When watching my last film “Remake”, you have probably noticed the change of facial expression, when the main character notices he is being chased by bricks from the theatre. The face he is changing to is not exactly what I had in mind, but I just didn’t have the right minifig head that (a) matches the other (happy) face and (b) shows a scared or worried expression. Instead, I had to live with an angry expression, which some people, understandably, didn’t understand.

There are many different faces for minifigs and also some different expressions but it is hard to find several expressions for the same character. So, let’s look at minifig customisation. After some searching, I found that the best method to transfer designs to any surface would probably be the DecalPro system. It lets you transfer toner based print-outs by way of some special materials, namely, specially coated paper (called “TTS”), coated plastic foil in several colors (they are the core of the system and have a coating that will react with toner when heat is applied) and transfer foil. You also need a laminator a hot-air gun, some alcohol to clean surfaces and a paper cutter and cutting mat. After using the colour foil and applying the transfer foil, the whole thing is subjected to a water bath in which the transfer foil together with the coating and the toner will detach from the paper, ready to be transfered to the target surface. The biggest advantage over water decals printed on foil is probably that you can use black toner and have it appear as black, grey, white or a number of metallic colours or glittering effects. It is also possible to transfer full colour print-outs. If you use several layers, you can have a design with white areas on a dark surface. I bought the starter kit for 85 Euros (and a laminator for 20 and a hot-air gun for 15). Oh, and I also bought a colour laser printer (but I wanted to do that anyway ).

Does it work? Well, yes, but not without some experience. The Porsche logo below was my first attempt (included with the starter kit come two sheets with 24 printed logos to experiment, of which I tried about 12 or 13 before I did my own print-outs). Problems: The colour coating doesn’t seem to stick on the toner (as I found out later, this was probably due too little heating-up of the laminator), parts of the design don’t stick to the target surface (later, I applied a bit more glue to the decal and let it stay on the surface longer before I removed the foil, which seems to help).

My own print-outs: The Steinerei logo is missing two letters, which were lost during the water bath for some reason. The Bricks in Motion graffiti shows that half-tones work, too, unless they are to bright, like the “t”, “i” and “o”. In those cases, there seem to have been to many white spots in the printing pattern, causing the remaining dots to stick to the transfer foil, rather than the surface.

The faces are my favourites so far, even though the design is not perfect yet. They consist of two layers, white for the pupils and black for the rest. I can very much imagine to animate with heads like these.

(bottom head is an original from Lego for comparison)

Are they scratch resistant? Sort of, yes. Of course you can remove the design with your fingernails if you really want to, but normal handling will do no harm.

After some initial concerns, I now enjoy using this quite a bit. Even though parts of the design still dissolve during the water bath or don’t stick to the surface, I have had enough success to believe this will be useful.

All I need now are better designs, but I’m already working on that.

Links:

• http://www.pulsarprofx.com/decalpro/
• http://www.druckeronkel.de