Barry’s Blueprints of Hits and Heartbreak

[buttheadsmate]

I'm not sure if I'm on record as having said this before but I find it amazing that so few Minimates characters 'smile'.    There are characters with demonic smiles ,some smirks & an occasional grin but very few with a truly happy smile .

Minimates make me smile but TBQH they're generally a grumpy bunch of bastards

Edited October 8 by buttheadsmate
grammar

[Barry]

1 hour ago, elhonez said:

Are you the Asgardian guard?

Yes, that was one of them.

 

53 minutes ago, buttheadsmate said:

I'm not sure if I'm on record as having said this before but I find it amazing that so few Minimates characters 'smile'.    There are characters with demonic smiles ,some smirks & an occasional grin but very few with a truly happy smile .

Minimates make me smile but TBQH they're generally a grumpy bunch of bastards

It does come with the nature of the characters, and there was early fan feedback that people didn't like the characters smiling, especially alluring smiles on women.  It's not fun drawing grumps though, because I often mirror the face I'm drawing subconsciously, (something we were taught in animation), which usually ended up with my brow hurting, or headaches.

[FightTheDead118]

3 hours ago, Barry said:

 

Sometimes likeness issues came down to misunderstandings of the drawn style.  Not everyone in approvals understood the comic book style line art.  In one case, an approver insisted I'd drawn a character with a moustache when they clearly clean shaven in the movie.  Confused, I assured them I didn't draw one.  It went back and forth with their frustration level rising until I asked them to point out where this moustache was.  Turns out they thought the lips were a moustache and the shadow under the chin was a mouth.  It was a real-life version of the Mr. Burns “Get rid of those sideburns!” gag from The Simpsons.

 

You know that reminds of a random thing thats been bugging me for 10 years, what happened to Hartigan's chin from Sin City? Every prototype of that figure and even the artwork on the back of the box he has a chin, but the figure doesn’t. Was that a manufacturing error or some weird likeness issue?

[Barry]

6 minutes ago, FightTheDead118 said:

You know that reminds of a random thing thats been bugging me for 10 years, what happened to Hartigan's chin from Sin City? Every prototype of that figure and even the artwork on the back of the box he has a chin, but the figure doesn’t. Was that a manufacturing error or some weird likeness issue?

I honestly didn't remember this, but then I wasn't doing all of the sample approvals at this point.  All I can figure is the factory accidently deleted the lower lip / chin element by accident when using the tampo file.  There was only ever one version of the design and it matches the tampo file that I have, both of which have the lip and chin.  So, it wasn't a case of being revised at some point.

[buttheadsmate]

4 hours ago, Barry said:

It does come with the nature of the characters, and there was early fan feedback that people didn't like the characters smiling, especially alluring smiles on women. 

Cherchez la femme perhaps ? Or not ?

My vague , vaguer then usual, comment regarding 'Donatello & his likeness' is a self-deprecating comment about my own diastema . For those that don't know , you can live with a 'diastema' but there will always be a gap in your life .

Here's my question to everybody.....arguably one of the most famous women on the planet has a diastema, yet her Minimate portrays her mouth-closed              Is she also the only Minimate with a mole ? *

* I will not tolerate answers such as "Harvey Elder"

Edited October 8 by buttheadsmate
sp.

[Padrino]

32 minutes ago, buttheadsmate said:

Cherchez la femme perhaps ? Or not ?

My vague , vaguer then usual, comment regarding 'Donatello & his likeness' is a self-deprecating comment about my own diastema . For those that don't know , you can live with a 'diastema' but there will always be a gap in your life .

Here's my question to everybody.....arguably one of the most famous women on the planet has a diastema, yet her Minimate portrays her mouth-closed              Is she also the only Minimate with a mole ? *

* I will not tolerate answers such as "Harvey Elder"

Madonna? I think Sand Serrif had a mole

[cylonchaney]

14 minutes ago, Padrino said:

Madonna? I think Sand Serrif had a mole

Madonna seems a good guess. I wish there was a Letterman Minimate.  

[Barry]

Kendra Shaw had a mole too.

I don't think Madonna would have had a full gap if we'd drawn her with an open mouth.  Maybe just a hint of it like the beginning of the gumline that was sometimes drawn.  Nothing like Donatello though, which I couldn't figure at the time if it was a gap or a full missing tooth. 

