The Missing Piece

Why did they come here? What lies inside their armour? How many are they?

The only thing that's clear is the path of death and destruction these "insectoids" leave behind. Be they biological, artificial or any other monstrosity in between, their appearance in Auran Vex is not a coincidence.

[Some recent pictures I took from my Space Marines, to be used in future Kill Team data cards]

As I was working on the chapter sheet for the Star Rise Defenders custom Space Marine Chapter, I started to think about the next steps and the challenges ahead.

The biggest one was that I needed a consistent and fast way to paint the chapter symbols on the armour. And the chosen chapter symbol is a circle which is quite hard to paint consistently by hand on a tiny curved armour. Painting that freehand in a large amount of miniatures was going to be too painful.

So I looked into different options, and the one I found most feasible was creating my own transfers with transfer paper for inkjet printer.

That would allow me to create designs on the computer and print them. There was only one problem: You can't print white transfers (with a normal printer). Which is what I need for most of the models...

I thought about stamps, stencils or white transfer paper, but they all seemed to require me to be good enough with a knife to cut the tiny symbol, which sounded even harder... So I ended up discarding them.

But after a lot of tries I managed to get decent results with the custom inkjet transfers.

This is a summary of my process to create and apply the transfers to the miniatures.

Note that I'm using this clear inkjet transfer paper from Green Stuff World, maybe there are some differences with other brands.

Step 1 Designing and printing the sheet

You need to design the symbols in the computer first and print them. I used Adobe Illustrator but there are other alternatives that don't require you paying a stupidly expensive subscription.

A few tips:

Print many more symbols that you think you need. Especially at the beginning you'll be wasting 3 or 4 for one single attempt (yeah it's that frustrating). If you need 10, making 30 or 40 copies is not crazy.

Leave sufficient space between them. You'll want an extra bit of the paper to hold the transfer to apply it (the example in the picture doesn't leave enough space in the small symbols and it's painful to use).

Print a test sheet in normal paper to see the colours, quality and sizes before printing in the transfer sheet.

Plan ahead, an A4 sheet has a lot of space for small transfers, so you probably have spare real estate. Think of any symbols or patterns you may want to use in the future!

Step 2 Apply varnish

The ink will be dissolved immediately when wetting the transfer if you don't do this.

Spraying the sheet with some matt or satin varnish prevents it (for the most part).

I used a cheap acrylic satin varnish spray from the DIY store for it.

Step 3 Applying the transfer

This is the step that you'll likely get wrong many times before managing properly. Keep calm and keep trying. It can be exasperating, but after several tries you'll get the hang of it.

A few tips:

The whole sheet is "transferrable", so you'll need to cut the transfers as close to the drawing as possible. This makes it hard to hold the transfer to apply it. Luckily with a bit of care you can leave a small protuberance and scrape out a bit of the transfer with the hobby knife, getting you a bit of paper without transfer that you can use to hold it with some tweezers. As mentioned before, this needs to be accounted for when printing, leaving sufficient space for that.

Don't use a lot of water. Submerging the transfer in water will likely destroy it. Instead, just get the back side wet and wait a bit until the top can slide out.

Let them dry on their own. Using anything else to dry them (like gently pressing with tissue paper) will likely blur them or break them.

Notes for white symbols

Depending on the design, you can achieve white transfers in two ways:

For coloured symbols with white background/frame, if the background is simple enough, you can paint the background in the miniature first and then apply the transfer on top. The transfer colours will look almost as printed over white.

This is how I did the small circular symbols:

For white symbols, you can paint with your acrylic paints directly over the transfer sheet!! You can print the transfer in a light colour that won't be very visible over the coloured miniature and paint over. It's much easier to paint on the transfer paper than on the miniature as you have a reference. You can do this after the varnish too.

You can see the difference between the techniques, from left to right: Freehand, Transfer with a bit of paint over after placing, Transfer with paint over on the transfer sheet.

Conclusions

The method is by no means perfect, and it still requires a good hand and practice especially for white transfers. But it is a fast way of painting consistent custom iconography in armies, even achieving very tiny symbols.

In my experience it is definitely faster and I achieved better quality than if I had to freehand directly on the miniature.

