October 18 – Captain Blackmoon by Morgan190

that hat is almost comical, yet due to the cape and the heavy set beard, it balances out and make this custom minifig look that much more intimidating. awesome stuff from morgan…and heres the last part of our interview with morgan-

whats your favorite lego set and why? whats your favorite minifig and why?

I have a fondness for all the old Black Falcon sets because that’s what I grew up with, but as for favorite set these days… Although not the whole set, I’d probably say the bad guy’s ship from the Hyperspeed Pursuit set. I don’t care much for the white police vehicle, but the black car is awesome in so many ways: compact, built well, highly swooshable, and the firing missiles actually make sense for once.

Favorite minifig is harder because there are so many good ones. Darth Vader is a good choice because he kicked off the Star Wars line for me and I think LEGO did a bang-up job with him: a tiny plastic Dark Lord of the Sith is just too cute.

If lego could create any set and minifig what would you wish for?

Oh, I would loooooove a UCS-style Castle set with the works: beautiful landscaping, graceful architecture, maybe a load of figures with a new, unique faction design. Mmm, castle… LEGO’s been doing a lot of forays into the AFOL realm recently with big, high-priced sets in themes other than Star Wars and it would be great to give some love to one of their core lines.

For a minifig, I’ll go much broader and say MORE FEMALES! They’ve been doing better about it recently but for the longest time I think the LEGO population was very Smurf-like in its gender split, which is unfortunate. More options is always good.

whats your favorite custom minifig?

JasBrick’s Brikviet Shocktrooper (http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasbrick/3081085360/) is easily a favorite of mine. The paintjob, even back then, was very much “him” and the precision work he did cutting and combining pieces is nothing short of inspiring.

if there was one custom minifig accessory that you could create, what would it be?

Nothing really in particular, but I always enjoy when LEGO creates more helmet types— I find that the headgear on a figure is often the most important characteristic so it’s always great to have more options in that department. Atlantis introduced some really nice ones this past year, for example, and the Space Police 3 helmets would be awesome if they weren’t so ding-dang huge and sit so high on a minifig’s head.

there’s obviously lots of competition and friction between all the different custom minifig accessory manufacturers? What are your thoughts on this? do you find you have a particular allegiance?

I actually find myself going back to BrickForge a lot because of their exceptional quality, good prices, huge range of options, and how well the accessories mesh with official LEGO pieces.

The Fine Clonier, Arealight, Hazel, Brickarms, Minifig.cat, and (most recently) BrickTW are all outstanding vendors for the various angles they bring to the realm of accessories. It’s fantastic having so many third-party options and I love seeing what all the various shops are coming up with. In this case, I firmly believe that competition is definitely a good thing!

are there any other custom minifigs creators out there that you look up to and admire?

Like I mentioned before, JasBrick is an obvious one because of the techincal prowess he consistently displays. I’ve always admired Shamils’ decal designs. Although not minifig-specific, Legoagogo has burst onto Flickr this year with some awesome minifig-centric displays that show off excellent lighting and photography skills as well. And Geoshift has been pumping out some really nice figures, too.

thanks for all your time and comments, morgan! lastly, are there any fans or people you’d like to give shouts out to?

Oh goodness… Umm, can I say everyone and just not leave anyone out? Ha! Once again it was my pleasure and thank you very much for taking the time to humor my ramblings. 😉 So I guess “thanks” to all the folks on Flickr, your blog, and anywhere else online who’ve taken the time to say hello and post comments over the past few years. Here’s to hoping there’s many more to come!