The premise of the Minimate Cover Contest is fairly simple. Recreate any comic book cover using Minimates in any media you desire. Since I've been in full Blender mode for some time now, it was the obvious choice. The first big obstacle was choosing a cover. I spent way too many hours on the Cover Browser searching for ideas. I had to find something visually appealing that would translate well to Minimates and be within my Blender abilities. After collecting a half-dozen or so, World War Hulk #4 seemed to fit the criteria.



Using the basic Minimate model, I roughed out the cover's layout. This way I wouldn't have to model parts that wouldn't be visible, like Iron Man's legs and Hulk's feet. Since this wasn't going to be animated, there was no reason to completely flesh out everything.



Every one of the characters in the cover has a Minimate figure released. But none were an exact match. Dr. Strange was the closest but his cape needed be a lot more dynamic. Black Bolt was close but didn't have the wings or helmet attachments. Iron Man was based on the Extremis version, while Mr. Fantastic was basically Stretch Attack with a different torso. Hulk himself varied quite a bit from his Minimate counterpart.



I love the way Reed's stretchy bits came out, especially where Iron Man is gripping him.



This is where the tweaking phase took over. It's a manual process to try and get the colors and lighting right. The light from Dr. Strange's magic display needed to affect the foreground without washing out the background. Then there's the background pillar. It's much brighter on the original cover, but in the Minimate version bright didn't work. The darker version made the mood a better match at the expense of accuracy.



Hope no one minded that I added my name to the credits in that final version.