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Student Design Showcase 

Paid Work for LEGO Minifigure customizers

Throughout Drafting IV I received requests from two LEGO Minifigure customizers: MiniBIGS and EclipseGrafx. MiniBIGS is known in the LEGO community for his custom minifigures with decals having the quality of those found in LEGO kits, and EclipseGrafx makes Star Wars lightsaber hilts by hand as well as high quality figures. Images 1 and 2: The project received from MiniBIGS was a minifigure scaled FAMAS Rifle as it appeared in Call of Duty. The design went through three versions. Most of the changes were with the grip and magazine because they had to be condensed to fit with a minifigure's arm and hand shapes. Images 3 and 4: EclipseGrafx wanted CAD designs for some Lightsaber hilts since 3D printing and plastic-injection molding could produce more detail than by hand. Luke's lightsaber was a fairly easy design to start with this client. EclipseGrafx was impressed and wanted more at the same time, which really had my skills improved. The next design from EclipseGrafx was Yoda's lightsaber hilt. This was a very challenging design for LEGO scale because the hilt is very small but still had to hold a lightsaber blade. The clip holding the blade in place went through many different versions and was difficult to balance appearance and functionality, yet both EclipseGrafx and I are satisfied with the final product.

UNSC Armor and Equipment

Image 1: The LEGO Spartan III armor for minifigures consists of two pieces: torso piece attaching to the neck bar, and belt piece attaching to the hip. Image 2: The Spartan III armor has made significant changes since version 1. The shaping and usage has improved to match the unique shape of Spartan III armor better. The back of the armor has a bar that clips, minifig hands, and holes of the correct size can attach for more customization possibilities. Image 3: The belt part of the Spartan III completes the look of the armor. While the design of the belt seems simple and quick, it had to be revised many times to allow smooth arm and leg movement without interference. Images 4 through 6: The Jet Pack armor ability from Halo: Reach has gone through three versions. The final version has thrusters with bar pieces for http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=4589b to attach to simulate thrust on the thrusters, as well as different attachment points. The Jet Pack has two attachment points. The top one attaches to the Spartan III armor and the bottom attaches to BrickForge's Space Marine armor: http://www.flickr.com/photos/42832748@N05/5679795551/ Image 7 and 8: The Fragmentation Grenade from Halo: Reach has a unique appearance, and it's not just from its massiveness. The grenade was a challenge to make, but I got a better understanding of using the circular pattern tool in Inventor through this quick design.

LEGO Halo: Reach UNSC Weaponry Wave 2

Image 1 and 2: The MA37 Assault Rifle is the Army counterpart to the MA5B used by other branches of the UNSC military. The MA37's skeletal design is truly unique in shape and I wanted to capture the uniqueness with a functional LEGO part. Image 3 and 4: The M45 Tactical Shotgun is a pump-action shotgun used by the UNSC Army. The Reach Shotgun has many small spaces and details that would be difficult to produce with plastic-injection molding. I had many creative solutions to these problems, especially the ejection port and pump designs. Image 5 and 6: The M6G Magnum combines the firing rate of the Magnum from Halo 2 with the 2X zoom of the Magnum from Halo CE into one. This design is my personal favorite. It appears to be the most true to the original design. The section above the barrel as well as the scope (located below the barrel, strangely) turned out well in my opinion despite having difficulties shaping these parts well.

LEGO Halo: Reach UNSC Weaponry Wave 1

Image 1 and 2: The M392 Designated Marksman Rifle (DMR) is a UNSC medium-to-long range rifle. The challenge with this design was making a foregrip that has the triangular shape and a radius to be gripped by a minifigure's hand. Image 3 and 4: The Laser Designator/Target Locator is a UNSC piece of equipment that designates targets for orbital strike, using a green laser pointer. The Target Locator's details made this project difficult to design for molds. The scope and body can be gripped by a minifigure's hand, which was a feature I wanted to have in the final product when I started. Image 5 and 6: The M319 Individual Grenade Launcher is a break-action grenade launcher. The shape is really unique and required many different extrusions and lofts to design. Image 7 and 8: The Combat Knife is a multipurpose knife used by the UNSC Army in close quarters. BrickArms created a good LEGO combat knife design but wasn't scaled for a minifigure accurately or had a sheath. Part of this project was product improvement/innovation of BrickArms's combat knife design, which was my first time doing this for my LEGO designs.

LEGO Halo: Reach MJOLNIR MK V[B] Armor

Halopedia description: http://www.halopedian.com/Mark_V(B)_MJOLNIR_Powered_Assault_Armor The armor from Halo: Reach has an awesome design to it, and I wanted to create a LEGO compatible rendition. I wanted to make it, hoping that I can produce this design for my own hobby use and possibly for sale. This armor is made to fit on a minifigure torso and is designed to allow full 360 degrees of arm rotation, a flaw with other LEGO armor designs. The most challenging part of this project was scaling the details properly.

LEGO Halo: Reach Recon Helmet

Halopedia description: http://www.halopedian.com/Recon About 3 weeks of work went into making this custom LEGO Recon helmet from Halo: Reach. The Recon helmet is a favorite of Halo fans because it was extremely difficult to acquire in Halo 3. Goals I kept in mind during the design process: *Make the helmet small enough to be game accurate, yet large enough that it can be produced *Have a cut-out visor *Make the helmet possible to be gripped by minifigure hands *Have holes cut on the side for accessory attachment (similar to LEGO's Star Wars Clone Wars helmets http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemPic.asp?P=61189pb08 )

LEGO Halo: Reach Focus Rifle

From Halopedia: "The Type-52 Special Applications Rifle (or T52 SAR) [1], more commonly known as the Focus Rifle, is a Directed Energy Weapon used by the Covenant Empire in 2552. The Focus Rifle is a sniper-style weapon that...fires a continuous purple-tinted beam." I created a LEGO Minifigure-scaled rendition of the Focus Rifle. Inspiration comes from BrickArms, a custom LEGO gun designer/seller. About 5 hours of CAD work went into this project. I wanted to make the Focus Rifle because it is my favorite new Covenant weapon in Halo: Reach, and there was no way to accurately recreate a minifigure-scale rendition with LEGO parts. Features I wanted to include in the final design was the barrel of the gun able to be gripped by a minifigure's hand, and for the hole through the side to fit a LEGO bar through it. I also wanted to challenge myself into simplifying the complex organic shape of the Covenant weaponry. Only one part didn't work out as I had planned, and that is the triangular parts extruded off the barrel. I would have preferred for those to be cut into the part and be more rounded, but no solution I could think of looked good. After doing this project, I have a better understanding of minifigure-scale in CAD, and I could make more LEGO weaponry faster and more complex.

Custom LEGO Halo: Reach accessories

LEGO doesn't make any armor or weaponry from Halo: Reach so that's what I'm making.

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