Here there are some more examples done with the transfers:

It's been relatively recent that I got back into the Warhammer 40k hobby. I had the chance to go to Warhammer World a couple years ago with some colleagues, and I got a pack of Space Marine Stenguard Veterans.

I just wanted to paint them in different chapters and have fun, learn new techniques and potentially move on. And so I did.

But an idea started to creep in. As a kid I never got to properly finish my Blood Angels army. And that's a wound that's never healed properly. My inner child was calling (again). So I started to muse about creating my own Space Marines Chapter, and building a small army. Enough miniatures to play a game perhaps.

But if I wanted to actually achieve this endeavour properly with the little spare time I have as a recent father and full time employed with another bunch of side projects I needed to be smart and patient. I needed to use all my experience in design, arts and craft.

So I started by designing the chapter in my head and imagining some lore that would inform some decisions I make. I chose blue and orange as those were colours I had just painted recently, got good results with and, well, I like them!

I did some quick tests in impcat, and this is the scheme I liked: The bright orange is a great contrast over the dark blue.

I decided to inspire them vaguely in Maltese history. I know we already have Templars and Hospitallers in 40k, but apart from the iconography I don't think they use much of the history (I'm not really knowledgeable in the Warhammer lore so maybe I'm wrong). But I thought my chapter could be a spin off the templars.

So enter the Star Rise Defenders! The elite warriors assigned to defend Auran Vex, a desertic planet that's constantly in siege due to some unknown important thing that nobody remembers anymore! The idea was that some Black Templars were assigned a mission to fight and defend a planet's outpost in a huge battle known as The siege of the Long Night. They resisted and emerged victorious at down as the planet's star rose on the horizon. And after some time a new chapter was born: The brave Star Rise Defenders, champions of Auran Vex!

The dark blue for the night, and the orange for the dawn. The symbol is a star rising on the horizon.

I had all the pieces to do some quick artwork, design more iconography and plan my project! And I produced a chapter sheet. I wanted to figure out the different armour configurations for the main roles in the army, and explore a bit the lore with some details.

I chose a miniature to do a test the scheme with a spare veteran. Some (many) weeks later I had the first of the finished models for this army: Luthien Velt, Captain of the 3rd Company.

The army now has a few more members and I think it's looking pretty good! My inner child is happy so far, but wants more!

I'll post more details about the process I've followed to get here, and how the models came to life!

If you like this project, stay tuned, follow and all that. There'll be some battle reports of some sort at some point. The Star Rise Defenders story just begun!

A quick Lego Streaming/WFH setup design suitable for any influencer minifigs!

Includes adjustable ring lighting and DSLR camera for the best video quality!

Buganvillas are common in the Maltese urban landscapes. They add a lot of colour to the yellowish limestone, so it was the perfect way to build some decoration into the outer wall of the Maltese Townhouse I'm making.

You can create one like this very easily with some relatively cheap and common Lego pieces:

Green, Bright green and Dark Green Plant Leaves

Green or Bright Green Plant Plates

Green and Reddish Brown Plant Flower Stems

Magenta Plate 1x1 with flower pattern

Magenta Star Accessories

Magenta Cone 1x1

Assembling it is really fun, as you can randomly place the pieces to make it look more natural.

You can begin by placing the Plant Leaves in the wall starting with the darker colours first. This will give it a nice shading, having the surface brighter than the background. Because the leaves are big and can be joined together you won't need many studs in the wall to add them.

Build some flowers in the green stems, mixing the star accessories with the flowers and the cones.

Then add them to the Plant Leaves, fitting them wherever you want. You can also place some flowers directly in the plant leaves, and add some of the plant plates to break a bit the patterns.

Lastly you can add some of the brown flower stems at the bottom, to emulate the trunk of the tree.

This is my long-term project that I've been building for a couple years and it's still far from completion... But here's there is the story so far!

Since I moved to Malta in 2014 I hadn't followed on my Lego passion apart from a couple Star Wars small models I bought to decorate my shelves. But in 2019 everything changed.

Around March that year I had the chance to go to London for work and I had passed by the Lego store there and brought a couple minifigs that were supposed to be my girlfriend and I to give her as a present. Later that year, for my birthday, she answered back by giving me one of those big Lego classic boxes. We always loved the colourful Maltese town houses that you can see around here in the island, and with that in mind and the Lego Classic box, we mused about building a 2 story town house for our minifig alter-egos to live in!