At that scale, you have to weight what's needed and what looks distracting.  I always found that for every additional line you put on a woman's face you age her about 10 years.  Not sure if that applies to teeth, but still something to think about.  It's definitely weird if you outline each tooth, and also if you put a full line from left to right where top meets bottom.  We usually had them fade in the middle to look less creepy.

[Nessex]

On 9/10/2025 at 6:19 AM, Lobsterman said:

 

One of the fringe benefits of working on paint masters was that, every so often, Robert would send me a big box of goodies. These were usually prototypes for figures that would soon be released, but on occasion I would get some that made it to proto stage but didn't go into full production. These are obviously among the most treasured items in my collection.  

Sweet zombie jesus - THESE are absolute jewels.

[MisterPL]

I recall Jennifer Lawrence "declined to participate" in the Days of Future Past line, resulting in the cancelation of Diamond Select's Mystique figure. 

And I know Sigourney Weaver hadn't signed off on likeness rights to Alien but did for Ghostbusters, I believe. Which is great for anyone wanting a Ripley in lipstick. 

[BuffaloDelorean]

44 minutes ago, MisterPL said:

I recall Jennifer Lawrence "declined to participate" in the Days of Future Past line, resulting in the cancelation of Diamond Select's Mystique figure. 

And I know Sigourney Weaver hadn't signed off on likeness rights to Alien but did for Ghostbusters, I believe. Which is great for anyone wanting a Ripley in lipstick. 

I wonder if that had anything to do with Alien Ripley having Aliens Ripley's haircut.

[WookieFodder]

On 10/1/2025 at 12:14 PM, Barry said:

When characters appeared at multiple retail locations, they were considered the same figure.  In my tracking sheets they were listed as 'reused' characters even if they were new for that release.  (So, new for Specialty, reused for the same corresponding TRU wave).  Some ended up with small differences, like the Wolverine belt situation, but those weren’t intentional or planned running changes, so I don’t keep separate production files for them.  Similarly, I don’t log a specialty version and a TRU version as different in my own list of everything I worked on.  They're the same figure.

At one point, there was more than one factory involved, but I’m not sure how long that lasted since I wasn’t project manager then.  That may have caused differences like the Wolverine belt, but it could just as easily have been a matter of different runs done at different times.  All the source files were identical and the variations likely came down to a factory or individual missing something.  

Occasionally, sets were re-run multiple times.  For example, Deadpools Assemble (my original title was “Deadpools Resemble!” but I digress…) was produced at least four times.  Over the years, minor differences are inevitable, but I still consider them the same figures.  I understand that some collectors care about those small changes, like Star Wars POTF2's infamous long vs. short lightsabers, but from my perspective they’re all the same figures.

As far as intentional changes go, there was only ever one true running change, and I don’t think anyone has ever noticed it.  The Hulk Through the Ages set originally included Classic Iron Man’s helmet among Maestro’s trophies.  When we re-ran the set years later, the original helmet tooling was unavailable.  The factory asked to swap in the Extremis Iron Man helmet, and I approved it since it fit on the base without issue.  Since most die-hard collectors bought the first release, the revision likely went unnoticed.

 

Honestly, I’m a little relieved we never got to Eternals because I think the tampo costs alone would have broken the bank!  I know some of the post-Endgame MCU characters remain frustrating holes in collectors’ shelves, but at least we did manage the one What If? set with the Zombies from Season 1.  The only reason that happened was because most other What If episodes would have required new tooling, while the Zombies were existing MCU designs just reimagined in animated, zombified form.

As for my own collection, I don’t have any playsets or dioramas only because of the sheer size of it.  I’ve kept one of every figure I worked on, and when I had them displayed, they filled rows upon rows.  So many that I eventually ran out of space.  Sadly, I took them all down during an office redesign.  Maybe one day they’ll return, but for now I’ve shifted focus to statues in my personal collection.

When the figures were up, it was incredibly useful having them right behind my desk.  I could just turn around, glance over the rows, and spot suitable reused parts for a project without digging through storage.  Then I could easily take them out and kitbash a new figure together to make sure the parts worked without interfering with each other.  The photo I have here is the last shot I took before taking them down that I can find.  They were displayed on old IKEA VHS/DVD shelves, which I’d customized with acrylic doors for combating dust.  Since then, I’ve completely redone the room with Moducases.  For reference, there's 4 rows of figures on each shelf, so there's just over 2,000 displayed here.

