The next step of creating my custom LEGO minifigures is cutting and shaping. Ninjago Fedora Lloyd needs hair added to his hat and Dernhelm Éowyn needs space cut out for her legs so they can be repositioned without ripping off the custom decal. I started with Lloyds’s hairpiece.

This photo shows all the tools and parts I used for the hairpiece. I used the saw to cut off the top of the original Lloyd hairpiece and then used the knife to shape it to the angle of the fedora. The last step is fine sanding the hairpiece for a smooth join. This bit requires patience and lots of trial and retrial. I would say error, but there is really not a lot of room for error. The first time I made one of these custom fedoras I used more than one hairpiece before I got it right. The trick is to cut the hair above the ear spacing (the thinnest part) thick enough, but not too thick, to allow for a bit of sanding. The final step is using superglue to attach the pieces together. Here it is from the front and back views.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Derhelm Éowyn has leg decoration, so in order to make room for the decals on the legs to slide under the hip piece without being destroyed, a bit of shaping is necessary.

This photo shows the difference between a shaped and un-shaped hip piece. Edoras Éowyn’s legs are plain white so they don’t require any hip shaping. The dark brown legs have the space cut out for Dernhelm Éowyn’s leg decals. Without this space the leg decals would rub against the hip piece and get scraped off and destroyed when posing the legs in different positions.

This shaping process is fairly simple. I used my trusty X-acto knife to slowly carve away the inside edge of the hip piece until there was enough space for the decal. This also required some trial and re-trial by putting the leg pieces back on and testing with the paper version of the decal. I imagine with more experience I will know just how much to carve out of the hip pieces. This time, when I was sure there must be enough room, I would inevitably have to take the legs back off and cut just a bit more before the decal could comfortably slide under the hips.

Now my pieces are painted, shaped, and glued, and my decals are tested and fitted. I’m ready to put them all together.