You did know I was a comic book/Lego geek, yes? ‘Cuz I would hate to have misrepresented myself.
So I may have mentioned a silly Lego minifig customization project a few posts ago. It started out with deciding that the current line of official Batman minifigs sorely needed a Harley Quinn (given that Joker, Poison Ivy and Catwoman were represented) — so I built one. Then in typical fashion it quickly spiralled out of control after surveying the rest of the DC comic book universe. So it’s been a hobby of sorts lately, getting me through the otherwise grim November doldrums. Picture of some of that work above. Batman’s the only stock character; all others designed by yours truly (well, original characters designed by DC, of course).
Construction notes in brief: those are all water-slide decals, drawn in Illustrator, printed on an Epson color inkjet. Other than Harley, I used Lazertran paper — the stuff is expensive, but great to work with, for one simple reason: on the same decal, you can choose areas to have either transparent or white backgrounds simply by choice of painting with water or oil varnish. (Why care? Inkjets generally can’t print white, relying on the color of the paper instead, and if you’re trying to keep most of the decal transparent, not being able to print white is a huge issue. Plus areas with white background also end up more opaque, so they keep the color truer if you’re sticking on a colored torso. Case in point: Superman’s chest shield would be green — yellow on top of blue — if I hadn’t painted that area with water varnish.) I was still figuring out techniques on Harley, so she ended up with Krylon Fusion paint under decals printed on cheaper (and much inferior) paper, and tiny amounts of Sculpey on parts of the hat. The bow and hammer came from BrickForge. I’ll be happy to answer any questions in comments.
Update: I’ve finished a few more characters, and started a photoset for them on Flickr.
December 25th, 2007 at 2:47 am
No question – just wanted to say they are fantastic!
January 10th, 2008 at 9:38 am
[...] “You did know I was a comic book/Lego geek, yes? ‘Cuz I would hate to have misrepresented my… Posted on January 10th, 2008 in Interesting [...]
February 20th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
How do we buy these cool lego minifigs?
Nick
February 21st, 2008 at 11:28 am
Sorry.. they’re not for sale at the moment
I’m a little afraid of DC’s lawyers were I to start making and selling these, and anyways my sweetie would be upset if I spent any more time making these than I already am.
February 27th, 2008 at 6:20 am
I would like to know where you found the hat for the harley quinn figure. it is not in my lego collection, nor in any of my friends.
Frederik 11 yrs
February 27th, 2008 at 7:58 am
Hi Frederik,
Harley’s hat started out as an old Space man helmet with the chin strap cut off. I painted half of it with Krylon Fusion, glued on one red and one black barb/helmet horn (like these), and finished off with some Sculpey to hide the seams and to make the white pom poms.
May 11th, 2008 at 9:01 am
can i by them
May 12th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
I was wondering if you could give me some more details on how to make my own decals for my minifigs using the methods you spoke of? Also waht Illustrator are you speaking of is it part of Microsoft Office?
May 13th, 2008 at 10:33 am
Adobe Illustrator is a vector drawing program. For this sort of work with solid lines and simple color fill regions, a vector mode package is ideal – as opposed to a bitmap paint program like Photoshop, although Photoshop also has vector tools that should be able to handle these. Another program of this sort is CorelDraw. There’s a free, open source program called Inkscape that I’ve used before and recommend highly. They do have a bit of a learning curve but the Inkscape tutorials are quite good.
So, I draw the decals in Illustrator, using official Lego minifigs as guidance; scanning the Lego parts in if necessary – this helps for color matching and making sure the decals have the correct size.
May 19th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
dear Levork,
These are so amazing! i just want to ask a couple of questions( I am neither a lego or batman nut so please
forgive me) A. Who is Harley Quinn, B. How did you make the Flash hat and C. Whos lego part did you use to
create these?
thanks, Kat
11 yrsold
May 20th, 2008 at 8:31 am
Hi Kat,
Harley Quinn is the girlfriend (or at least, willing accomplice) of the Joker, Batman’s arch nemesis. She’s kooky, possibly deranged, but somewhat misguided as she’s clearly infatuated with the Joker despite his rather shabby treatment of her. She first showed up on television in Batman: the Animated Series, and since then she’s shown up in the comic books.
Flash’s hat is made from three Lego parts: an old classic space man helmet, combined with two side plumes from the helmet of one of the Dragon Knights. I had to drill two small holes in the red helmet and use some crazy glue to get everything together.
Hope that answers your questions!
May 23rd, 2008 at 11:22 am
Hi
I am very impressed with your justice league lego minifigures.
I was wondering if you would be interested in selling your lego minifigures.
please write back.
yours sincerelly
Dylan Gray
May 28th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Hey there, levork.
Great customs you have there.
I was looking through your other ones on Flickr, and found you
saying you’d be making a white cape for Captain Marvel.
Not nessevary, mate. You can find them on Ebay, in case you were interested.
Click on my name for the link.
Good luck with future projects,
Brakken.
July 12th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
amazing job. you definitely need to make azrael and az-bats.
March 3rd, 2009 at 5:18 pm
Anyone know where I can find a color guide?
April 25th, 2009 at 5:36 am
Hi julian i have a mocpages account and i ut your justice league on it and my friend said awesome job and we would like for you to make robin 1 2 and3 thank you and have a nice day
April 25th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
sorry for putting your photo online without asking
August 31st, 2009 at 6:48 am
WHERE DID YOU GET THE SUPERMAN LEGO !!!!!