Licensed figures being based on concept art

[KingPixels]

I've been noticing that a lot of licensed minifigures have been fairly inaccurate to the source material, mostly because they're based off early concept art. I thought it might be interesting to track down some of that art.

Black Widow.

I've always been slightly annoyed by the black widow figure, mostly because of the blue lines that aren't present in the final design. I think I've found the pieces of art that the figure was based on. The figure seems to have taken the blue light elements and leg straps from the image on the right, and single belt from the left image.

These markings don't appear in the final design:

Drax.

The thing that bothered me about the Drax figure was the colouring. The character is iconically green, so why was the figure light bluish grey instead of the closer sand green? Probably because of this concept art. It might just be the lighting, but Drax looks decidedly grey in this image, and I'm confident that it's the cause of LEGO's odd colour choice.

Final design:

If anyone else has any examples of this occurring I'd love to see it!

Edited July 11, 2014 by KingPixels

[kbcakir]

Interesting point indeed. You may be right because lego sets are released before the films are. And we know sets are designed in 1 or 1.5 year period. So designers maybe have only concept art as a source???

[LuxorV]

I think this thread could gather more interest and be at home in the Licensed forum, as it concerns actual LEGO products and not customs.

Moving it now.

[Zilcho]

Cool, I'm pretty sure Hawkeye suffered from this too.

Edited July 11, 2014 by Zilcho

[Robianco]

It's an interesting point... And potentially a fantastic thread.

Even these images shown actually make me like the minifigures more knowing that they were part of the design process even if not the final version.

Someone mentioned in the SW forum that the new Rebels figures are our version of getting McQuarrie concept drawing as minifigures similar to the Hasbro release.

[Rinzler]

Are we forgetting The Mandarin? He was suffering from this too

[DJ Bricks]

you managed to pick the one picture that Drax look more green in. in the rest of the pics and trailers I have seen he looks like a greenish grey.

And I have another one Eric Savin from Iron Man 3 AKA the Extremis Soldier

[K-Nut]

The thing with Hawkeye is that he's just about the same in the film, just without the shades (which he does wear at one point I believe). Another fig that I believe has been a victim of this was the new Rocket Raccoon fig.

He looks to be more grey in this pic than in the actual film, but still looks great as a fig.

[KingPixels]

you managed to pick the one picture that Drax look more green in. in the rest of the pics and trailers I have seen he looks like a greenish grey.

And I have another one Eric Savin from Iron Man 3 AKA the Extremis Soldier

Nice find!

And yes, Drax looks less full-on green in the movie, but he's still green enough that making the figure grey is inaccurate. Here's one of the action figures:

The thing with Hawkeye is that he's just about the same in the film, just without the shades (which he does wear at one point I believe). Another fig that I believe has been a victim of this was the new Rocket Raccoon fig.

He looks to be more grey in this pic than in the actual film, but still looks great as a fig.

I didn't really have an issue with Rocket's colouring. He looks good to me.

[DJ Bricks]

he a colour that LEGO couldn't make without making a new one off colour that like I said they couldn't use again. Olive would be too green, Sand would be too, I'm fine with his colour.

Yeah, there's one with sleeves to warrant the figure for Savin, but I can't find it, So most people can count him as an actual character.

[MstrOfPppts]

I think that the Blackbeards hat from POTC was also designed after concept art at is inacurate to the movies.

[BrickBob Studpants]

I think that the Blackbeards hat from POTC was also designed after concept art at is inacurate to the movies.

The Davy Jones minifig featured the same hat mould, so I guess they simply decided to produce one mould for both characters instead of making two different ones

[MstrOfPppts]

Yes, but they could also use the ordinary tricorne aswell. But the concept art for blackbeard had a similar hat that was splint at the top infront. I do agree though it looks better this way ...

[K-Nut]

I didn't really have an issue with Rocket's colouring. He looks good to me.

Neiher do I. I'm just saying that the concept art makes him look more grey opposed to the brown that he looks to be in the film. I love the rocket figure, and think it's one of the best from the wave. Just that he seems (at least to me) based more on that concept art where he's more grey than brown.

[B-Lister]

Drax isn't a big deal to me. It looks right. Yeah, he's green canonically, but as others have stated, there's no point doing a run of a custom color for only one character.

Far easier to use a color already being used, to make a one-off.

[KingPixels]

I still think sand green would be better, but oh well.

[montgocloud]

The Mandarin from the smallest Iron Man 3 set, the "Ultimate Showdown," also fell victim to concept changes. Also the inclusion of War Machine instead of Iron Patriot was probably because of early concept ideas. The art book features some renders of War Machine.

http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/MarvelFreshman/news/?a=79425

[B-Lister]

I still think sand green would be better, but oh well.

Hopefully we'll get a sequel, and they can give us the apology figure. Until then, I like the one we have.

Edited July 14, 2014 by B-Lister

[KingPixels]

Hopefully we'll get a sequel, and they can give us the apology figure. Until then, I like the one we have.

Good point! I forgot about the possible sequel.

[Alldarker]

I actually thought it was common knowledge that Lego is usually 'forced' to design licensed, (original) movie-based sets mainly by way of the available concept art and vague descriptions of plots and plot points.

Movie studio's usually keep story lines, plot points and final art under wraps for as long as possible (I guess for good reason), while Lego typically needs to start design one to two years in advance. It's the reason why so many licensed Lego sets fail to really recreate the exact look of the movies (PotC, Prince of Persia, Iron Man 3, The Hobbit to name a few lines which had significant differences between sets and the movies they were cross-promoting). Another example of this was the 'premature' release of 79001: Escape from Mirkwood Spiders and 79004: Barrel Escape in the first wave of Hobbit sets, due to Peter Jackson / Warner Bros deciding at a relatively late stage to split the series into three Hobbit movies instead of the originally intended two Hobbit movies. Much too late for Lego to change their release plans for the first wave of Hobbit sets. I'm pretty sure some harsh words were exchanged over that between Lego and the studio!

[Lancethecat]

I think that the Attack of the Wargs set from the Hobbit line would have been a lot more successful if it had included Azog instead of Yazneg, who was originally going to be the primary antagonist in the movie. Then again, maybe the new Dol Guldur Battle (which includes Azog as an exclusive figure) wouldn't be doing as well if that were the case...

[strangely]

It's just as well they made Drax grey. This way we'll need a green variation in the future too. Really all Lego did was create demand for another version of the same character.

Plus his color in the movie doesn't match any of the Lego colors, so they probably just had to pick a color that was on one side of the spectrum or the other. I'm sure if they had chosen green everyone would say how he looks more grey in the movie.