ED-209

As something of a follow up to the Watchmen decals I made a few weeks back, I thought I'd post their fictional "Golden Age" predecessors - The Minutemen. Hollis Mason, the first Nite Owl. Tan torso, head; dark tan hips; flesh arms, legs; and black hands. Sally Jupiter, the first Silk Spectre. Flesh head, torso, left arm, left hand; black legs, right arm, right hand; yellow hips, reddish brown Endor Leia hair. Edward Blake, the young Comedian. Flesh head; yellow arms, torso, hips, legs; black hands and classic hair. (He was neater in his youth!) Nelson Gardner, Captain Metropolis. Red head, arms, torso; orange hips, legs; yellow hands; blue cape; and tan flat top hair. Bill Brady, the Dollar Bill. Blue head, arms, torso, legs; red cape, hands and hips. Ursula Zandt, the Silhouette. Flesh head; black hands, arms, torso, hips, legs and bob cut hair. The Hooded Justice, identity unknown. (Possibly Rolf Müller?) Dark purple head, arms, torso; dark grey hands; dark red cape, hips and legs. (I do know that TLG have not yet manufactured a dark purple head, but I've yet to come up with a feasible solution here. I suppose while I'm in fantasy land here, why not a dark purple farmers' cowl? Ideas?) Byron Lewis, the Mothman. Dark red head, arms, torso, legs; black hands and hips. (Still trying to work out how best to do his wings...) And here's the original topic, for anyone who's not familiar with it: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=32181 As always, any opinions/suggestions/feedback is much appreciated!

LOL, yes I guess he does! He was meant to have a somewhat neutral expression on his face; as he gets progressively more and more emotionally disconnected from humanity. Or minifigdom, in this case!

I've bought their Viking helmets - which are excellent (and accurate, yay!), beards, and the pigs. I've found them all to be of a very high quality, and would recommend them wholeheartedly.

Ooh, I'm so flattered and humbled to have influenced someone in this fashion! It's an impressive and bold undertaking that you're proposing here, and I think that one of the big challenges will be in deciding what to omit. I think that rendering pretty much anything in Lego (be it buildings, vehicles or people) is essentially like drawing a caricature of a person - there's a knack for knowing what elements to exaggerate to make it most recognisable. That being said, how much of a purist you are will also impact things. Personally, I see nothing wrong with making your own stickers to represent some of the wallpaper as TLG themselves do that sort of thing. As for the mirrors, if you aren't committed to the idea of using reflective Lego parts, you could get small mirrors from a craft shop (I've even seen some small ones for mosaics that are approximately the size of a 2x2 tile!) and glue them to thick cardboard to mount behind the wall? Or you could use silver metallic card overlaid with a sheet of acetate printed with a grid? It wouldn't look as real as actual mirrors of course! Best of luck with your project, I'll be looking forward to see how it develops! And BTW I love the effect of the parquetry that oo7 demonstrated - amazing idea there! (And what helmet is that guy wearing? It looks like a standard Lego spangenhelm with a custom aventail?)

That's cool with me too. (In fact I'd be flattered if you used any of mine! )

Sure, a normal suit? And while I'm at it I'll do the zoot suit in tan too! Cool, hope they turn out well!

Thanks for all the kind words everyone! LOL I guess that's true, but not as sore as the lady I'd wager! Ah, marvellous! TinyPiesRUs, it was indeed your guillotine that I'd seen a while ago that inspired the use of the arch as a basket. It had been bothering me that I couldn't remember/find it to give due credit - thank you, and thank you for comments too! Please do, after all I did make it for a history teacher!

Oh, the poor fellow! I really like the cobwebs in the tree, although I'm a little worried about the condition of that carrot... not that it matters to a skeleton I suppose! Very well done, although it has put me off my breakfast.

Some excellent ideas there! How about some more mediaeval headgear? A spangenhelm for instance? (Hell, you could probably just trim the neck guard off a standard Castle Lego helmet and cast it if you went for the pointed Norman style!) I'd love to see one of the more rounded kind though! Or a hat? What about ladies' bonnets? Women have always been under-represented in Castle Lego!

Was that the kind of decal you were after? I made these in case you (or anyone else for that matter) wanted a decal to wrap around a head piece. One for opaque, one for transparent. Sure! Like this? Why stop at just red? Why not blue? Or green? Or dark tan? Or dark purple?

My beloved wife is a secondary school humanities teacher, and she asked me knock together a Lego guillotine to show her revolutionary history class. I had originally planned to make only the guillotine itself, but I got carried away and built the scaffolding too, and then of course there had to be a crowd of jeering onlookers too! The cotton is the only non-Lego piece, and the guillotine actually "works" in that unhooking the cotton from the executioner's wrist will drop the blade. The idea of using the arched window piece as a basket is not mine. I'd seen it somewhere else a while ago, but can't seem to find it again to give credit to its creator. If anyone knows who came up with that little stroke of genius, please let me know! This project also marks my first attempt at using SNOT (which seems somehow remarkable to me that I'd never done so before!)

Awesome, these look great! I'd love to get into casting things in Lego-ish colours... I enjoy sculpting new parts but always find that painting them makes them look less like an official part. Did that make sense? Also, will you be casting in some kind of flexible moulding agent (like latex or something) to allow for complex shapes and overhang without the need for complex multipart moulds?

