Hi there! I’m Barry Bradfield — the other of the two artists who works on the artwork for Minimates. Along with helping create the 2-D control art, I also choose out appropriate colours and apply them to the black and white artwork. Once the artwork is finalized and approved, I then create tampo files that will be used to print elements of the artwork onto the final figures (such as faces and chest details).

With the release of the Iron Man Minimates imminent, everyone involved with Minimates are proud to announce that some of the Iron Man figures were featured on the Ultimate 2-Disc Edition of the Iron Man movie! During the “Making Of” documentary, Director Jon Favreau can be seen reviewing some of the figures. One of which was the Mark I armour, which he said was “awesome”!

Knowing that the director himself thought this is very satisfying to hear, as the Mark I armour ended up being the most difficult to design of the series. This was because of its chaotic design. The MkII/III suits, along with Iron Monger’s armour, have symmetry and a sense of manufactured design to them. The MkI armour, being made with scraps in a cave, has little of these qualities. This proved a problem since seeing a reference photo of the MkIII’s outer right leg, we’d know that the outer left leg would reflect the right. On the MkI armour, there could have been anything on the opposite side of his body we weren’t seeing if a reference photo didn’t show it. Luckily, the Mark I armour from the movie made an appearance at 2007’s San Diego Comic Con, and Robert was able to grab photos of it online to create a near-full turnaround of the outfit. I could now pick out some of the finer details, down to the stenciled lettering of “STARK IND.” on one of the back plates.

One of the other aspects to design into this armour was to make it removable in order to have a Captive Tony Stark figure underneath. In the movie, the armour covers Stark’s entire body, but here, we had joins that still had to be exposed in order to make the armoured up version of the figure poseable. Uriel set to work on capturing the likeness, and designing Stark without the armour on. Once complete, I made sure I could cover as much of him as possible with various removable pieces. Part of the trick of making the armour cover joints was in the colouring. Dark coloured pants easily made the leg joints turn into armour, but with Stark in a tank top, the bare flesh-tone arms posed a bit of a problem at the elbows. Luckily, Stark wasn’t being held in a very clean cave, so we decided some patches of dirt would do the trick to help disguise the elbows when in the suit.

Next time, I may discuss creating the design for Iron Monger, which was described by Mr. Favreau as “…the best toy yet”!