Robianco

Most printers these days can handle photo quality so you should get a much better finish than that. Either the paper is crap or you may just need to mess around a little with your settings on your printer with regards to telling it what kind of paper you're printing on and what quality to print at. I've had photographic paper that just didn't look great in the past... then the same printer and ink produced fantastic results on different paper. Unfortunately it just happens at times. I'm not sure if you're in the US, UK, Europe etc but I wouldn't worry too much about the paper on your first order. Just don't spend over the odds on some. Maybe try this: http://www.amazon.co...ide decal paper Then get a good acrylic spray. I've found that Gloss is too shiny but Satin has worked great: http://www.amazon.co...D2527VCSFN6NK2S Then it's just down to your printer and your skills cutting them out. I used to spray the whole torso a couple of times with a thin coating once the decal was on it to help seal everything and I've still got a couple of torsos that I did several years ago that still look good.

I still think most of the images of the TFA figures are all genuine Lego just retouched onto baseplates (actually they definitely are as the close up of Fin clearly shows 'Lego' printed on the gun. Let's see when someone has them in hand.

Good spot. That would make for a nice variant.

I've still got a custom printed figure of that version and I'd love to replace it with a genuine Lego version but, like you, I'm not sure they'd go that route.

I'd hope for a new Scarecrow but after the reissue of Ivy in Jokerland you never know. Ivy was in a couple of sets before Jokerland though so with Scarecrow only being in Arkham I can see them making a new version... There is always that new witch hat with hair from the CMF line that's been used in various customs of Scarecrow that I could see that being used. I think after seeing Croc in LB3 I'd hope that it's a bigfig. I know he may not be the same design but it would make a great figure with a hinged jaw and at that price point there's a good chance he's of that scale. Great to hear that Mr Freeze '66 is a promo bag. Really keeps the fig slots open for the more well known family and villains. From what J2G et al have hinted at I can see it having the cave and maybe part of the house with the batpoles as mentioned along with the Batmobile. If they go for a piece count like the Hellicarrier then I'll continue to hope for something at the scale of the Ewok Village (even thought the HC had many more parts).

Like everyone Vader's TIE sounds very interesting and hopefully for the price tag it's a good build. I must admit... I'm not sure how different an OT or Rebels TIE Advanced would look? Surely the actual build would be pretty much identical... the only thing that may be slightly different is how Vader would look? I'm thinking he'd have the new helmet mould and just slightly different printing on the body with a younger, scarred head.

It depends how much you want to make. I order quite a lot from BL and pretty much always look for minifig parts so supplement orders. I also know there are certain sellers that have parts that can make up recent figures for much less than eBay prices so I tend to order those too then sell them on to make my BL order money back. That way I get anything from BL pretty much free or sometimes with a little profit. It's not so much a money making thing as just a way of helping to fund the rest of my Lego stuff.

No... I 've neve brought that many of them. I actually bought around 4 or 5 of them from an advance seller before that micro fighter got released for around £5 each. I then put the helmets on the older Rebel torsos and sold them as a group of pilots. I actually just picked up another torso/legs/head for around £2.30 from a UK seller so I'm just waiting for a new helmet for that.

I've always thought this was going to be another set around the same size as the GBHQ. From everything we've heard there have been little hints that this is a big one.

I've been doing that for Rebel pilots in both Hoth as well as Yavin/Endor battles. They're on my Flickr account on the link in my sig but I'm on my phone so can't link to an image.

That's not waterslide decal paper. Waterslide paper works exactly as it sounds... You place it in water and slide the print off the backing sheet. If using inkjet paper you'll need to seal the print first. You should be able to use what you've bought but they'll work as a sticker rather than waterslide decal. Just try them out and see how you like the result.

There have always been in stock in the Liverpool Lego Store. I think that'll be around for a while.

I know BB-8 is in the Dargo set with a R2 unit here: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Star-Wars-Darth-Vader-Force-7-Awakening-Minifigures-Aciton-Figures-8pcs-Lot-Trooper-Building-Blocks-Sets/32555774320.html?spm=2114.031010208.3.114.1u0ozz&ws_ab_test=searchweb201556_3,searchweb201644_4_79_78_77_82_80_62_81,searchweb201560_1 I don't think any of the others have appeared yet.

