Here's where it all started, way back in 1994. It was my first session playing in a new Champions campaign. I was stuck miniature-less. And, as they say, "Necessity is a mother..." Or something like that. I had a few paperclips, my trusty folding pliers, and a few minutes to kill. And thus, Minimalist Man was born. He's there on the left. Note the corrugated pizza box base with directional arrow. On the right is Minimalist Man II, made approximately two hours later. Note the over-sized feet, which give him the ability to stand without a base. Well, sort of, if nobody breathes.

The wire sculpted miniatures caught on. I later experimented with articulated arms and legs, different colors, anatomically correct proportions of arms and legs, and so on. I never really had any notable successes, though, until these. Here's a view of a Draco, a dragon, made from telephone wire. It was commissioned by my roommate back in college. Below the dragon's snout is Heatwave, a superhero with assorted microwave based powers (think Marvel Comics' Firestar, for those of you out there who follow comic books).

Here's a closeup of Heatwave and Draco. If you look closely, you can see Heatwave's goggles, and the steel pipe worn over his right forearm (used as a waveguide to better control his microwave powers). The base is cardboard, with an arrow to indicate his facing. And check out that action pose! It occurs to me that perhaps I should have dusted these two off before taking their pictures.

A few years later, I joined another campaign. Again, we lacked miniatures. The GM suggested using Lego men- A brilliant idea! Even without fancy additions and customizations like those below, you can create semi-custom miniatures that fit your character almost perfectly. Of course, you have to have a few dozen Lego men from many different sets, and a willingness to spend five or six bucks a pop to buy Lego sets, just to get a couple of choice parts. Here we see Calen, medieval blacksmith and symbiote with the legendary Phoenix. This is the first Lego miniature I made that was anything more than a simple out-of-the-box mix-and-match. The glowing red eyes are courtesy of an LED embedded in the head. The eyes were originally powered by a watch battery in the torso. If you look closely at the chest, you can see the texturing for his homespun tunic, and the strap for his travel bag. The background is courtesy of a trading card for the anime movie El Hazard 2.

Here's Kirby Shaw: rock star, time traveller, and all-round Action Hero(tm). Ten points if you know where I stole the name. We see him in his preferred blue jeans, leather jacket, and black T-shirt. In his hands is his trusty baseball bat, made from the centerpost of a pop rivet, marked with a black Sharpie, and distressed with a pair of pliers. And, yes, I gave him hair. He's kind of got the whole aging-rock-star thing going on. The hair is made from three shades of grey six-strand embroidery yarn: steel grey, beaver grey, and ash grey. The strands are threaded into holes drilled in the head and tied off inside the skull. Sy Sperling has nothing on me!

Kirby again, caught in spotlight. This time, we see him decked out in his black dirt bike gear and helmet. The armor is actually Lego samurai armor, painted black. Note the yellow panther eyes painted on the helmet, his trademark. In his right hand is his trusty shotgun. The gun has been carved and cut to scale from a standard Lego adventure set rifle. The barrel has been hollowed out and the stock painted black. On his hip is an aluminum Mag-Lite flashlight, favorite of security guards everywhere. The flashlight is a Lego antenna, cut to length, with a clear plastic Lego nub glued in the end for the lens. The holster for the flashlight is a modified Lego pipe holder bracket, glued to a 1x2 black lego piece. The legs have been modified to accept standard Lego fittings, so that the holster and belt assembly can be inserted between the legs and torso. This also has the advantage of making Kirby about 1/8" taller than all the other Lego men. This probably explains the smug little Lego grin. And, lest you think I know when to quit, you can also take a closer look at Kirby's own pocket dimension, Limbo. Don't leave home without it.

Here's two more medieval types. On the left is Gareth Byrne, adventuring archaeologist, and great-great-great-great-grandfather of Indiana Jones (in a metaphorical sense). On the right is the giant Cregor, professional monster hunter and wielder of the mighty Canopener. I can't take credit for the characters, which is a shame, because they are really cool. They are two more characters from the game that spawned Kirby and Calen. But I can at least claim credit for the model weapons they hold. Gareth holds the Ano-Chi, a rare and difficult weapon. The sickle is made from a plastic Lego shaft, cut to length and split on one end. The blade is a sliver of aluminum cut from a Coca-Cola can, scraped free of paint and pinned in place with a piece of safety pin. The hoop on the other end is a soldered wire loop. The chain is from an old necktie chain I sacrificed to the cause. Cregor's Canopener is forged from several different parts. The shaft is another Lego stick, a broom handle, if I remember correctly. The main body of the head is a spent 9mm bullet casing. You can see the firing pin dimple in the primer. Although it is difficult to tell from this angle, the brass tapers into the point from a plastic mechanical pencil. The top blade is cut from the the back of an old Olfa Touch-Knife, which just happened to have about the right size and shape. The entire assembly is glued together with 5-minute epoxy, and painted with metallic silver model paint.

