I was invited to try out the new minifig app, MiniMi, while it was still in beta. It is a fun, novelty app and I actually spent quite a bit of time trying different comibinations of figures, making myself, my family members and what-not. My kids absolutely loved it. Overall, it is well made and pretty intuitive to use. It’s an entertaining app, in and of itself. Also it is free to download, which is nice. There are also expansion packs, such as Space and Castle (yay!), which cost 99 cents each.
However, I think this app has the potential to really shine as a customizing tool. How so? Because it has the only minifig face generator of which I am aware (feel free to correct me in the comments if I am wrong). Switching hair, hats, torsos and colors in the app is pretty straightforward but the face generator is something unique. You can choose from a selection of eyes, eyebrows, mouths, facial hair, glasses and so forth to create unique faces that don’t actually exist on official minifigs. Because the app has built in share functions, you can export your fig image…isolate the face…resize and print it on decal or sticker paper.
Currently the number of elements in the app is limited but the expansion “packs” remedy this somewhat and the team is planning more. If they expand the library of facial elements, I think this app could be something really special. I would also like to see a feature added to where the user could resize and/or change the colors of the various facial features but this may come with time.
Download it here.
There’s Chris Doyle’s Minimizers, but this is a bit more lego-like. There’s several versions… They’re on Reasonably Clever, but I can’t get the site to work right now.
@Jimmy – Yup, I remember Chris Doyle’s but that only uses official LEGO parts, I believe…plus you can’t mix and match the facial features like you can on this.
However, with Chris’, you can actually build the figure.
It’s too bad it’s only available on iCult right now.
@ Josh – Chris has several using non-official parts and mixable facial features- just sayin’.
http://www.reasonablyclever.com/mini-mizers/classic-mini-mizer/
http://www.reasonablyclever.com/mini-mizers/mini-mizer-2-0/
http://www.reasonablyclever.com/mini-mizers/blockhead/
Am quite excited about the prospect of using MiniMi as a customizer’s tool, but very important there would be the ability to kick out a high-quality tweakable version of the face on transparent background, like a PNG or photoshop file, without the yellow head. I don’t know if there’s a special warping needed to make it look good on a curved surface, but it might be advisable too.
@Jimmy – I’m not hugely familiar with all of Chris’ stuff, so that is good to know. In MiniMi, you can export the face without the yellow skin. Not sure about the resolution or file types. That is something the developers should think about though. Not sure if they will or not because this is not actually something they had considered until it was mentioned it to them during the Beta.