Ooh, they should be... why, what colour have they come out?! If the CMYK values are off, then I've probably just made a typo and will correct them. Sorry guys (facepalm). (I'm at work right now, and the images are blocked from me! Damn, this is what happens when you post things late at night and don't realise that you've made a mistake! ) Edit: Yup, those colour values were off, so I've corrected them now. Cheers.

Thanks! I'm thinking that I would like to make the Minutemen (the first Silk Spectre, the first Nite Owl, young Comedian, Dollar Bill, Hooded Justice, Silhouette, Captain Metropolis and Mothman) - do you have any other ideas for figures? Moloch the Mystic perhaps? Big Figure? Hmm... I'm certainly open to suggestions here! Well the official Lego torsos are pretty much all based on coloured line work, so I use Adobe Illustrator to draw the decals. It's basically the lesser-known vector-based cousin to Photoshop. I then rasterise the image with Photoshop, and convert it to JPEG format. But that's an interesting point - what software do you use? What software does everyone else use? Should that be a question for a new topic?!

So I picked up the Watchmen Bluray on special the other day, and after seeing it again for the first time since it was in the theatre I thought "I know what I'll do, I'll make some Lego Watchmen decals just like so many other people have done before!" So here they are, including a list of the colour parts they are intended to be used with (if anyone wants to use them, feel free to use whatever parts you like, these parts are just what I had in mind): Jon Osterman, the superpowered Dr Manhattan. Sand blue arms, torso, head and legs; light bluish grey hands (because there are no sand blue ones! ); and black hips (unless you're feeling saucy, then feel free to use sand blue!) Laurie Jupiter, the second Silk Spectre. Black arms, hands, hips and legs; yellow torso; black "Marion Ravenwood" hairpiece, or long hair. Dan Dreiberg, the second Nite Owl. Dark tan arms, torso and legs; brown cape, hands, hips and "Savage mask" from Brickforge.com Walter Kovacs, the vigilante known as Rorschach. White head; black hands; reddish brown arms, torso, hips, legs and fedora. Adrian Veidt, Ozymandias - the Worlds Smartest Man. Sand purple hands and hips; black cape, arms, torso and legs; tan wavy hair. Edward Blake, the vicious Comedian. Flesh arms; black hands, torso, hips, legs and tousled hair with side part. Plus a bunch of weapons from Brickarms.com Any criticisms/feedback/suggestions? If people like these, I'll look at making some for the Golden Age heroes - The Minutemen.

I was right about the height? I was only going by memory when I said that... wow I'm quite shocked that I was right! I agree, it certainly shouldn't alter the resolution, but just in case I've converted it from my original Illustrator image to rule out that variable:

Ah, the conversion to CMYK caused the problem? How odd... My apologies Wellington, it displayed perfectly on my browser so I didn't realise there was a problem, but I'm glad to see that we've already figured out what went wrong! (Thanks muchly Luxor! ) I'm under the impression (this is from memory, not measurement if anyone can correct me?) that the side of a 2x2 Lego brick is 16mm wide, and 9.58mm high. Not including the studs of course! (Who would put a decal on the side of a stud? ) The circumference of a circle is "2 x pi x radius", thus the circumference of Wellington's drum piece should be "2 x 3.141592 x 8mm" or approximately 50.26mm. So, when I made the image, each decal measured 9.58mm high by 50mm wide, with a print resolution of 600dpi, so most decent image viewers should print it correctly without the need to resize it yourself. That being said, I don't know if when Luxor converted it from CMYK colours to RGB it may have lost the print dimensions? But I shall re-upload it tonight in RGB, with the print res as correct as I can make it. (Of course, if your programme ignores the print settings imbedded in the image anyway, I'm afraid this won't really help you! ) Oh, and the reason I didn't cut the notches out of the bottom is because a) that would make it trickier to line up when applying the decal, b) some people might prefer to have the option of no visible notches on the drum. If you do want the notches present, I'd personally slice the hole out with a scalpel after applying it to the brick. (Watch your fingers of course! )

Here you go, one in blue and one in red. If my high school maths holds up, the circumference should be right!

I'd be happy to take a crack at it, but tell me what dimensions do you want it? Or to put it another way; what brick are you planning to use for the drum? (I'm sorry, but I'm not familiar with Bonaparte's drums!)

Here's the M:tron torso, plus a slightly larger logo for bricks and what have you: No problem, I'm happy to be of help! I look forward to seeing the finished figure, but thanks to you I've now got "Night Fever" stuck in my head!

Wasn't sure if you'd prefer a yellow or flesh tone, so I did both!

Yes, someone could! (Although I really want an icy pole now...!) "Well you can tell by the way I use my walk, I'm a woman's man; no time to talk" Will this work for you?

I love this! The proportions give such a marvellous sense of "weight" to the building. Plus all the little details - it seems like all the minifigs have their own stories to tell. And my first thought when I saw the rug in front of the fireplace in the blue building was "Ooh, a trapdoor?" - sadly not, but I still think it's an excellent MOC!

I think the real question should be, will TLG release an Agents set where Chase wears the dinner jacket from Indy's Shanghai Chase? http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemPic.asp?P=973pb530c01 I think that would be an excellent compromise - I just can't think of what kind of scene/story/idea would justify him wearing it!

No? I must admit that while I like Pirate Lego, it's not really an historical period I'm massively familiar with, but I thought that sword-length bayonets really only became common after the end of the Golden Age of Piracy? That's a fair point, and I agree that the straight back of the blade does give it a bit of a modern look. Not that that stopped TLG from including it in the Mediaeval Market Village mind you!