I designed this miniature version of my Tale of the Three Brothers build, from late March of this year, for a microscale LEGO Harry Potter contest online. I had the idea to miniaturize my previous Wizarding World creation as soon as I read about the contest; after all, that build received such a warm response, and it remains one of my favorite presentations to date. So I set myself the task of making it micro!
This final build, the which I finished in a short day’s work, was a fun and quick exercise in miniaturization. While building stuff smaller-than-life in LEGO is hardly unusual (case in point: even my huge 40” Chateau de Chenonceau isn’t quite the same size as the real-life castle!), to take an existent design of mine and replicate it smaller was a novel task.
I encountered the most challenges in recreating my original Death design, which relied upon BIONICLE/Chima/SW Constraction capes arranged over a huge skeletal frame for its signature ethereal appearance. Tessellating Dementor capes and other minifigure fabrics to achieve the same effect took a lot of finagling, balance, and patience.
Other parts fell into place more easily. Replicating the original build’s colors was, generally, a breeze; after all, I had a template in the original. Not having to figure out the right color balance through trial and error saved me a lot of time!
Two parts of the micro-build that felt especially synchronous were the brown whips-turned-handrails. Just as on the original, where I only had my desired length of flex tubing in brown, these whips were my only viable options for the micro-build, and I only had them in that same hue!
I knew from the start that I sought not just to replicate the design of my original, minifigure-scale model, but also to replicate as closely as I could the original’s presentation. I made sure to photograph the micro-build under conditions as similar as possible to those I remembered creating for the original. Matching up background color and gradients, the picture’s saturation, brightness, darkness, and emphasis took a lot of fine tuning in post-production.
I opted for some of my original subtle after-effects, like the glowing wand tip and Resurrection Stone, but chose not to make Ignotus, the middle brother, slightly transparent here as I did on the initial image. I thought that would have looked too distracting at this smaller scale. Instead, I separated all three brothers from the scenery and each other by making them dark grey.