(Written by Taylor of minifigME.com)
LEGO sets are imaginative, character-based, interactive experiences and are the only toys my son and his friends consistently choose over media. LEGO has it all, except for just one thing; a way for kids and adult LEGO fans to have a perfect reflection of themselves in the form of a LEGO minifigure that can be used for play, display, gift giving and more.
So we thought to do something about this, and thus minifigME.com was born. We invented a brand new way of customizing LEGO minifigures to completely reflect a real person. To achieve this we first we take a close-up photograph of someone’s face, transform the photo into minifigME art and then apply it to a LEGO minifigure head-piece. We then complete the process by adding a finish that will protect the artwork and make it durable and long-lasting for both play and display. (UPDATE: this website is no longer available.)
We recently saw The LEGO Movie, and got inspired to create some new examples of our work. We took a shot at profiling some of the LEGO Stars “taking a break in between shooting”. We also did some cameos including Chris Pratt as Emmet, Will Ferrell as Lord Business, Will Arnett as Batman (yeah, we know it’s the wrong Batman suit… but he had to fly soon), and Liam Neeson as Bad Cop. It was a fun project!
We’ve also done minifigs of other starts; like the recent Sochi Olympians with Jenny Jones winning 1st ever snow medal for GB, Ellen DeGeneres hosting the Oscars, and David Beckham – LEGO lover and greatest soccer player ever.
Creating custom LEGO figures of real people is not just a fun process, but it also allowed us to be part of peoples’ lives during heartfelt moments that we never expected. We had the honor of making young LEGO-fan Mitchell Jones’s entire family into minifigME characters, which brought him joy just days before his tragic passing from Muscular Dystrophy (read full story here: Remembering Young LEGO-Fan Mitchell Jones). We also made a minifigME of a single father Marine and his young son and they, literally, carried each other around in their pocket (and their hearts) until they were reunited. We’ve also done minifigME characters of siblings for 3 families of separated foster kids that helped soothe their feelings of being apart.
These examples (and others we’ve experienced) just goes to show that LEGO is so much more then just a lifeless toy. We believe that facilitating kids to have their faces printed on “the all-time greatest toy ever made” fosters positive self-esteem as they can play out being Olympians, princesses and superheroes with their very own minifigure. And for parents minifigME characters are the perfect keepsake – like a child’s handprint from kindergarten.
If you would like to make your own minifigME character or considering minifigME as a gift to someone, come by to our website at minifigME.com and we can help you with the process. Also, if you have any questions, comments, suggestions or requests, please feel free to ask in the comment section below. Thanks for reading! (UPDATE: this website is no longer active.)
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I’m not sure about this. It just doesn’t look or seem right. the noses don’t help.
I agree looks… awful t.b.h. Not Lego enough.
Brian, that’s a good observation about the noses. LEGO minifigs (except the old Western sets) don’t have them. It would be interesting to see these minifigME figures without noses and see if that would make them more LEGO-like. I’m sure Taylor would appreciate suggestions like that and might even give it a try. 😉
I think they should move the parts around the face like with LEGO
Awful.
CREEPY!! Why change a good thing? LEGO faces are fine just the way they are.
Maybe give Taylor some constructive feedback on how their idea could be improved on? 😉
That is so creepy and weird!
very unique for one thing……but I think if hey lowered the eyes on each one, it would make for a more “lego” looking head =)
just my opinion though
I agree
I think you have to have yellow faces and not so spread out, more compact. And I think you need just regular lego expressions and faces and still try and make it look like you! 🙄
That’s what I do as well when I want to make someone into a minifig; try to find an official LEGO face that resembles them the best, then add clothing and headgear that matches what they wear in real life. 🙂
Yeah, it’s a great idea, but I would just try to use the official faces!
Yep, I do that too. Although I don’t have everything that fits how I look, so I just make how I feel at the time. 🙂
funny thing is, I was just thinking about this kind of thing yesterday. the only thing I have a problem with these is well, the faces are just too detailed, they need to be more minifigish. but on the other hand it was a cool idea that if a kid was away from their dad or mom who was a marine they could each have a minifigure that looked exactly like each other. 😀 so overall, cool but it needs less detail.
