cylonchaney's custom figures

[cylonchaney]

Hi Folks,

Starting a new thread for custom figures. I've made a few Minimate customs that I'd like to post but it will be mostly 3d printed stuff of my own design.

My first customs come with a bit of a story. Some of you may recall from my vehicles thread that my initial Cylon Raider was actually too small to hold a Cylon Minimate. I hate to be wasteful and this really bothered me. Soooo close. LOL But what to do with the 3 I had already printed?

 

I have an idea. Lego minifigs are smaller than Minimates. How about a Lego minifig? There is no Cylon minifig. OK. There are lots of minifig parts on thingiverse. There is a helmet I can use. All I need is a torso. So I made a torso and completed a Lego Cylon.

 

 

Problem solved. Right? Well not exactly. Can you guess what the problem is now?

 

 

 

Seated, he's basically the same height as a Minimate. Grrr. What if I design my own Minimate-like Cylon figure. Maybe I can get some kind of speed boost or something.

 

 

 

Well, that doesn't really help either does it? But if we can upscale the Raider to fit a Cylon Minimate, we can downscale a Cylon Minimate-like block figure to fit a Raider.

 

 

This time, problem solved once and for all!

 

 

 

 

The end.

[luke314pi]

That's really cool!

[bilbofett]

They're adorable. Take your Cylon to work day. 😁

[minimateship]

a mini minimate! such a lovely cylon family

[cylonchaney]

I was playing around with some more printed figures and it dawned on me how iconic some looks can be. Take the following. Just a blank figure in the character's base colours. No decals or hair. And I bet a ton of people could guess the character. 

Another crap looking close up photo. 🤣

 

[cylonchaney]

And another one. Maybe a little tougher but I bet there are quite a few people who could correctly name all four characters, even though two of them are identical at this stage. Again, I find it interesting how much is conveyed by so little. I guess that's why block figures work though.

 

[minimateship]

the yellow wiggle? 😛 inspiring as ever to see! I get the feeling those in the Star Trek thread are gonna love these i look forward to acquiring more Data

[cylonchaney]

Bet you can recognize these guys now.

 

 

Edited October 30, 2023 by cylonchaney

[cylonchaney]

Once again, my photography lets down the quality of the work. LOL These are lit from the absolute worst angle for catching the edge of the stickers.

 

 

 

Edited October 30, 2023 by cylonchaney

[buttheadsmate]

As someone who is proud to own some of cylonchaneys minimates, I am qualified to say that they are quite superb . 

[cylonchaney]

8 minutes ago, buttheadsmate said:

As someone who is proud to own some of cylonchaneys minimates, I am qualified to say that they are quite superb . 

Thanks! I think they are fun for being 100% home made. Technically they are not Minimates, but a block figure of my own design. I'm not kidding about this. I considered calling my design "Buttlimates" in honour of a certain member here.

I'm pretty amazed with what can be accomplished with hobbyist tools these days. It's a great time to be any kind of artist in terms of the tools available to you.

All of the faces are using my technique of using clear stickers and painting the eyes white on the backside. I'm not very good at it and they often bleed. But when I get a good one I really like how it turns out. Worf is the second attempt because of this. I always print extra faces so I can have a couple of tries. I may have another go at some of the face sticker designs. Worf's  brow ridges need another go and Data looks angry. He should be almost smirking.

I've actually made quite a few characters now. I have all these grand plans to unveil them. The problem is I'm way more into designing and making them than I am into posing and photographing them. I was getting close to actually doing this with one that's been years in the making when I sidetracked onto this. I think I might have a mild case of ADD. I'm easily distracted and have many unfinished projects on the go.

[buttheadsmate]

I'll elaborate on cylonchaney's stuff.  I had received a rather magnificent load of this guy's vehicles , "amazing stuff" thought I  .  Over the next day or so I went back to the box they were packed in , lifting out the ships & studying them yet completely disregarding the minimates that were packed within the box . I do still get a kick out of Minimates but TBQH I just thought  " hey the guy's even packed a few BSG 'mates for me !"  I was totally immersed in the ships .....then ....& only then..... it clicked  ......

...they were cylonchaney's workmanship .......they are that good   

[NerdyTrev]

Is that Steve Austin in the back ???

[Padrino]

wait, did you 3d print the entire figure?! That's amazing!

