The Three Head Problem

[The_Cook]

Apologies to the TL:DR mob who just want to look at pretty pictures this is a wordy post; go knock yourself out looking at pictures in the GOH sub-forum. Those of you that are still here; read on...

I've been collecting a Fantasy Era Troll army for a few years now; it's origins can be traced in the Troll Town series of posts. Trolls however have a problem, The Three Head Problem, there are only three Sand Green Troll heads available.

• : King/Captain
  
• : Warrior
  
• : Queen
  

There is an equally limited number of torsos

• : Reddish-Brown
  
• : Drak Bluish Grey
  

There are three helmets, and either nothing, shoulder pads or a cape. At best this is 3 x 2 x 3 x 3 = 54 possible combinations; although availability of the King and Queen heads reduces that to nearer 36. Additionally all of the combinations are of a martial nature and I'm trying to populate a town with at least some civilians. Therefore it becomes a challenge to create a diverse population utilising existing torso prints and the available three heads.

---

My first attempts are fairly simplistic, stick an 80's era plastic cape on backwards, add a farmers cowl and call it a blacksmith. I change the minifig hands to black to represent gloves which gives me spare sand-green hands to use elsewhere. I forsee sand green parts becoming a valuable commodity as things progress. This version can be seen in Troll Blacksmith

The next simple swap is to the skirt and torso of Viking Woman from Collectible Minifigs series 7, marry that with a Sand Green Troll Queen's head and top it off with the hair from a Fortune Teller from Collectible Minifigs series 9; this becomes my Inn Keeper for the Trolls' Guarded Inn. It's not ideal, there's a small sliver of yellow at the neckline of the Torso, however it's the beginnings of a female presence in Troll Town and a start at building customised Trolls.

---

As I work towards assembling Troll Town in it's entirety I start to craft more and more minifigures.

One of the first creations is a market seller to supplement the Trolls' Market Place. The Neimoidian Viceroy torso was the starting point; a hand-swap to Sand Green and some dark tan legs complete it.

Another torso that I already have in stock is the Atlantis Portal Emperor; the sand green torso is a reasonable representation of a bare chested troll. Couple that with some black legs and we have a Troll that's happy to brawl in the streets.

Star Wars Torsos provide rich pickings for kit-bashed minifigs; the Dark Red Pauldrons and Capes provide additional adornment for elite troops and royal bodyguards. Everyone's favourite little green alien from Star Wars provides a tan tunic torso with sand-green skin; ideal for civilians if a little pricey due the desirability of Yoda. More recently the Embo torso provides more Sand-Green as does the Wald torso.

A Wald troso married with POTC Cannibal Legs. The POTC Cannbial legs are a good find and can be used as a direct substitution for the standard Troll Warrior legs in order to give the Rank and File troops some more variation. There are also two variants of the Cannibal legs, one with skulls and one without.

The "Colors" section of Brinklink also proves useful, allowing me to view all the Dark Red or Dark Orange torso's. Another trick has be to select sand-green hands and then see what minifigs they are part of; similarly for sand-green arms. Are those torso's useful at all?

The latter trick lead me to the Embo torso, the legs are from Space Police 3. It's a happy coincidence that the skull belt buckle seems to line up perfectly with the dark tan armour printing on the torso. An aviator helmet turns the minifig into one of my Dragon Riders.

Staying with the Embo torso I use the legs from Dragon Wizard and a black hood. I'm not sure what role this Troll plays in Troll Town but he looks suitably menacing.

Yoda troso are useful because they have sand-green necklines and hands; therefore they fit nicely with Trolls. The torso is paired with Cannibal Legs and black combed back hair to create a troll merchant. I experiment with the hair and settle on swept back black.

As I'm building up the minifigs I realise that there are rules. Trolls have Sand Green skin; the obvious thing would be to hunt down all the Sand Green torso's ever produced and utilise those but most of them are printed to represent clothes so they actually look wrong; a better option is to look for torso's in complementing colours and supplement them with Sand Green arms or hands to represent sand green troll skin. In terms of complementing and contrasting colours blacks and browns complement the sand green nicely, reds and oranges are the contrasting colour and also work. Olive green seems to be too close, it looks wrong, so I avoid it. Dark green has a similar problem it's just too close to Sand Green to properly work. I aim for the darker earthier colours rather than the brighter colours; as the darker earthier tone seems more Troll like.

There is a similar rule around Troll hair; Reddish-brown is too similar to the colour of many of the Troll torsos and therefore they all merge into one reddish-brown lump; so I avoid it. Dark brown is better but it still looks wrong compared with black. Black hair becomes another of the rules for building up custom Troll figures.

