While I was working on the Faris miniature, I had occasion to take some precise measurements of the Lego man's torso. I ended up recording all the info in AutoCAD, just so that I could more easily visualize the space I had available for batteries and wiring and such. I soon found that there was simply not enough room for the battery and resistor I needed. On a lark, I decided to neaten up my work and send it to the rest of the RPG group. You can see the drawing on the right. Click on it for a full-sized image. I was too lazy to dimension the parts. Everything is drawn to scale, though, should anyone want print out the image and measure the lengths proportionately. The base of the torso is 15mm across, and the neck is 5mm in diameter.
But what I didn't do is tell the group why I was taking these measurements. Darien, our illustrious GM, wrote me back and asked what I was doing. I wouldn't say, since I was building the Faris miniature as a surprise for him (since he had thusfar been left out of the custom Lego fad, and Faris was a popular non-player character). He speculated that I was trying to make a template for Lego clothing. I wasn't, but it was a darn good idea! We talked about it for a bit, and came up with our own templates. Darien made the first Lego clothing, a fold-over bib-type tunic, using an art package and a laser printer. Chrono Man, the Chrono Scion mascot, was the result.
From there, I went on to make more detailed templates. Two different types of capes (seen below) were made, by scanning Lego capes with a flat-bed scanner and neatening them up a bit. I have also made a more detailed tunic template, with wrap-around flaps for the sides of the torso. The tunic can either be made with ordinary paper, folded and taped into place, or printed onto self-adhesive white labels. In either case, the arms and head must be removed, and the tunic folded into place. The arm holes on the tunic are slightly oversized, to allow room for the shoulder ball joint. This also reduces friction at the shoulder, which can tear the tunic.
All three of the templates below were created at 300 dpi. So, once you have decorated them with your favorite art package, you will need to expand or shrink them to print properly with your printer. Simply divide the pixel dimensions of the images by 300 to get the size of the template in inches. Click on the image to see the full sized template.