[cylonchaney]

3 hours ago, buttheadsmate said:

I'll elaborate on cylonchaney's stuff.  I had received a rather magnificent load of this guy's vehicles , "amazing stuff" thought I  .  Over the next day or so I went back to the box they were packed in , lifting out the ships & studying them yet completely disregarding the minimates that were packed within the box . I do still get a kick out of Minimates but TBQH I just thought  " hey the guy's even packed a few BSG 'mates for me !"  I was totally immersed in the ships .....then ....& only then..... it clicked  ......

...they were cylonchaney's workmanship .......they are that good   

I don't know about you, but my failing eyesight makes many things look better than they are at this point in life. LOL But thanks for the praise.

2 hours ago, NerdyTrev said:

Is that Steve Austin in the back ???

That is indeed. My favorite show as a kid. I had the action figure. He's been waiting for a sheet of white sticker paper to get a proper chest decal. I need to redo his shoes as well. He was only intended to be test piece but I keep slowly fixing him up. I might make him an engine block to lift one day.

1 hour ago, Padrino said:

wait, did you 3d print the entire figure?! That's amazing!

Yes. These are fully 3d printed "Chaneymates". LOL In this next shot we can see Troi in the foreground. This is why McCoy never trusted those damn transporters. That's an upscaled Lego hair piece and it has already had support material removed. The rest of the parts are as they come off the printer. The brim around the bottom is to help the parts stay stuck to the print bed. This and the support material need to be removed. But aside from that, most of my stuff is as it comes off the printer.

 

[Padrino]

you are profoundly talented

[cylonchaney]

 

[elhonez]

Nice! I like Bev's hair.

[cylonchaney]

My talents do not include hair sculpting at this time. Both ladies are sporting downloaded Lego hair pieces upscaled to 120%. The right side of Beverly's hair should hang down further but it broke off when I was cleaning things up. It still looked ok as is so I kept it. But it was intended to have a longer look. I have a head design with a rounded top and a peg for use with Lego hair. But I find it's unnecessary. They hold on well enough with friction to my standard head.

Also, credit where credit is due. A lot of my decals are downloads from our decals thread, some modified by me. Worf is my only original design and even there a couple of small bits are borrowed.

Are there any armchair engineers out there? Geordi's visor just barely holds on. It's just friction and the small amount of pinch it applies to the head. Just looking at it the wrong way will make it fall off. I just can't see a way to lock it on at that size. The obvious thing would be to make a couple of cylinders protrude from the head where the little flashy connectors are. Then make corresponding recesses in the the visor. It would sort of clip on. The problem is that kind of thing is too small at the sizes we're talking about here. It's the only idea I've got and it won't work. I'll probably just glue it to his face. But removable would be so much cooler. I could try gluing it to his hairpiece but I don't think that's going to work well either. Anyone have any brilliant ideas?

I will try to see if I can make a couple of tiny micro-dots of poster tack and see how that works. That's all I've got. I'm just grateful that it holds on long enough to take photo at least.

[elhonez]

You mentioned the approach I'd take -- glue it on, and make a second swappable visor-less head.

I recently was banging my head trying to get glasses super-glued to a hairpiece, but the connection points were just too small. I ended up glueing the glasses straight to the face, and it worked like a charm.

 

[cylonchaney]

Here I am talking about the hassle of gluing it to the hairpiece when I designed both parts. LOL Gluing to the hairpiece is super fussy IRL. But trivial in CAD software. I designed and printed a unified hairpiece. But in the end I'm sticking with poster tack. Pun intended. I put the smallest ball I could make on each end of the visor. The I press fitted it a couple of times and trimmed off the bits of tack that gushed out. There is enough left to hold but it's tiny. It holds great and is removable for posing or repainting. And if I change my mind I've got the unified hairpiece similar to a Cyclops one.

[cylonchaney]

 

Peacemaker is 125% scale. Roughly the same size as 2.5 " mate. As usual my photography skills are not helping. LOL

In person, you can see Heisenberg's glasses and some detail on his jumpsuit.

Edited November 5, 2023 by cylonchaney

[Captain Paco]

On 10/29/2023 at 11:31 PM, cylonchaney said:

 

LOVE THIS WORF.....I would love to get me a couple of them.

 

[cylonchaney]

On 12/4/2023 at 11:23 AM, Captain Paco said:

 

Thanks!

Do you have access to 3d printing in some way?

The Bat'Leth is from thingiverse. I can send you the file for the hairpiece and head stickers. You have the skills and resources to take it from there.

If you need me to send you 3d printed stuff, maybe we can work something out.

 

[Captain Paco]

I don't have a 3d printer but I know two people who do.

I have access to sticker paper so could likely bull that off.