But of course, the pieces in the box weren't enough to achieve such a big endeavour... So I started to think bigger.

I knew I needed lots of bricks for the walls, so my first idea was to go into Amazon. I ordered a bunch of yellow bricks to start building the house, to soon realise they were the wrong colour!

After that mistake I searched a bit more in Google, and finally arrived at Bricklink. I had found that the Tan bricks worked much better as the limestone used in Malta for the constructions, and luckily for me, those are pretty common. Also the chosen colour of the house details is the standard Blue that has a huge amount of pieces too. After looking at the catalog I started to get lots of ideas, and the thought of building small sets for my family as presents started to take form.

I placed my first order for around 200 2x4 bricks in Tan colour (which I thought it would be enough for the walls), a few other pieces like windows and doors, and minifig and other parts for my brother's set.

Of course I soon understood that the scope of what I wanted to build was much larger I had anticipated... But that wouldn't stop me! It just meant it was going to take much longer...

I first worked in designing and iterating on the front of the house. Especially in regards to the balcony, which is the most iconic feature.

This is the first iteration of what the balcony could be. Using small 1x2x2 windows, and transparent bricks on top. The sizes don't match exactly though, making it look a bit weird with a row of 3 windows over a row of 4:

I also played around with the placement of the balcony, deciding finally that it would be placed in the right side over the door, with two windows in the left side. It was taking shape. I even started to play around with the arch that most Maltese town houses show on top of their balcony.

I also soon realised that this architecture wasn't going to work well if we wanted to play in the interior of the house, so we decided it should open like a doll hose.

To do that I had to rebuild the front wall to be split in 2 and separate from the rest of the house. I also reworked the design of the balcony to be a bit more representative using 1x2x3 windows. Unfortunately this is one of the few pieces that don't come in Blue, so I had to rely in a different shade for them.

The front was almost ready!

After several more Bricklink orders to get more Tan bricks (the 200 were barely enough for the front of the house!) and many other pieces, I was able to complete part of the outer walls, and some bits of the interior. I started designing the kitchen and worked in the layout of the base floor. I also got a big baseplate to hold the house and iterated a bit more on the balcony.

Now, with the front complete, the house opened and you could see what's inside!

From there I've been working more in the layout, improving the kitchen and the living room, and the walls. I have rebuilt the walls 3 or 4 times already, and after several more orders of Tan bricks of all shapes, guess what? I still don't have enough! XD

But it's starting to look more complete and detailed. I'm still working out some structural issues, trying to make it easier for me to adapt parts of the house without having to destroy everything.

I have added the staircase, started building a small terrace in the back, and got windows everywhere. I found it gets pretty dark inside when the ceilings are on, even if the front is completely open, so I may need to add some actual lighting on it. But that's for another day way in the future. I'm still figuring the basics out.

It is still far from completion and I'm going to have to throw more money and time in, but I'm quite happy with the overall result.

During the pandemic I've had a bit of time to dig deeper in to Lego design, and learn some very useful tools and techniques. I've even managed to design my own products to participate in Lego Ideas, like the beautiful Tyrrell P34 (please support it here or give it visibility by sharing it to anyone who could be interested).

So, how do I do my own Lego designs? I present you this 5 Step guide to design and build your own Lego sets.

Step 1: Design with BrickLink's Stud.io

The first step is to goof around with Lego! If you have a big collection you can start by playing around with your own pieces, but if you don't have what you need, don't worry! The computer is your friend here.

We all dreamed as kids about having an infinite collection of pieces to play with. Well, Stud.io is exactly that! Stud.io is a free software supported by the BrickLink platform (now owned by the Lego corporation) that allows you to design Lego sets with their vast collection of pieces. You can add any part that you want into your model in any available color, and connect them in all possible ways. It's just great fun! Also, it has CTRL+C and CTRL+V, which are really useful when designing big models.

You can also use their sister app, Stud.io Part Designer, to add stickers or create special pieces - just bear in mind this may be an issue to make the model a reality.

