minifig to be completely useless. From any angle, even straight on and fairly close-up, it still looks like a normal minifig body, just with a curved 'mark' down either side! I don't dislike it to the point of not using it because you can see past it if you try hard enough but it just seems like redundant printing to me.

Edited January 30, 2011 by chris_austin

[Aanchir]

In my opinion, there's a certain amount of detail that's essential to any modern-day minifigure. That includes a shine/sparkle in the eyes and eyebrows of some sort. I'm not much of a traditionalist when it comes to LEGO minifigures and am a big fan of the collectible minifigures with their very unique details.

There are things I often consider too much detail, though. For instance, I have never been fond of minifigures with colored eyes (besides non-human figs like the trolls in Fantasy-Era Castle). I have no problems with the level of detail in Clone Wars or Exo-Force figs either, but naturally I would not accept this level of detail alongside any standard minifigures. In fact, I rarely mix figs with different levels of facial detail, whether it be mixing realistic skin tones with yellow-skinned figs or mixing minifigs with sparkly eyes and those without. I'm very grateful that when the Max minifigure was finally released, he was re-imagined with simpler eyes rather than the awkward manga-ish eyes of his original appearance (I have a great respect for more detailed eyes, but not on a "regular" minifigure).

As far as non-facial detail is concerned, I also tend to prefer a certain amount of detail, but never too much. I'd love a different hairpiece for the sigfig in my avatar, as the "classic" hairpiece often looks awkward alongside hair with more detail, like hte collectible minifigure skateboarder or surfer's hair. But I'm not averse to using the classic male hairpiece. With the torso, I'm fine with the female torsos being printed to imply a more feminine shape, but I never consider this essential. Arealight's custom "female" torsos are nice, but I don't think they'd ever be necessary for official minifigures and in fact I'd rather keep the minifigure torso fairly generic.

I'm totally OK with multi-surface printing, and have no problem with it in most cases. But ultra-realistic shading on any print is a no-go on a regular minifigure. I'm fine if you want your scantily-clad figs to have simple details to their physique, but they should maintain the simple screen-printed or cel-shaded look that is traditional for minifigures, with a limited number of colors. Thankfully, this seems to be pursued on most minifigures not just for aesthetic reasons but also for cost reasons. You can count the colors on any one printing surface of most minifigures on one hand.

Overall, I'm fairly tolerant of diversity in minifigure designs, but that doesn't mean I don't have preferences.

[Runamuck]

I have seen that some people have talked about prints to indicate "curves".

Personally I don't mind it, and I think that if you can use lines on the torso to simulate being fat (like the sumo wrestler or the town chef) you can also use line to indicate that the figure is thin. My brother also says that some licensed figures would look kind of strange without the "curves".