A Photographer’s Story: Alicia Costalago Meruelo

Building

Minifigure Customization 101: Happy Birthday!

Article and Photography by Jared Burks

Hu Tao with a ghost.

Character turnaround. TM & © miHoYo. Let me get this out of the way quickly—no, I have not made Frosty the Snowman. For any one old enough to recall the 1969 TV special and know this character with his magic top hat, perhaps another time.

Um, no.

Today, I have made a custom figure for my daughter as a birthday present. She enjoys playing Genshin Impact and has a favorite character; even though she doesn’t have this character, it is still her favorite. Therefore, I set off to make her a custom LEGO based version of the character Hu Tao!

For those that don’t know, Genshin Impact is an action role-playing game developed and published by miHoYo, and it has been released across multiple platforms including Microsoft Windows, PS4/5, iOS, and Android. It is typically referred to as a GATCHA game, meaning it can be free to play, but to get the best items and characters you have to pay (notice my daughter doesn’t actually have the character). Anyway, Genshin Impact follows the deeds of the mysterious “Traveler” through the fantasy world of Teyvat. Teyvat is home to seven distinct nations, each of which is described by a different element and a different archon/god. The Traveler is searching for his/her twin sibling, as you get to choose if they are male or female. I can go on and on about the game, but the long and short of it is that the Traveler’s exploits take them to a city called Liyue. Different game plots introduce the character Hu Tao to the player and she is obtainable through specific wish banners, but has not been available to this point in my daughter’s play. Hu Tao is the 77th Director of Wangsheng Funeral Parlor, features a Pyro Vision (connection to the powerful element), and fights with a polearm. Typically, she is best equipment with the Staff of Homa (https://genshin-impact.fandom.com/wiki/ Staff_of_Homa). There is an immense bit of background on Hu Tao as with all characters in the game. To learn more, please visit: https://genshin-impact. fandom.com/wiki/Hu_Tao/Lore

As for the custom LEGO-based version of Hu Tao, there are certain required elements and additional bonus elements. I went after the critical ones first and will continue to chase the others as time permits. As you can see from the character study of Hu Tao, she is a character with a unique hair style and hat. These are critically important, and use of any “official” LEGO element to portray Hu Tao would be limited, as the hair must be unionized to the hat. So this was part #1 to find, create, or modify. Part #2 is the staff of Homa, her ideal weapon—actually almost every polearm-based character’s ideal weapon. As far as the non-critical, it would be a waist cape to emulate the tails of her jacket. I place less emphasis on these, as due to the LEGO proportions, she will have substantially less leg showing because of the way LEGO legs are scaled. What this translates to is it is less notable if missing, and now I wonder why I shared this bit beyond basic design. I will circle back shortly. Hu Tao’s hat hair combo is challenging and critical because there are many small details, from the flowers on the side to the delicate projecting hair bangs. These convey her character, and as such are key elements to her design, and will likely be fragile. Many of these elements may need to be reduced to properly create the part. It is terrible when I create a figure, and five minutes after it is created it, it’s damaged because I pushed the envelope of scale, so I had to critically think through how to manage this part of her design. While I do have some skills at designing parts in 3-D programs like Fusion 360, and I am attempting to learn Blender, this part would take me ages to create from the ground up. So I started looking for statues that others may have created that I could use as starting points. I found three different versions that were free and many for sale (several were the same model being sold by multiple people and at many price points, so please be careful). I found one listed on Thingiverse, but it was too low resolution for what I wanted. I found one in Blender, which looked amazing; however, details were way too small and I would lose so much. The third version I found was on a random website that led back to Thingiverse and is missing the character’s face; luckily I didn’t need that part.

As I didn’t know if this was going to work, I started with the last two, even though the details were fragile on the Blender version, and started reworking them using Meshmixer. Meshmixer is a dated program that is no longer supported, but still has some great options to alter and edit mesh files (STLs) so that they can be adapted to other purposes. So I twisted, warped, scaled, and modified the two designs, and ultimately decided on the one that was originally designed for a chubby style of statue, as opposed to the more direct game play figure, because it complemented the LEGO scale more. This design was created by Epsilonaughty (https://www.thingiverse.com/ epsilonaughty/designs). Epsilonaughty designed this figure off of Poofybird’s work (https://www.thingiverse.com/poofybirddesign/designs), which is where the face that is missing in the image above could be found. By using this chubby style, the smaller fragile parts were already a bit thicker and minimized the amount of systematically adjust needed. So perfection solution found, now I had to continue the modification to get it to fit on a LEGO head.

