Month: March 2017

Scratching yet another decal request off my list, I finished working on a young version of Admiral Yularen, as featured in the Clone Wars animated series! I wasn't sure if the right tone for his uniform exists as a torso, so I designed one opaque and one transparent decal:

Admiral Yularen features the same rank insignia and uniform style as seen in the show and two different expressions, one standard sceptical military expression and one more friendly, humorous one. Like Ahsoka Tano, this decal was requested by Florian and I hope it will serve him well in complementing his Lego Grand Army of the Republic!

Today, I finished another decal request – The Clone Wars star heroine, Ahsoka Tano!

The idea was to have a face decal of young (Clone Wars era) padawan Ahsoka Tano that's in line with the normal minifig face designs and does not have the unique The Clone Wars designs Lego used for that line of minifigs (cartoony proportions, overly big anime eyes).

Interestingly enough, there exists an official design that I could use for it! It is not used for the physically produced minifigs, but instead, it is featured in the Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars videogame:

This gave me a template to work with, but only for proportions sake. I then proceeded to tweak the design based on stills from the show to make it a little more authentic. Also, to keep in line with Ahsoka's grown-up face design from the Star Wars Rebels sets, I decided to give her blue eyes instead of black ones for continuity's sake.

The neutral expression on the left was the first design; I knew that a character like Ahsoka called for two expressions, so I wanted a basic one as a template first. In hindsight, it now appears to be rather boring looking, when the smiling expression on the right looks so much more lively and does the character way more justice. So in the future, the neutral expression might be changed to a fiercer, more aggressive battle expression, but for now it will have to do. This was the first of two decals requested, and before I update this one, I want to be done with the other decal as well. There's always a chance to go back to a finished design and make tweaks and enhancements at a later point in time.

With all the work for Nar Eurbrikka, working on decals is not my top priority right now; still, I try to get the requests done at a somewhat satisfying pace. So today, I finished a face decal that was requested quite some time ago depicting beloved Return of the Jedi-sidekick Nien Nunb!

This decal should work well enough on a flesh head, I think, even though I didn't get around to testing it live myself yet. If I do, I may post some photos depicting this iconic Sullustan.

When I get a request, I usually check if there exists an official design, first. In this case, Nien Nunb's puppet was so unique and iconic that I didn't even bother to look it up until I was finished with my own version. I just used still images from the movie as a reference and made this entire design from scratch.

Checking Brickipedia, I then was surprised to find out that there was never an official Nien Nunb minifig released physically. There exists a face decal design, but it only appears in videogames so far. Also, I find it worth mentioning that this is one of the rare instances when I actually do like my custom design more than the official one. But since the latter has been around for a decade, it is, naturally, rather dated and nowadays, Lego would probably release a more sophisticated revision of it if they were to produce an official minifig. But then again, with his unique head, big ears and custom cap, Nien Nunb's head virtually screams for a custom mold... let's cross our fingers that Lego will create one someday. Until then, feel free to use this face decal and enjoy your own custom Nien Nunb minifig!