There is an interesting Spiked Helmet on one of the Space Police 3 minifigures; although the black visor looks too futuristic. Replacing that with a visor with horizontal slit gives a more appropriate headgear.

The idea to use Gundabad Orc torso's with sand-green arms substituted is attributable to Nuju-Metru. The spiky armour works and sets me thinking about what other torsos have spiky details on them.

Space Police 3 once again comes up trumps; one of the aliens has spiky silver armour on a reddish-brown background and sand-green arms. Win-win situation, all that needs to change is the head.

My hunt for Dark Red troso's led me to the Evil Wizard. After a head and hand swap and the addition of a dark red hood and pauldrons some form of Troll priest emerges.

Cleansing Monks of the Avenging Flame; Thou shall not covet another man's minifigs.

I'd already been using the Dark Red Evil Wizard Troso and Slope; but the Red Torso and Slope on the righthand minifigure was new to me; off to Bricklink we go. The minifig in question is Fluminox Heavy Armour two are subsequently ordered and appropriate substitutions made.

Capes and pauldrons turn out to be a useful way of creating diversity in the minifgures. An arm swap on a Dark Ninja (from TMNT) torso, paired with Dark Red hood and Cape and cannibal legs creates a Troll Nobleman.

Dark Red Pauldrons turn ordinary Troll warriors into verterans or an honour guard.

A Nemoidian viceroy troso paired with

A black pauldron and a messenger pouch creates a courier.

Another option for adding differentiation to the standard Troll Torso's is through the use of scarves and bandanas. A dark red headscarf on a troll warrior.

A black bandana; the warrior could now be a farmer or a labourer.

The headscarf coupled with a peg-leg; an injured veteran but still a force to be reckoned with.

The headscarf works both ways around, here it's protecting the back of the neck with the knot infront. The Dastan legs from Prince Of Persia are good fit, principally due to the red belt, and have been used a number of times in the Troll Town population.

Headscarf couple with a Wald torso and cannibal legs.

Headscarf and bandana used together. The legs are from Prospector Legs but the original dark tan hips have been replaced with reddish brown hips.

Keffiyeh are another piece of headgear that seems suited to Trolls. A standard Troll torso is matched with Wiley Fusebot legs.

White keffiyeh.

The Dragon motifs can dominate some of the Ninjago Torsos; this one happens to be fairly plain.

The old Adventurers line has a nice Dark Orange Torso that matches some dark red hips and black legs.

The Witch torso form the Series 2 Minifigures provides a starting point for what I keep thinking of as a Bishop; if such a role exists in the Troll belief system. I think the staff is a Megabloks part; I might have to revisit it and replace it with a purist staff at some point.

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Did you notice that there was just 3 heads? Did you notice that I only used the female variant once? If you didn't then I think that I might have solved the 3 head problem.

[Exetrius]

I think you did an absolutely fantastic job in diversifying and filling a big amount of troll niches! The market seller, troll nobleman and veteran troll warriors are my favorites. In my opinion, you have solved the 'three head' problem. Congratulations!

[MAB]

The staff isn't megbloks, it is from brickforge.

Another useful torso for female villagers is the one from Medusa, although it has become expensive these days.

[soccerkid6]

I think your solution is very successful, you have quite a wide range of troll type figs here. And they all look unique and easily identifiable with different occupations

[The_Cook]

The staff isn't megbloks, it is from brickforge.

Another useful torso for female villagers is the one from Medusa, although it has become expensive these days.

Thanks for the tip on the staff; I think I got the "bishop" figure in a job-lot from eBay so I had no real way of attributing the part properly.

I do have a medusa but I'd like to keep her whole. I might source an additional torso from BrickLink.

[Actor Builder]

You have a lot of trolls.

[AmperZand]

Cool minifigures.

Would you consider using other sand green heads to increase the variety such as the two on the right of this picture?

[Borex]

Or maybe a different shade of green? [link]http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/lego/images/f/fc/MartianManhunter_Lego_minifigure.png/revision/latest?cb=20140302051239[/link]

[AmperZand]

Or maybe a different shade of green? [link]http://vignette1.wik...=20140302051239[/link]

With different shades of green, the problem is very much lessened as there's considerably more variety in the available prints (as seen in my goblins below for example), but I think the OP is specifically frustrated by the lack of sand green options - which I can understand.

Edited May 16, 2016 by AmperZand

[The_Cook]

Cool minifigures.

Would you consider using other sand green heads to increase the variety such as the two on the right of this picture?

My personal opinion is that if you stray from the original 3 head variants then they stop looking like trolls; they need the red eyes and the pointy white teeth.