Hu Tao with the staff of Homa.

Another look at Hu Tao’s hair.

Some 3-D models of the character found online.

lee goldman jedi vector

Lee Goldman’s Jedi Vector Fighter

Article by Steven Smyth, Bantha Bricks: Fans of LEGO Star Wars Photography by Lee Goldman

Galactic greetings! I’m Steven Smyth from Bantha Bricks: Fans of LEGO Star Wars. Since the community’s founding in 2016, on an almost daily basis, I have witnessed amazing and creative Star Wars builds in the best Star Wars themed building brick group on Facebook. Lee Goldman is one such creative builder and recently shared this custom build of a Jedi Vector starfighter from the Star Wars High Republic era. You may remember Lee from a previous BrickJournal issue, #74 in July 2022, where we talked about his Sith Fury-class Interceptor from Star Wars: The Old Republic. His amazing ability to transfer a Star Wars craft design into a LEGO medium is a topic we wanted to revisit! Steven Smyth: How’s it going, Lee? I know you have quite a following with the members of the Bantha Bricks Facebook group and I know people in the community and beyond in other online discussions have been amazed by your many awesome Star Wars brick builds—but for the uninitiated, please introduce yourself and tell us a little about what you do.

Lee Goldman: My name is Lee Goldman and I have a business that focuses on educational snorkeling tours in places throughout the tropical Pacific. I started this business after many years working for travel companies that hired me to design and lead adventure tours throughout the Indo-West Pacific. I have a Master’s degree in marine biology and my family and I moved to Las Vegas in 2019 after living 20 years in the Philippines, Palau and Guam. I come from a family of engineers and although I did not follow their paths in life, I certainly got my love of building from them.

If you would be so kind, please refresh us on why you love Star Wars so much and why you choose the LEGO brick as your medium to express yourself?

In 1977, I was that wide-eyed, nine-year-old kid believing he just saw sci-fi fantasy perfection. To this day, I do not

Data File: Jedi Vector Fighters Jedi Vectors were a model of starfighter used exclusively by the Jedi Order during the High Republic Era. Designed to be a physical extension of the Jedi’s connection to the Force, the Vector was a sleek and streamlined vessel that emphasized performance and maneuverability. Renowned for its speed, it was a highly-precise craft that demanded extreme concentration from its pilot. Further cementing itself as the premier ship of the Jedi Order, the Vector’s weapons systems could only be activated with the use of a lightsaber as a key. This prevented non-Force-sensitives from using the ships and ensured deadly force could only be used in carefully considered situations.S

Source: Star Wars Wookieepedia

think much has changed! Star Wars is a philosophy to me. It is my childhood story that brings up only good things even to this day. To some degree, LEGO is like that too. I grew up with LEGO and building takes me to a comfortable place. Even more so, I love that LEGO can be a complicated and complex puzzle to be solved: “Here is the ship, now recreate it using plastic parts of various shapes and sizes and that fit together in specific ways.” Very challenging and very fun! Marrying Star Wars with LEGO was genius and something I jumped on the moment I saw set 4483!

I love that you designed and built a LEGO version of the Jedi Vector starfighter. What inspired you to build this particular ship?

I fell in love with this design the moment I saw it. I love ships that, even subtlety, resemble animals and nature. The hard part in the beginning was finding enough images. It took me several months before I could make a go at it, and I am still not sure I did an accurate job on the rear section.

IF YOU ENJOYED THIS PREVIEW, CLICK THE LINK TO ORDER THIS ISSUE IN PRINT OR DIGITAL FORMAT!

BRICKJOURNAL #77

LEGO® PHOTOGRAPHY, with guest editor SHELLY CORBETT! SCOTT MURPHY on how he brings his whimsical ideas to life, WENDY VERBOOM photographs LEGO minifigures meeting nature, and ARVIN COLOMA shows how to photograph LEGO in unexpected places! Plus BRICKNERD, AFOLs by GREG HYLAND, building instructions by CHRISTOPHER DECK, and JARED K. BURKS’ Minifigure Customization! (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99