For a while now, Bartosz Sobecki aka Sobek_Bricks has been engaging the online AFOL community in an amazing way by showing off well-thought-out minifigure combinations. Known as fig-bashing, creating custom minifigures out of existing parts is a longstanding tradition in the community, but Sobek takes it to the next level.

Importantly, he also gives advice to other builders, new and old, on how to improve on creating custom minifigures. He does this by showing tutorials and by rating minifigures of others, teaching that creating minifigures can be a lot of fun!

I sat down with him to talk through his process and you might be surprised at how much thought goes into these “purist” custom minifigures.

An Interview with Sobek Bricks

Marco: Looking at your Instagram feed, it's clear that you love creating fantasy characters. Where do you get most of your inspiration from? And is there a theme that you like most?

Sobek: I take my inspiration from recently watched media and games, but I rarely recreate the exact characters they present. I like to build my own characters based on some of their characteristics. I often get inspired by others on Instagram who make custom minifigures, by new techniques and unique connections, or just NPU (nice part usage). Back in the days when I regularly browsed on BrickLink and ordered many parts, I was guided by the need to use those newly received pieces.

My favorite themes to build in are quite obvious, mainly castle. Lately, however, Dungeons and Dragons (DnD) has stolen my heart because I can create fantasy minifigures as individuals who do not fit any faction. I currently started a third DnD Series, which is a 2nd playable character series. I also did NPC’s upgrades which was actually the first time I recreated an exact character like Szass Tam.

Marco: What's your approach to finding the right combos for the minifigs?

Sobek: Well, it depends on the minifig. But being guided by the colors of the main parts you want to use is key. I want to have minifigures that look as aesthetically clean as possible, so every part used must match the figure. If the piece I am using has a specific detail, printed armor, fur effect, etc., it should have a connection with the arms, capes, legs (their print continuation/waste cape), armor type, and color. In the end, everything must come together if you are aiming for the best possible custom minifigure.

Vyrrith Kharathis, Tiefling bloodline of Zariel, Barbarian, Path of Berserker

Marco: What is your take on using non-LEGO elements?

Sobek: I am a purist. That means I don't use any third-party custom elements, prints, capes, etc.—only original LEGO parts, without cutting, gluing, tape, or anything. The only exception is the string on the bows made from the thread tied on them. I think that a limited selection of parts is what ignites creativity. Like with my Dwarf Paladin. If I had an existing shield in gold, matching the character, I would never have come up with a custom axe-head shield!

I’m also not fond of custom pieces from other companies or prints with a huge amount of detail. LEGO minifigures and prints have their own unique style and are “clean”. I would also like everyone in the world to be able to recreate my figures from original pieces.

Marco: How do you sort your minifigs and accessories?

Sobek: I have drawers from LIDL/ALDI for sorted pieces, as well as accessories for minifigs and storage boxes for built and WIP minifigures. It’s a cheap way to keep your parts in order, for sure not the best one. Drawers get dusty inside and there are only two sizes of them. However, I would like to find suitable frames for the figures in the future in order to properly display them.

Marco: Quite recently, you've started the "Rating your custom minifig series." That's an awesome way to engage with the community—what made you decide to do this?

Sobek: There are several reasons for this. Firstly, I enjoy seeing good custom minifigures. We have some legends in our community who rarely miss with their creations. However, that’s just a handful of profiles. Often, when looking at the Instagram homepage, I’d end up with five ads and four poor/mediocre figures out of ten posts, with only one good one. I was slowly getting tired of seeing the same mistakes made over and over again with minifigures in the community. I wanted this to change without rude comments because everyone has their own style. Nevertheless, some things remain universal regardless of the theme of the figure.

Secondly, I suffer from the affliction of seeing flaws in everything (and not only that, I can also appreciate the smallest detail). So, I wanted to use this for a good purpose: to help other creators, create better minifigures, and share my insights and knowledge. This also helps evaluate works in order to measure improvement in the future.

Thirdly, I wanted everyone to benefit from the process:

Small profiles can learn and have easier entry into the world of custom minifigures. As well as faster profile breakthrough at the beginning when they already represent a high level through sharing.
Medium and large profiles can polish their skills and, in the long run, get more ideas and techniques from which they could draw inspiration and also expand their audience.

I hope that thanks to this series, I have given something of myself to the community and that no one resents my low ratings. It is done with the best intentions. Everyone starts somewhere. I myself look very critically at my figures, so I adopt the same criteria for the applicants.

Fourthly, not everyone has someone with whom they can share doubts about WIP minifigures. So I wanted to create a place where everyone can ask for help even before the rating, I am always open and happy to give advice.

Marco: Can you tell me something about the criteria you use when rating those minifigures?

Sobek: I have a very sharp eye, so no detail escapes me! I look at the minifigurers as if I have been the one creating them. I pay attention to every part used, the idea, the techniques, color choices, overall looks and impressions. Every section must be perfected, otherwise you will face minus following my system.