Hmm, maybe I should investigate getting some heads custom printed by minifigs.me ...

[rodiziorobs]

The priest is my favorite.

As scrolling through the post, it never occurred to me that I was seeing the same three heads over and over, so I think you've done a great job!

[The_Cook]

Decided to try my hand at some custom minifigure heads so that I have 5 additional Troll variants to use when populating Troll Town

The heads are based on the existing designs and were professionally printed. The shot below shows my new heads on the right with the original 3 heads on the left. There are 5 alternative designs.

My female trolls now look a little more feminine without being wild eyed and witchy.

Piracy and age can now be represented.

Alternate expressions for the common soldiery. From left to right; original, shouty, goofy, eye-patch.

Very happy with the results; they're almost perfect. If I do another batch I'll just tweak the line thicknesses on the mouths up by about 20% to match the TLG originals.

Edited July 10, 2020 by The_Cook
Re-upload images

[SerenityInFire]

Nice work diversifying your trolls. I plan on building up an orc/troll army myself, though I will also be throwing the LotR orcs into the bunch.

[Mesabi]

How about http://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=3626bpb0919#T=S&C=48&O={%22color%22:48}? Fits the red eyes and fangs profile. http://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=3626bpb0552#T=S&O={} Might work too, if you're open minded.

[The_Cook]

Time passes. Civilisations rise. Civilisations fall. Continents drift.

 

TLG releases new sets; which means new minifigure parts are available for customising Trolls.

The inspiration here was the Dark Ninja from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; the Dark Red torso fitting neatly with the Troll's colour scheme of Dark Red. An arm swap to Sand Green and the addition of capes and headcoverings gives a set of what I've been calling Ninja Trolls as a nod to the inspiration.

TLG's efforts at a better gender balance mean that Troll Town can have a better gender balance as well.

On the left the torso is from Shredder from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Whilst not a female torso intentionally I think that the cutouts are on the torso look very similar to the waistline cutouts that TLG uses to represent the feminine body shape. Dress is from the Fortune Teller collectable minifigure.

The middle is another amoured female torso.  I think it's another Shredder variant due to the purple belt and clasp being similar but it doesn't match the images in Bricklink.

The righthand is Magpie from Batman. As soon as I saw the Minifigure in a reivew I knew that I just had to obtain it for TrollTown and purchased the set; which is unusual for me since Superhero sets are not normally something I'm that interested in.

The Kanjiklub Gang Member was the starting point for the next two; just a head-swap needed.

The Ninjago Skybound Pirates provide the starting point for the next set. I'd picked up quite a few of the Skybound sets in order to get hold of the Dark Orange balloon segments.

Another happy observation was that a number of the old Viking torso's are devoid of yellow skin printing; therefore with just an arm swap they become different armour variants for the Trolls. The leather and chain armour of the Viking theme fits with Troll aesthetic.

The latest Mad Eye Moody minifigure from Harry Potter provides a long buckled coat eminently suitable for my Dragon pilots; aviator headgear finishes it off.

 

[jp-30]

There's a new Sand Green Ninjago troll that might be able to be utilised to add more variation to the population.



https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?M=njo603#T=S&O={"rpp":"100","iconly":0}

Edited August 6, 2020 by jp-30

[AmperZand]

On 8/7/2020 at 12:47 AM, jp-30 said:

There's a new Sand Green Ninjago troll that might be able to be utilised to add more variation to the population.

https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?M=njo603#T=S&O={"rpp":"100","iconly":0}

I’m already using one as an orc in my display collection! I reckon that Ninjago’s designers intended for this minifigure to be thought of as an orc.
 

If you want its eyes to match the Fantasy Era ‘trolls’ (orcs) shown earlier in this thread, you can recolour them using a red Sharpie. I haven’t tried it, but have used Sharpies to recolour parts before and it works well. If you subsequently want to remove the Sharpie, isopropyl alcohol or sanitiser gel containing alcohol will do it. To make the Sharpie permanent, give it a light coating of Humbrol Satin Cote.

[jp-30]

A couple of red-eyed 'trolls' in a new Monkie Kid set to add some colour variation to your armies. Looks like they may be reversible faces too.

 

https://www.lego.com/en-my/product/monkie-kid-s-cloud-roadster-80015

Edited August 25, 2020 by jp-30

[The_Cook]

The Ninjago Troll Torso and Legs in definitely something I'll be obtaining. I'll probably swap the yellow eyed head for one of the Red Eyed variants.

The coloured heads aren't of as much interest to me; my Troll aesthetic is very much Sand Green but others may have more mileage. The blue head in particular with it's mouth looks like it's drawing upon the Troll prints from 10 years ago.