Celebrating 40 years of the LEGO Minifigure - Design Sketches for LEGO Minifigures Theme

[WhiteFang]

Dear Eurobricks Community, 

Special thanks to TLG (The LEGO Group) for these amazing design sketches on the LEGO Minifigures Theme otherwise known as the LEGO Collectable Minifigures Theme. This is my all time favourite theme since the dawn of 2010 and it is still going very strong till this age. I am sure all of us are familiar with these characters and from the perspective of inspirational design, largely stemmed by Matthew Ashton, Vice President of Design (TLG) as well as the core designers and team including Tara Wike, Alexandre Boudon, Austin Carlson and Chris Bonven. I won't be writing too much and I will leave your thoughts to wander around when you see these awesome design illustration versus the actual product. Without further ado, let's dive into this rare illustrating insight of the world of LEGO design right at your doorstep.  

On a personal note, I had totally gone nuts after seeing these very original inspirational designs!  

The original super detailed high resolution images provided by TLG can be found in this Flickr Album. 

Sketches provided by Alexandre Boudon

Sketches provided by Tara Wikie on parts design - Guess which part is it for?


Sketches provided by Chris Bonven


Sketches provided by Austin Carlson (by the way the top left is a Godzilla or Dragon Suit Guy inspiration?)





Sketches provided by Matthew Ashton































Pretty much everything else you see came to an actual reality? Guess which is this series from? Scroll down to find out the answer



Link to Series 13 review

I hope you enjoyed this simple comparison feature as much as I went through the sketches.  

WhiteFang

[Niku]

This is very nice, the sketches are funny to look and you wonder what else might be for the future, thanks for sharing WF

[Agent 86]

Thanks for putting this thread together - it's a fun read!

[K_Tiger]

Huh, kind of disappointed we didn't get that foliage cape for the Rogue.

[x105Black]

I love that this guy was originally supposed to have Cthulhu wings.

[MAB]

I think you are wrong that the Austin Carlson sketch shows the Lizard Man / Godzilla minifigure from Series 5. This suggests that they had designed the other series 18 figures shown, which include a number of future parts such as the tutu skirt that don't appear for some years, prior to 2011 and then sat on those designs for 7 years before they made it into the CMF series. More likely is that this is a preliminary sketch of a minifigure that later became or was replaced by the dragon in S18. Similar with the identification of the penguin, I imagine this was meant to be an idea for a new bird for S18 that was decided against as they had already done the chicken and, quite recently, the penguin.

[Robin_IV]

19 hours ago, WhiteFang said:

I think I know this guy. But don't know from where.

[Digger of Bricks]

It's interesting to see how they'd originally planned on giving the S17 Retro Spaceman a pauldron part that would make his planetary atom insignia center-chest rather than on the shoulders, sort of giving him more of a nod to Lego's Classic Spacemen. Also, while the inclusion of a "Sandy" helmet over his new helmet mold would've been cool as a fusion of "Atompunk" and "Raypunk" Spaceman styles, I do prefer the way the final incarnation did turn out without it. 

[Frostbricks]

33 minutes ago, Digger of Bricks said:

It's interesting to see how they'd originally planned on giving the S17 Retro Spaceman a pauldron part that would make his planetary atom insignia center-chest rather than on the shoulders,

Mate, I'd love to see them release one looking like the concept art. So gorgeous.

(Cross fingers and we'll get the pauldron released in a future series  (especially as we've already gotten the bubble head)

[Robert8]

I hope they'll include more stuff like this in the next CMF encyclopedia 

[Digger of Bricks]

12 minutes ago, Frostbricks said:

Mate, I'd love to see them release one looking like the concept art. So gorgeous. 

Perhaps we'll see more of a bubble-helmeted retro spaceman CMF with a "Retro Space Explorer" archetype in a future series, something more in the vein of 1950's "Astropunk" rather than 1920's/1930's "Raypunk", such as this concept art for instance:

[x105Black]

That would likely be a body wear piece that goes over the head and torso.

[Digger of Bricks]

6 hours ago, x105Black said:

That would likely be a body wear piece that goes over the head and torso.

Instead of a new part, perhaps it'd just be a recolor of TLBM Mr. Freeze's body armor, which would rather accommodate a dome part as opposed to Sandy's helmet, but hey... 

[WhiteFang]

Glad to see you all look pretty excited about these CMFs sketches like I do. 

On 8/31/2018 at 5:43 PM, MAB said:

I think you are wrong that the Austin Carlson sketch shows the Lizard Man / Godzilla minifigure from Series 5. This suggests that they had designed the other series 18 figures shown, which include a number of future parts such as the tutu skirt that don't appear for some years, prior to 2011 and then sat on those designs for 7 years before they made it into the CMF series. More likely is that this is a preliminary sketch of a minifigure that later became or was replaced by the dragon in S18. Similar with the identification of the penguin, I imagine this was meant to be an idea for a new bird for S18 that was decided against as they had already done the chicken and, quite recently, the penguin.

I think you are right. It could be the replacement of Dragon based on the time period analogy. I thought it was strange on why this is the only earlier series. I will include the Dragon inside above. Thanks. 

[Angeli]

you know what I would love to see? Sketches of things that didn;t make (yet:) into CMF

I saw a ton of wonderfull things with that sketch 10 years ago