Tag Archives: Custom

This is not the page for LEGO purists. From heavily customized minifigures to LEGO pieces chopped, painted, and stickered to within an inch of their little plastic lives, this is where you’ll find some of the most creative uses — and abuses — of LEGO anywhere.

Brickmania Black Friday / Small Business Saturday sales [News]

Another great LEGO-centered small business we love to support here at TBB is Brickmania, led by talented designer and all-around great guy Dan Siskind.

Dan and his team in Minneapolis have posted daily deals all week this week, leading up to the massively discounted Fokker Dr.1 — The iconic Red Baron’s tri-plane from from World War I. It’s discounted from $195 to $95 starting at midnight tonight.

Brickmania has been releasing a new custom kit at the rate of about one a week for months now, and I’ve been eyeing this gorgeous M3A1 Scout Car for the last few weeks.

Like other BrickArms resellers (including Citizen Brick and GI Brick), Brickmania is also a great place to stock up on the types of custom accessories that LEGO will likely never produce.

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Citizen Brick deals for Black Friday / Small Business Saturday [News]

Our good friends over at Citizen Brick have just announced their Black Friday deals, centered on a batch of new custom minifig packs and a pretty sweet “Xmas Fun-Pak” you can get by spending $75 or more.

Joe and his team are releasing a number of new products on Friday, starting with this three-pack cleverly titled “Bowling Buddies.”

And don’t miss “Pity Enthusiast.”

I’ve never regretted a single purchase I’ve ever made from Citizen Brick, and the CB team are some of the nicest people in the LEGO vendor community I’ve had the pleasure to meet. While you load up on all those discounted bricks on Black Friday, consider spending some of your LEGO budget to help support this innovative, boundary-pushing small business as well.

Supplies are limited (I’ve missed some pretty awesome new items myself in the past), so take a nap after that turkey dinner and set an alarm for midnight Central Time so you can get shopping!

This customizer’s always right

It’s no secret that I’m not much of a customizer myself. But, like most LEGO fans on either side of that customizing fence, I can still enjoy a beautiful bit of customizing when I see it. And Terry Jeffries’ customs are nothing if not beautifully and exceedingly well executed. Clean paint lines and smooth transitions between original LEGO plastic and added-on bits are hallmarks of good customization, and it’s hard to find any mistakes with either in Jeffries’ work.

This golden neo-Samurai warrior is just plain gorgeous, bringing together sci-fi and feudalism with just a dash of steampunk. This and the left model below remind me vaguely of the titular character in Desert Punk.

Yavanna, from the pages of Middle Earth

I have for you a most beautiful custom minifig. Marina brings us Yavanna, from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion. She is responsible for all things that grew in the earth.

We are Groot.

MikMikEternity gives us this wonderful custom Groot minifigure. The detail and sculpting are impressive. He says he sculpted the additional pieces and painted by hand. I love the weathered, wooden look and the subtle greenery all over Groot. There is so much character.

Last chance to get in on the Crazy Arms Kickstarter [News]

Guy Himber’s Crazy Arms Kickstarter project hit funding over the weekend, and deliveries are expected by the end of the year. This one looks particularly useful. If you want in on the Kickstarter rewards yourself, you have about 12 more hours to support the project.

I’ve always enjoyed Guy’s various custom projects, and this particular one has the approval of Abraham Lincoln on a velociraptor (my war-like Honest Abe is using one of Guy’s older straight-arm prototypes, and is wearing one of his stovepipe hats).

I walked with you once upon a dream

I, like a fair few of you, very much enjoyed Disney’s Maleficent when it came out last year. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Marina did as well, since she has created this absolutely lovely custom figure of Maleficent herself.

Take a look at the rest of her photostream; there are a number of amazing custom figures. I would be hard pressed to pick a favorite.

Crazy Arms are a crazy cool idea

Regular readers of this blog will be no stranger to Guy Himber’s Crazy Bricks, which has been classing-up the world of figs for years now with top hats, skulls, and all manner of other unique accessories. But Guy’s latest offering, Crazy Arms, could be a game changer for mini-fig fans.

These patent pending replacement arms not only offer better poses for your figs, but also solve the problem of how hard it has always been to remove and re-insert the standard arms into the standard torso. How? Watch the video below to find out!

