Best Software for Custom Minifig design?

[ThousandMoon]

Hi, I want to start designing my own custom minifigures, which I'll eventually want to produce as pad printed figures (onto Lego), and potentially with some custom moulded parts as well.

I'm about to start learning Adobe Illustrator to create my designs, but I just wanted to see whether anyone would particularly recommend any other programs, like AutoCAD perhaps?

Any advice greatly appreciated.

Many Thanks!

[JintaiZ]

Perhaps LDD works.

[Darkdragon]

If you want to make your own models you'll want something like Blender.  

[supertruper1988]

17 hours ago, ThousandMoon said:

Hi, I want to start designing my own custom minifigures, which I'll eventually want to produce as pad printed figures (onto Lego), and potentially with some custom moulded parts as well.

I'm about to start learning Adobe Illustrator to create my designs, but I just wanted to see whether anyone would particularly recommend any other programs, like AutoCAD perhaps?

Any advice greatly appreciated.

Many Thanks!

So creating art for pad printing is best done in a vector program like Adobe Illustrator or Affinity Designer. The export to PNG can be used with the Studio Part Designer to apply the decal to minifigs for instructions and/or rendering. 

 

Creating custom molds is a hole different ballgame and is something that you can do but it takes working with a mold maker to get the perfect and its expensive to make molds so you would also likely need a business to support you and/or build up a following that would be able to support the cost of manufacturing. 

[ThousandMoon]

On 9/17/2020 at 4:46 AM, supertruper1988 said:

So creating art for pad printing is best done in a vector program like Adobe Illustrator or Affinity Designer. The export to PNG can be used with the Studio Part Designer to apply the decal to minifigs for instructions and/or rendering. 

Hi, a belated thanks for your advice. Just got to grips with Studio, so that's good to know!

Thanks!