Here is the mighty wizard Faris, complete with magic staff. The staff actually lights up red or green, by means of a two color LED. The images have been enhanced somewhat, as photographs really don't do it justice. Power is supplied to the staff by means of two button cell batteries built into the base of the figure (concealed under the cape). Wires run through the base to two terminals (ordinary sheetmetal screws) which stick up through the protrusions ("bumps") on one end of a standard Lego 2x3 flat. The legs, which fit onto these bumps, contain aluminum contacts which ride against the terminals when the figure is pressed into place on the flat. From there, wires run from the contacts, up through the legs, and into the torso. The legs were cut out to allow the figure to bend at the waist, while still allowing a continuous wire run. The wires in the torso continue on, one through each shoulder joint, and into the arms. It was necessary to drill the arms out as a two stage process, first through the wrist hole (with the hand removed), then through the elbow up to the shoulder cavity. Finally, the hands themselves were drilled out with a tiny circuit board drill bit, and the stripped ends of the wire were threaded to the "palms" of the Lego hands. The bared wires are simply bent flat against the palms, to provide power contacts for the staff. It should be noted that the Lego man still has a full range of motion, and has almost as sure a grip in the Lego hands as an unmodified figure. This is one of the challenges of Lego modifications: maintaining full functionality. The body of the staff is composed of two pieces of 1/8" diameter brass model building pipe. The two pieces are joined together with a piece of small plastic piping. This is importatant, as the piping must be strong enough to hold the pieces together, yet must still be non-conductive. The LED wiring was fed through the piping, with one wire contacting the top piece, and the other wire contacting the current limiting resistor inside the lower pipe. This resistor is connected to the lower pipe to complete the circuit. A drop of solder was placed on the lower end of the pipe, both to provide an end-cap, and to assure a solid connection. Color change is achieved by simply reversing the Lego grip on the staff. This reverses the current flow through the LED, and thus powers either the red or green element. If you have animated .GIFs enabled on your browser, you can see the staff in action, both in red and green. The head of the staff is a transparent green "Rock Raiders" crystal. The crystal was drilled out in order to provide room for the LED. The black pieces below the crystal are hollow Lego cylindrical elements. These elements were glued to the end of the staff, and provide a convenient connection for the crystal. The large black cylinder was provided to allow sufficient room for the soldered connections to the LED. The crystal itself is pressed into place, and can be removed and replaced with other appropriately modified elements for future use elsewhere. You'll notice that, with the exception of Kirby's shotgun, all of the weapons and tools are somewhat oversized. This is intentional. If you look at any Lego equipment, you will see that the scale is way off. For example, the original Lego rifle used as the base for Kirby's shotgun was over an inch and a half long. It was taller than Kirby! So, most of the equipment is oversized, to match the Lego standard. The handmade weapons are a little closer, but they still vary on the large size because of this. Well, that, and it's easier to work on the larger-than-life models.

Here we see Chrono Man, the mascot for the Chrono Scion campaign world. He's stylin' in his custom made tunic and cape. Chrono Man was made by Darien, the GM of the Chrono Scion campaign. If you have animated images turned on, you can see the detailed cape, complete with snazzy fabric texture. Legend has it that Chrono Man conceals the secret to time travel under his cape. Sadly, the pictures are just a bit too fuzzy. Take a look at the Lego Clothing page to see more of how the idea of custom Lego clothes came about, and to get templates to make your own! Joy! Joy and rapture!

Here we see Calen again, this time with the Phoenix Visage, a manifestation of the Phoenix within him. (It's kind of like the Jean Grey's "Phoenix Effect," for those of you who follow Marvel's X-Men. The GM tells me the idea was developed independently, which, in my opinion, makes it all the cooler.) Basically, this is what happens when Calen gets really upset. "Don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry." I had planned on making this addition to the miniature a year or so ago, back when I was still playing the Calen character. But the campaign went in another direction, and I decided to put Calen aside in favor of Kirby. I ran across the plastic slide, though, and decided to complete it. The Phoenix image slide started out to be a hand drawn scratch hologram. But the field of view proved to be too narrow for these purposes. Quite by accident, I discovered that illuminating simple scratches edge-wise can produce striking results. The slide at the right was made by taping a printout of a picture I found online to the back of a CD jewel case, and using an upholstery needle to create horizontal scratches along the borders of the image. The base of the unit contains three red high-brightness LEDs. The bulbs are forced up through the holes in a drilled-out standard 2x4 Lego brick. (The reinforcing cylinders inside the brick had to be wallowed out a bit and trimmed short to accomodate the LEDs.) A similar brick is installed lengthwise next to the LED brick. The second brick has a small toggle switch, a current limiting resistor, and two button-cell batteries. The Phoenix slide is glued onto a 1x4 brick, which is in turn snapped into place on top of the LED brick. And, viola, spooky floating firebird!

Here's another edge illuminated slide. This time, it's Kirby's "aura." In brief, Kirby can jump back and forth into his own personal pocket dimension, which he has named Limbo. The trick is, he returns to the same point from which he left. So, occasionally, it is important to know exactly where the dimension-hopping hero is going to land. In the past, we have used coins and odd pieces of Lego, or drawn little X's on the map. But, as you probably guessed, I just can't leave well enough alone. This one was made about a week after the Phoenix slide. It is powered by three SR721W watch batteries (rated for high drain use), stacked with a bend of wire on each end of the pile, and held together with a band of 3/8" heat shrink tubing. The lamp is a high brightness blue LED, supposedly good for 3.6 candles (or 3600 mcd, which must be brighter than a mere 3.6 candles). It's bright enough to leave some pretty good spots in your eyes if you stare into it. A tiny slide switch is concealed in the base, a single standard height 2x3 Lego brick. Otherwise, it's essentially the same kind of arrangement as the Phoenix.

Go back to PG Projects.