Crazy Arms will only be available through a Kickstarter project. So if you want to get your posable fleshy hands on some, you’d better back it before the end of the month!

Don’t dare take your eyes off these Five Night’s At Freddy’s LEGO characters

If you live with teens or pre-teens then you’ve probably seen your fare share of videogame fads. A year or two ago it was Minecraft. And before that it was Angry Birds. But without a doubt, the big one right now is the minimalist jump-scare game Five Night’s At Freddy’s. And while we brace ourselves for that inevitable wave of FNaF merchandise to hit store shelves, let’s enjoy these suitably creepy-looking LEGO versions of the game’s characters, built by David Pickett:

In his usual fashion, David has created them at three different terrifying scales, including custom mini-figs! And many of the characters are represented – check the Flickr album to see them all.

And if you wanna take a crack at building your own, David has even made a couple of instructional videos showing you how his were put together:

Figuring it all out

The printed micro-figs introduced with LEGO’s new SHIELD Helicarrier set seem to be generally well received by fans. Our Facebook poll suggests 2 out of 3 of you are in favor of them! So I expect before too long we’ll see people customizing them. Customization of classic mini-figs is nothing new, but customization of the newer Friends mini-dolls is way less common….

And that’s a shame, because I for one find them more aesthetically pleasing. If LEGO could just fix their rather limited range of motion, I think it’d be great to see them used in future Movie or TV based LEGO themes. Flickr user JustJon obviously agrees, and has been repainting one Friends fig every week along those very lines:

Pictured above, as if they needed any introduction: Luke Skywalker; Sailor Moon; Ghostbuster; Deadpool; Catniss Everdeen; Red Sonja.

UPDATE: The creator just pointed out that he previously created an entire set of superhero Friends customs, which are equally awesome and can be seen here.

Brick Warriors’ Dragonmen, Jester and More [Review]

Brick Warriors has been releasing some really interesting items lately. Having bought some of the new items and some old, I thought I would share my thoughts, as it’s been a while since we reviewed Brick Warriors here.

The first new item that caught my eye was their Dragonman Head. It has really nice detailing, including forehead ridges, spikes on the side of the head and segmented scale up the back of the head. The nose/snout and jawline slope sharply down and forward, giving the head a really nice profile. The fit is excellent, not too tight or loose. The head is available in 5 colors: Black, Gold, Green, Dark Red and Brown. I bought a green, dark red and brown. All three are a very close match to official LEGO colors. There is a slightly different feel to the plastic in comparison to LEGO, but it is barely noticeable. When combined with Brick Warrior’s Dragon Wings and either the Dragon Tail or the Barbed Tail, you can make a great Dragonman figure.

Supplementing the release of the Dragonman head, they have also created a Lizardman weapon, armor and shield. I picked up a couple of the armor pieces and one each of the weapon and shield. The details on the pieces are really cool. The armor looks like it made of stitched-together plates and has a nice fantasy feel to it. It has a large spike on each shoulder, two clips on the back for wings, and a single, hollow stud for the tail. The weapon is spiked club that looks like various teeth have been fastened to it. The shield is probably my favorite. It is a scalloped circle with what appears to be the jawbone of a dragon lashed onto it. Quite the barbaric piece!

I ordered all the Lizardman pieces in black, so there are no color issues at all. There is one minor issue with the armor in that the wings are a bit loose, especially on the left side. The wings fit tightly on the Demon armor and in official LEGO clips, so it is only an issue with the Lizardman armor. The wings stay on and are still easily posed, so the issue is minor. To change things up a bit, I also ordered the lantern shield, bearded axe, demon sword and demon shield to go with the other two dragonmen. All items have excellent detail and fit perfectly. These dragonmen and accessories are a huge hit in my house! I originally ordered a single green dragonman, but each of my boys decided they had to have their own. After raiding on their piggy banks and two more orders later, three dragonmen now live in my home…but in completely separate collections.

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Minifig Customization – The Purist Way

Pete Reid has decided to show us the actual process behind the creation of the green classic spacepeople! Okay, not really. When I realized that he had recreated the most common tools and supplies for minifig customization all out of LEGO, I had to laugh. It is really well constructed and very realistic looking. I’m super impressed with the cutting mat and the handles on the knife and paintbrushes.

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