I think you have to look at the customisers that are out there and gauge how your product will compare to theirs to see whether there is space in the market... and that also takes into account the scale of what you want to do. Someone like Christo produces top quality pad printed figures which are enhanced by newly moulded pieces that are of Lego quality. The first examples of figures he puts out can sell for up to $200 per figure, such as the Maestro Hulk and Mera figures he released at the end of last year. After that they regularly sell for between $40 and $60 per figure depending on the amount of print etc. Printing pad customs isn't cheap and you have to have a place in the market to know that you're going to make your money back. There is an EB member who has Phoenix Customs and has produced around 7 pad printed figures... He sells initially through a pre-sale at a slightly discounted rate which then acts as a pretty good indicator of popularity while also funding the initial print run. You have customisers like Onlinesailin on eBay who print digitally and in large numbers... they also have a very good reputation and following and sell tens, if not hundreds of figures a month. You could look at putting custom figures together with genuine parts from BL or B&P with customs parts from people like Brickforge etc and then sell those as a starter or even print on decal paper to create custom figures to sell. A few years ago I created a set of Ghostbusters with accessories from Brickforge which I sold on eBay... this was before the official set was released. You can do it whatever scale you wish... Getting known on Flickr is also a good way to sell or trade figures.

This is how it worked out for me:

Unfortunately I don't think even Christo printed any in the dark blue colour. I know his was just black, which has been cloned by a bootlegger. I think Onlinesailin might be the only customiser I've seen print up a dark blue one and as yet it's not been cloned. Dargo looked like they were going to start a programme of releasing around 80 figures or so, a lot of which were cloned from OLS figures so if that continues it may happen eventually.

All the SH sets were on shelf today at the Lego Store in Liverpool but I didn't see any Mighty Micros which is a shame. Looks like they might be delayed in the UK... Did someone say a March release date?

They seem to be splitting things up a lot over various themes. I picked up the OT battle packs at my Lego store today and they had the rest of the sets in including Carbon Chamber, Droid Escape, Rebels, TFA sets etc but then we're missing certain things on other themes such as the Mighty Micros on the SH theme. Maybe these quirks are something that'll become more common .

Thankfully I picked that up from another EB user for around £6 a year or so ago.

I can't say anything that hasn't already been said with regards to how good this build looks. The interesting thing on this is that it's to scale with the 7965 cockpit which works so much better than the 'frame' build on 10179. I must admit... as much as I'm looking forward to the possibility of a new UCS release it would need to be as good as this build... otherwise it would seem lacking. Like others have also said... I'd love to see an inventory on this to get some idea of how much it would be to build. I'd be VERY interested in starting this as a build as an alternative to BLing a 10179.

There's so much detail in some of those figures they look odd.

No... there are no official Batpod releases at that scale. I think there's only one official Batpod release of any scale and that's the giveaway 'UCS' version from last year. There have been various Batbikes released in different sets such as the one in the Batcave here Nothin in support of the Nolan Batman films though

In the UK there's a seller called Yellow Farm Bricks on Bricklink that has 50 of them: http://alpha.bricklink.com/pages/clone/catalogitem.page?P=30381&name=Minifig,%20Headgear%20Hood&category=%5BMinifig,%20Headgear%5D#T=S&C=80&O={"color":80,"loc":"UK"}

I wouldn't hold my breath for dual moulding from bootleggers just yet. I'd say that was just printing. I'm interested to see how much of an improvement Sam Wilson will be over the DLP version as the torso and head were pretty good on those. GL Bats will be interesting to compare to the DLP Bats wave. Let's see whether the JL wave with the iffy faces is indeed a test wave for the arm printing etc and we'll see on that Iron Man Silver Centurion. After the DLP and Decool Arsenal figures now SY have a chance to give us a good copy of the SDCC fig. I'll compare with the genuine one when the wave arrives. Harley is another one that I'm interested to see the quality of as the leg printing will need to be done well although I'll give this one to my daughter. Not sure about that Deathstroke. Blue costume but black helmet? Is that how he appears? Looks odd to me. Lastly... I'm really not sure what Batman variant that's meant to be. Infra Red Batman? Fire suit Batman? I'll reserve judgement until I see it in person.

Someone asked about Janson a while ago and I did a retouch and posted it on my Flickr. Definitely his helmet in that video