The learning curve can be a bit steep, and you probably need to learn a bit the 'lingo' (and the difference between plates, bricks and tiles). But give it a try, and in no time you'll be creating amazing custom designs. I recommend starting with something small and accesible like these designs I made for my family. They are a great present to give to your loved ones!

Step 2: Check your part list in Bricklink

Once your design is ready in the virtual world, you may want to make it a reality. This is also where Bricklink comes handy.

Your imagination and creativity has probably gone too far however, and you might not be able to find all the pieces that you want in the colors you want them. Stud.io now has a functionality that will warn you if a piece is not available in a specific color. But even if it exists it may not be easy to find in the market to purchase.

But don't worry, with Stud.io you can directly export your model into a 'wanted list' in the Bricklink platform. And with your wanted list you can check the availability of each of your pieces and see which sellers have them.

If you can't find some of the pieces you need continue to Step 3. Otherwise, if you are all good, skip to Step 4!

Step 3: Readapt the design

Oh no! That 2x2x3 window in blue color doesn't seem to exist... It's time to think outside the box and make sure you can build your model. Is it available in another color that you can use? Can you work around the model to get the same effect without that part?

Now it's all about finding solutions. I usually end up going back and forth between Bricklink and Studio to check what pieces can be easier to find and use. So get your hands dirty, rework your model, use more available pieces, and try Step 2 again. Maybe this time you can actually do it!

Step 4: Order the parts!

Once you are happy with the part list and you are ready to spend some money on it, it's time to buy!

You'd think that this is the easiest step, but even if your part list is comprised of very common pieces, you may need to spend some time preparing the order.

The sellers in Bricklink are no miracle, and they don't have all the existing pieces all the time. Bricklink's platform makes it easy to list the shops that have the biggest amount of the listed parts, but there are some caveats and things to look for. Some shops may have a minimum price you need to meet, others may have a minimum amount of pieces for a specific part (be careful or you'll end up ordering 300 1x1 tiles when you only need 3). The price of each part can also vary wildly between shops, so double check you aren't spending way too much for pieces you can get cheaper in other shops. Especially if you need a big amount or they are rare. The shipping costs and time are also factors to have in mind.

Once you are happy with your shopping carts, it's time to pay. I usually pay with paypal, but some sellers will accept other means. Once the payment is done, just wait and sit for the pieces to arrive.

Step 5: Build your model!

This is the last step, the one you were waiting for, the moment of truth!

Did you order the right things? Does your model build well and works? If you are lucky, you'll be looking at your very own Lego toy! Good job!

Ready to make another one?

Bonus step: Instruction design!

One of the most iconic features of Lego are the instruction sets. I won't lie to you, designing them is a huge amount of work. But it can be very rewarding, especially when it comes to gifting away your models to other people.

Luckily for you Stud.io also helps you with the instruction design! You can use its Instruction Maker to plan and print your instructions.

To design a good instruction manual, the most important bit is to plan the right steps. It helps to have the pieces with you so you can see how you'd actually build it (where do you have issues placing which pieces, where it's not clear, etc). You can also vary some colors if it makes it easier to see where to place them and it won't be seen in the model. Studying Lego's amazing instruction sets can help you understand how to do it better (not even Lego get's it right all the time!).

Once you know the steps and have configured them in Stud.io the rest is easier. You can go with the default style, or adapt it a bit. You can try to make it more personal or closer to the original Lego sets, it's up to you!

In summary

Following these simple steps you can start building your own Lego sets. Each of them will take some time and practice to master, but if you are a Lego fan I promise it will be really rewarding.

I'll also be posting some more insight into each of the 5 steps and some tips and tricks soon, so keep an eye out for more Lego content in this blog.

Classic 6-wheels Tyrrell P34 Formula 1 car designed for Lego Ideas.

Hi all!

My name is Enrique Hervás Caballero. I'm a passionate Game Developer with more than a decade of experience creating video games. But I've created this Tumblr blog to have a space to talk about other things. Specifically my Lego building hobby!

I've been quite obsessed with Lego since I was a kid and I got to play around with the Classic Lego Space. I loved the (apparent) simplicity of the designs, the instructions, the Lego pieces and minifigs.

These days I still buy and build Lego sets but I'm becoming more and more interested in designing and building my own creations. Like this sea scene inspired by Malta that I designed for a Lego Ideas contest: