Sometimes it’s just fun to play with minifigs. Despite all the LEGO Star Wars sets I’ve built to review over the last month since the movie’s release, there are still some key characters from The Force Awakens missing from my collection. One of the most intriguing new factions is the Knights of Ren, of whom we only really get to know Kylo Ren, their commander. There was, however, a brief flashback that showed a squad of Knights lit up by lightning on a rain-drenched battlefield, so I thought I’d take a crack at building minifig versions of the Knights of Ren.

While the minifigs themselves are just your usual “figbarf,” I’m pretty pleased with the presentation. I’m not skilled with Photoshop or GIMP, so I primarily just use the Photos app on my Mac. First, I took my photo of the minifigs on a black cardboard background. With a screenshot from the movie trailer as a reference, I began post-processing by darkening the photo significantly, and reduced the warmness to get the bluer tones for the background as seen in the movie (which fortunately still kept the minifigs black). Next, I found a free online tool that lets you add effects like rain and a vignette to photos, so I processed a copy of my photo with that tool (first the rain, then the darker, blurred vignette border).

All in all, it was fun to build the minifigs, taking me back to my early days online, but I particularly enjoyed finding easy ways to post-process the photo to mimic the movie still.