Bonus points criteria:

+ New and unique techniques, or well-used (and tagged) ones.
+ Clean approach and unified color scheme—regardless of whether the fig has two or five colors, it should all match well (+ for castle figs, keeping the faction colors).
+ Self-built weapons and shields that are in line with the scale of the minifigure,
+ Proportions and reality are kept right. It’s important for me not to have a regular character holding giant weapons, two bows, or whatever.
+ Multiclassing done right—if you add a bow, there should be a quiver, a place to hold a sword, etc. Not everyone has their own bag of holding (but you can surely include it to make sense)!
+ NPU.
+ Well-matching hair color to the face print (beards, eyebrows).
+ Clever posing.

Penalty points criteria:

- Double belts (yeah, I hate those). If the torso has a belt, you shouldn't add another one on the hips.
- Non-matching skin color. Head, arms, hands, ears, those should match. Just like prints on the torso and legs should.
- Messed-up armor pieces. If you decide that your character has silver armor, he should have other parts made of the same metal. This applies to gloves, arms, neck accessories, helmets, and prints on the torso or legs.
- Discontinued prints between torso and legs.
- Pieces like hair not connected to the end that create strange-looking gaps.
- “Customs” not being customs – changing just the head from an OG fig is nothing fancy.
- Missed opportunities like unchanged hands, belts, switching arms, and empty hands.
- Too large of accessories like back builds etc.

Simplified final score explanation:

1-2 points for fig barf, where nothing works together at all, or for almost unchanged figs from the original.
3-4 points for mediocre minifigures where there is much to improve or change.
5-6 points for clean/semi-clean simple figs, often a maximum example of the “basic knight,” like a regular quipped knight or regular archer. Nothing bad about that, if executed right, these minifigs are also needed!
7-8 points for very good, complex minifigures with small shortcomings or the greatest executions of simple figs with unusual details.
9 points for one of the best minifigures… but not quite the best yet.
10 points (very rare) for the best minifigures that have ever existed, without a single identifiable mistake, showing the skills and mastery of their creator.

Marco: Do you have a certain favorite among the minifigs you’ve made, and why?

Sobek: That depends on the time when you ask! I often look very critically at the older minifigures I’ve made. So its’s fluidly changing. Currently my favs are DnD s1: Disembodied Mage, Gith Druid and Air Genasi Fighter, and from the rest: Squigmaster (recently posted), Skullcrusher Ogre, and Black Falcons Ultimate Knight. These are some of the best custom minifigures I think you’ll ever see on the internet.

Why are those my favorites? They shocked me immediately after their creation. Accompanied by a feeling of ecstasy, later not being able to look at them enough for days! I think that they are sort of my business card, as they are the culmination of skills and knowledge that I’ve acquired over two years of creating figures.

Marco: Making close-up photos of just minifigures can often be tricky. Do you have any tips or tricks? Like what do you use for lighting, or what kind of background and what camera settings do you use?

Sobek: My setup is kinda dumb, but if it works, it works, right? I am shooting all my photos and videos in a shadeless tent (40x40cm PULUZ PU5041B) with a ring LED light mounted on the top and an additional ring LED to better illuminate the minifigures from the front. I’ve built a stand for the phone I use as my camera. (Yes, I’m using a phone.) For older previous photos, I used a Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro. After that, I’ve been using my fiancé’s Samsung Galaxy S23. Now after a year and a half since the start of my Instagram profile (and thanks to a steady income from Instagram of $0 per month), I managed to get my own Samsung Galaxy S23+. I use a distance indicator made from bricks with a pointed bar on the side to know where to place a minifigure, so that’s always the same in every photo.

For tips and tricks, I am not the best person to give those. I literally have no knowledge of doing photos. Often, my photos get too much light, have odd shadows, or become unsharp, especially at the bottom or where the weapons get out of focus. I can share that if you can place the camera low to the ground, the photo will look better. I also always set up minifigures to be looking straight to the camera. I care a lot about little things, like posing the row of figures, opening and closing minifigures to the outside, matching the flare on the backgrounds between all three photos to have a straight line, and matching the background color between them as well. I use Lightroom (free phone version) to edit photos and Inshot for videos.

Marco: What can we expect in the future? More updated D&D minifigs, hopefully?

Sobek: You can surely expect more tutorials of customs I built, as they get more and more complex. I’m working on two demons at the moment. I’m currently struggling a bit with creating new stuff, so I honestly don’t know what you can expect in 2025 after the current DnD series is finished. But surely it will be from Castle or DnD! Let me know what you would like to see come back or which characters from DnD I should upgrade or recreate next!

Marco: I’m a huge fan of the Black Knights from the early 90-ties. So if you ever come up with something like that, I’d probably like it a lot. But I should probably just give it a go myself and let you rate it! Thanks for your time and for chatting with us at BrickNerd!

Have you ever created custom fantasy minifigures out of existing LEGO parts? Let us know in the comments below.

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