Modelling collectible minifigs for official LEGO book - Can you help?
Aled started this discussion in Parts and Decorations Design

Hello!

My name is Aled and I'm a designer and author and (with the permission of Scrubs) I use Mecabricks to create books for LEGO. My first book (LEGO Small Parts: The Secret Life of Minifigures - available on Amazon!) came out at the start of this month. Mecabricks is an incredible tool that has equipped me with an arsenal of rare parts and decorations for this project. Something that would have been prohibitively expensive and inconvenient photographing real brick builds.

For my next project, LEGO want me to use as many of the characters from the collectible minifig series as possible. On Mecabricks, a couple of the series are almost complete but many are not close and there are loads of gaps and partially complete characters. While I am able to model and submit decorations, I can't model missing parts.

If that is something that you could help with, I would be really grateful and there is a good chance that the parts that you model will be featured in my next official LEGO book. I know there is a long list of missing parts that people want on top of the constant flow of new pieces, but anything you could do to help model pieces of your favourite collectible LEGO minifigs would be amazing. Not any of the licensed series like DC or Disney as I can't use them, but any of the LEGO collectible series.

I appreciate many of the unique one-off parts in these series are complicated to model and tend not to have wide applications across many sets/builds so on the surface they are less 'useful' to the community, but I think set-building and storytelling using Mecabricks is amazing and these types of parts and minifigs really enrich that.

I'm putting together a spreadsheet of all the missing parts and accessories for each minifig that I will share and keep updated. I'll post in this thread the ones that I would really like to use, but honestly, any part or accessory that is missing that you can model is super helpful.

Thank you!

Aled

7 replies · Page 1 of 1

Have submitted part decorations for the Birthday Cake Guy minifigure.

I need hair part 35693 modelled https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=35693&idColor=11#T=C&C=11

and Cake, Double Layer with White Icing and Bright Light Blue Ribbons Pattern https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=35860pb01&idColor=104#T=C&C=104

Avatar of Scrubs
Administrator

@Aled Did you try to contact directly TLG about getting the 3D models? The LOD4 or LOD5 version that they have would do the job. Otherwise, for each part like these ones, it is about a full day of work.

Currently, I am the only one to model 3D elements. It requires some knowledge and a combination of skills that you can not really acquire quickly. It takes time and dedication. The learning curve is quite steep and it took me 10 years to get there.

Ah apologies I thought there was a bunch of folks here modelling and submitting 3D elements. I completely understand the amount of work and expertise involved and was putting them out there in case folks were interested and able to help. I will ask TLG directly and see if they can assist. Thanks for the suggestion!

Avatar of Scrubs
Administrator

If needed, don't hesitate to put your contact at TLG in touch with me regarding this. I used to deal with a team in the US and I know a little bit about their 3D files.

Thank you. That would be the ideal scenario, I think. I am making contact via my editor and I will let you know what happens. They really want the newer series of the minifigs featured so I'm hoping they will be receptive.

thatll be cool if you get their models. I wonder how they are? Just interested haha

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