A funny little side note: the reason Minimates come with stands at all is because of my own greedy need for them.  My own collection kept dominoing over, which drove me nuts.  I brought the issue up to DST, arguing that it had to be happening to other collectors too.  Since the added cost was negligible, we went ahead with them, and they became standard.

this is cool!

[Barry]

On 10/10/2025 at 2:59 PM, BuffaloDelorean said:

I wonder if that had anything to do with Alien Ripley having Aliens Ripley's haircut.

Her likeness issues were known online due to other companies lines including her.  It was decided to keep the hair the same to keep her generic and ‘the same character’ but I don’t think it was specifically requested.  I think because we had the generic one approved we just kept it.

I’d only heard about the Jennifer Lawrence thing online when everyone else did.  It didn’t seem to stop the Minimate.

On 10/10/2025 at 3:30 PM, WookieFodder said:

this is cool!

Thank you!!

[Trekker 42]

On 10/8/2025 at 1:40 PM, Barry said:

Yes, that was one of them.

@Barry is... is Dracula you?

I know it's not Lugosi. I remember there being a bit of a thing when he came out about not quite getting likeness rights to do Lugosi. And I see some resemblance in the eyes between the Asgardian Guard and Dracula.

Barry are you Dracula?

[Barry]

16 minutes ago, Trekker 42 said:

@Barry is... is Dracula you?

I know it's not Lugosi. I remember there being a bit of a thing when he came out about not quite getting likeness rights to do Lugosi. And I see some resemblance in the eyes between the Asgardian Guard and Dracula.

Barry are you Dracula?

Well, I don't enjoy garlic bread...

I do see the resemblance to other versions of me as you say, but on this one we just went with a generic interpretation, hence where the resemblance comes from.

[buttheadsmate]

Barry Vladfield ?

- batsdeadmate

 

Edited October 15 by buttheadsmate

[buttheadsmate]

On 10/10/2025 at 7:14 PM, MisterPL said:

And I know Sigourney Weaver hadn't signed off on likeness rights to Alien but did for Ghostbusters, I believe. Which is great for anyone wanting a Ripley in lipstick. 

I always loved this 'mate but until now I just never fully appreciated how beautifully designed it is . Superb. 

Edited October 15 by buttheadsmate
sp.

[Barry]

16 hours ago, buttheadsmate said:

Barry Vladfield ?

- batsdeadmate

 

I love this!

But seriously, I'm no vampire.  Just invite me into your home and I can explain...

 

16 hours ago, buttheadsmate said:

I always loved this 'mate but until now I just never fully appreciated how beautifully designed it is . Superb. 

Uriel designed the original face for her possessed version, then I modified the art it to use on this version.  I completely forgot that this set was supposed to have new parts with alternate civilian parts.  I don't remember why we had to change it, Ghostbusters was doing really well at the time.  It might've been a timing issue, as tooling takes a lot longer to produce.  I must've known we were heading in that direction when I was finishing them up because that marshmallow bag is an unbelievably lazy drawing.

 

[Barry]

Final designs with reused parts for comparison:

[buttheadsmate]

Those characters would have been great additions to a great line.

Of course I enjoyed the movie but I enjoyed the Minimates more than I enjoyed the movie .  Go figure .

 

On another matter.

Barry, sooner or later my respected fellow-member 'Trekker' will start a thread.....  'Best Thing Minimate ' .   Can I please ask you why this figure never quite got made with a head-colour that matched its head-piece. (brow) ?   Wave 37 'Thing' was nigh on perfect but the head ,once again, killed it for me.  There is a reason ,there must be ?  My thanks in advance.

 

[Trekker 42]

21 minutes ago, buttheadsmate said:

Those characters would have been great additions to a great line.

Of course I enjoyed the movie but I enjoyed the Minimates more than I enjoyed the movie .  Go figure .

 

On another matter.

Barry, sooner or later my respected fellow-member 'Trekker' will start a thread.....  'Best Thing Minimate ' .   Can I please ask you why this figure never quite got made with a head-colour that matched its head-piece. (brow) ?   Wave 37 'Thing' was nigh on perfect but the head ,once again, killed it for me.  There is a reason ,there must be ?  My thanks in advance.

 

Amusingly it was almost today’s but Doom highjacked my keyboard. 

[Barry]

48 minutes ago, buttheadsmate said:

Barry, sooner or later my respected fellow-member 'Trekker' will start a thread.....  'Best Thing Minimate ' .   Can I please ask you why this figure never quite got made with a head-colour that matched its head-piece. (brow) ?   Wave 37 'Thing' was nigh on perfect but the head ,once again, killed it for me.  There is a reason ,there must be ?  My thanks in advance.

I know a lot of people didn't like how he often came out.  He seems like he should be simple because he's mainly one colour, but that actually creates bigger problems. 

The cap was usually painted plastic, while the head underneath is injected.  Both use the same Pantone, but injected and painted colours will never look exactly identical.  They reflect light differently and have different surface finishes.  The injected pieces are usually more translucent and shiny while the painted ones are solid and matte.  The thickness of the plastic, and whether it's ABS or PVC can change how the colour is read as well.  If you try and adjust them to separate Pantones to force a match it actually makes it look worse.  Different Pantones are clearly more different than the same Pantone applied in two different ways.  Because of cost, we weren't going to be able to create custom mixed colours where it's a very small percent difference.

Not that it really applies to Thing, but tampo Pantones can look different than painted or injected ones too.  You sometimes see this on lighter colours that don't stamp as well as darker ones (mainly whites, caucasian fleshes, and yellows).  Often they require two or three hits to match the same quality of the same Pantone when painted.  You can even see this in some colours like reds on Spider-Man, where the stripe down his upper arm does not quite match the red of his mask.  The arm red looks darker and not as saturated.  Hitting it twice might make it pop more, but then it's hard to tampo on a curved surface, so you risk an increase in errors.

We had looked at orange tampo lines to mimic the sculpted rock texture when a wash was not applied, but that made the face stand out in a VERY odd way, which wasn't going to pass approvals.  It looked like his eyes and mouth were floating, and it made him look really clownish.  His facial features are a part of the rock formation in the comics, so unless the facial detail was also orange it was going to look odd.  I tried making the shadows of his eyes and mouth also orange, but again it looked strange when up next to the whites of his eyes and teeth.  

When we used black wash to bring out the sculpted rock details, it would only work on textured surfaces.  So, we could never apply a wash to the head to make it match the head cap because the head's smooth and more polished.  The wash just beads up or wipes away, so it couldn’t be used there.  When you wipe a wash on the sculpted parts, it finds the crevices and holds there when drying.  There's nothing on the face to hold onto, so you'd get the somewhat dirty looking darker orange head cap and the clean bright orange face.  You could try to adjust the Pantone here, but the wash is unique to each figure so it wouldn't work well.

From a cost standpoint, there’s only so much you can do at this scale and price.  Tooling a new head with sculpted rock detail might have worked, but then you encounter the same tampo problem as when you use orange lines.  The face pops when there's no black rock lines with it.  Tracing every rock line with a paint pen so the sculpted rocks match the tampo would have required a lot of manual labor and driven the cost up far beyond what would have been feasible.  At the same time, making all the body parts smooth and covering them with a full-body tampo to perfectly match the head would’ve been far too expensive.  You would have ended up with a lot of 'only on the top surface' rock detail where it fades as it goes to the sides.  There would be no way to completely wrap tampo around his hands or feet, or the head cap.

So, it always came down to getting him as close as possible within the limits we had.  It’s definitely not ideal, but sometimes we had to accept when it was good enough.  If it makes anyone feel better, I never looked at a sample of Thing and thought that it was 100% amazing.  It's what we could do with the limitations we had.  I still think the modern bulked up ones turned out well, even if they were not perfect.  Wave 82's wash to tampo ratio looked really good, I'd thought, even though the base colour of the parts to the head were a bit darker.

[buttheadsmate]

First of all.....

......as an ex-printer & at one time running my own print business for nearly 20 years I totally ,fully , understand Colour & Pantone shades .  Ironically I learned to hide my Pantone book from my customers , I tired of explaining why the 'standard' of a Pantone shade/colour was 'variable'  in the real world where 'variable'  whites of gloss & uncoated paper is almost infinite .   Forgive the italics .

That said, I am truly humbled that the guy who designed the stuff that I have collected for nearly 20 years has taken the time to elaborate on my criticism of the finished item .   There was always a reason for the 'Clobberinman's' minimate head being a different hue , I perhaps knew ...but it's sometimes nice to know for sure.

I have also asked in the past why Ben has a separate brow-piece  "what other minimate would you put it on"  & "why can't DST give us a moulded one-piece head" thought I ?

Marvellous thread .

Thank you Barry.

-benheadsmate

 

 

 

 

Edited October 16 by buttheadsmate
sp.

[Lobsterman]

I just did a lecture on what I was calling the "physicality of design" to a college design class—all of the ways real-world production processes and technical constraints can impact design that you just don't have to think about when you're making a meme for Instagram—so I really appreciated this deep dive, Barry!  

Edited October 17 by Lobsterman

[thereasonsy]

On 10/16/2025 at 4:05 PM, Barry said:

I know a lot of people didn't like how he often came out.  He seems like he should be simple because he's mainly one colour, but that actually creates bigger problems. 

The cap was usually painted plastic, while the head underneath is injected.  Both use the same Pantone, but injected and painted colours will never look exactly identical.  They reflect light differently and have different surface finishes.  The injected pieces are usually more translucent and shiny while the painted ones are solid and matte.  The thickness of the plastic, and whether it's ABS or PVC can change how the colour is read as well.  If you try and adjust them to separate Pantones to force a match it actually makes it look worse.  Different Pantones are clearly more different than the same Pantone applied in two different ways.  Because of cost, we weren't going to be able to create custom mixed colours where it's a very small percent difference.

Not that it really applies to Thing, but tampo Pantones can look different than painted or injected ones too.  You sometimes see this on lighter colours that don't stamp as well as darker ones (mainly whites, caucasian fleshes, and yellows).  Often they require two or three hits to match the same quality of the same Pantone when painted.  You can even see this in some colours like reds on Spider-Man, where the stripe down his upper arm does not quite match the red of his mask.  The arm red looks darker and not as saturated.  Hitting it twice might make it pop more, but then it's hard to tampo on a curved surface, so you risk an increase in errors.

We had looked at orange tampo lines to mimic the sculpted rock texture when a wash was not applied, but that made the face stand out in a VERY odd way, which wasn't going to pass approvals.  It looked like his eyes and mouth were floating, and it made him look really clownish.  His facial features are a part of the rock formation in the comics, so unless the facial detail was also orange it was going to look odd.  I tried making the shadows of his eyes and mouth also orange, but again it looked strange when up next to the whites of his eyes and teeth.  

When we used black wash to bring out the sculpted rock details, it would only work on textured surfaces.  So, we could never apply a wash to the head to make it match the head cap because the head's smooth and more polished.  The wash just beads up or wipes away, so it couldn’t be used there.  When you wipe a wash on the sculpted parts, it finds the crevices and holds there when drying.  There's nothing on the face to hold onto, so you'd get the somewhat dirty looking darker orange head cap and the clean bright orange face.  You could try to adjust the Pantone here, but the wash is unique to each figure so it wouldn't work well.

From a cost standpoint, there’s only so much you can do at this scale and price.  Tooling a new head with sculpted rock detail might have worked, but then you encounter the same tampo problem as when you use orange lines.  The face pops when there's no black rock lines with it.  Tracing every rock line with a paint pen so the sculpted rocks match the tampo would have required a lot of manual labor and driven the cost up far beyond what would have been feasible.  At the same time, making all the body parts smooth and covering them with a full-body tampo to perfectly match the head would’ve been far too expensive.  You would have ended up with a lot of 'only on the top surface' rock detail where it fades as it goes to the sides.  There would be no way to completely wrap tampo around his hands or feet, or the head cap.

So, it always came down to getting him as close as possible within the limits we had.  It’s definitely not ideal, but sometimes we had to accept when it was good enough.  If it makes anyone feel better, I never looked at a sample of Thing and thought that it was 100% amazing.  It's what we could do with the limitations we had.  I still think the modern bulked up ones turned out well, even if they were not perfect.  Wave 82's wash to tampo ratio looked really good, I'd thought, even though the base colour of the parts to the head were a bit darker.

Absolutely beautifully explained. Hats off to you.