The artwork could be improved upon, I think,
If rather then focusing entirely on realisticness, you found the key features of a person, and then applied them to Lego form. If the features were like that of the person in question, it would most likely be recognizable as them, but not so realistic as to be creepy, as some people said. It seems like when Lego copies movie actors, they simmer it down to some key features and shapes, and then applies those in a Lego form rather then a technically realistic one. When you take a Lego version of a real life actor, and put them side by side, they don’t look as alike as you might expect, but when you see the Lego version, there is still no doubt that it is them. Just my opinion, and also if the features were placed closer together and more like official Lego people, it might help for them to be more accepted in the Lego fan community. Again, just my thoughts, I think it’s a really good idea, and with some tweaking could be even better.
Good points. The LEGO Lord of the Rings, LEGO Harry Potter and LEGO Star Wars minifigs are excellent demonsrations of what you are talking about.
Taking another look at the pictures, I think the base problem is the mix of real life on a toy. It just doesn’t go well, even if the technical side is correct. Like the first demonstration picture, the features are correctly placed but the Lego head is wide, which is what makes it look a little strange. I think it needs to be a little more cute, and more adapted to the Lego head.
These could be done as caricatures, but lifting line art from a photo and printing it directly onto the Lego head may not be the best method.
They are also violating the first rule of a portrait, human eyes are roughly halfway up the head. You might think they aren’t, but you’d be thinking of just the facial area and not taking hair into account. Go look at pictures of Lego minifig faces, both the classic plain smile or more recent ones. Now look at the above photos of the personalized faces. They would look 100% better if the face were printed a little smaller and lower on the head. The only ones that even remotely look okay are the ones with a large hat or hair piece, increasing the apparent dimensions of the head.
Good suggestions, good feedback. I have emailed Taylor to make sure she sees your comments. 🙂
I think that would require removing the middle part of the nose, (and then lowering the upper part of the face) in order not to shrink the face any further…
That would give the face more cartoony proportions, but it might still be a more viable option.
In order to keep the price down, it’d be necessary to maintain a simple photo -> head print conversion method.
Good concept, of course it’s not perfected, a little tweak here and there and it could be great!
I like some of the suggestions like removing the noses, and more facial expressions. But these would be good to display at the office as nice conversation starters.
We recently had some friends from Hawaii visit us, before they left I dug through my CMFs and gave our female friend the Hawaiian CMF with the maracas and she went ga-ga over it, she couldn’t believe it, she was like “Where did you get this???” so people are very attracted to LEGO that remind them of themselves.
My wife and I call each other “bunny”, so what we did was take two bunny suit guys, swapped out one face for a female face and placed them on the LEGO wedding cake topper :-D… we have it in our living room.
LOL about the bunnies! You guys are too cute! 😛
😀 .. why thank you Anna 😉
My first impression of these is: horrible! But if you take into consideration all the detail and problems with it, it looks like a worthy project.
In my opinion, noses just don’t look good on minifig heads, because noses aren’t flat. Thus, the only person you could really put a nose on the minifig for is Voldemort, since he really doesn’t have a nose 😀 .
Also, the actual printings could be darker. On pretty much every newer minifigure (2005+), the printings for eyes and mouths are mostly black and simple. MinifigMe heads have too much detail, which creates the shading that seems to set the whole face off. 😕
This is most of my thoughts on this, hope it’s not too confusing. 😉
As a side note, my brothers and I have started the boat part of MetalBeard’s ship, and we are already missing two pieces. 🙁
Thanks for the thoughtful feedback. It’s nice to see our community coming up with so many good ideas. As far as the missing pieces, you can call LEGO’s Customer Service and they will send them out for you. I would suggest that you wait until you finish the whole ship though to make sure you have an accurate count of all the missing parts. Yeah, I know it is aggravating, but it can happen. LEGO is very good at sending the missing parts out right away. 🙂
As the mom of a 9-year-old KFOL I think this is…totally awesome!! Would love to see my little boy as a minifigure. The idea of having him be able to be anyone he wants within any LEGO set adds a whole new way for him to play. Given the tiny (curved) space their working with, I’m amazed they can get this kind of detail!
As many others think, I believe these feel too much like “Uncanny Valley”. They come off… off… although I’m not sure on how to fix it…
Most official heads based on real persons are actually so “iconicized”, that they’d generally be more or less impossible to recognize without the other minifig parts in addition…
I think the faces are okay but I would really prefer getting generic faces in flesh tones. They have the charming Lego character but are not lemon heads. In these days of multiracial families it would be fun to have two colour choices, one pale and one tan coloured. That should cover the basis. I like the Lego figure expressions, just not the colour.
DON’T LOOK AT THIS ARTICLE AT 2 AM!!!