"We're ready to believe you"

So, with my MOCs of ECTO 1 and the Ghostbusters HQ building now completed (you can read about them here and here respectively) it's time to wrap things up with the piece de resistance - the Ghostbusters themselves.

(from it.wikipedia.org)

I had initially intended to make do with generic minifig parts for the guys, but after spending ages fruitlessly scrolling through pages and pages of minifig torsos, legs, heads and hair on Bricklink desperately looking for something suitable I decided to admit defeat and call in the experts. Minifigs.me, owned and run by minifig customization gurus Nick and Caroline, had previously supplied me with custom stickers for my ECTO 1 and Ghostbusters HQ models, and prior to that they made me some excellent custom Watford F.C. minifigs, so they were the obvious choice. They were happy to design me a set of Ghostbusters minifigs from scratch, and a few weeks after I contacted them the minifigures below arrived (click pictures to enarge).

Peter...."He slimed me"

Egon....collects spores, molds and fungus

Winston....."Ray, when someone asks you if you're a God, you say YES !"

Ray....."Symmetrical book stacking, just like the Philadelphia mass turbulence of 1947"

The torso designs, which are stickers, are superb, right down to the individually named overalls and the walkie talkies hanging from their belts. I also love the shoulder patches. Care has obviously been taken to find heads and hair which approximate the appearance of the characters - Peter is suitably sneering and slightly dischevelled, Winston has his little 'tache, Egon is clean-cut, calm and collected, and Ray has obviously seen a ghost.... You can see the guys posing together below in front of their HQ building (click picture to enlarge).

To complement the set of Ghostbusters minifigs I thought it'd be cool if I could come up with a design for Slimer (below), surely the most readily recognisable ghost from the movie. I played around on LDD for a while in order to try and come up with a LEGO version of the gluttonous, mucus-distributing phantasm which would be at least vaguely reminiscent of the real thing.

A Class 5 full-roaming vapor (from cinemascope-blog)

Once I'd arrived at a design which I was reasonably happy with I contacted Minifigs.me and they agreed to have a crack at customising it. I therefore went ahead and sourced the parts, built Slimer, put him in an envelope and sent him to Sheffield, and below you can see what Nick and Caroline sent back (click picture to enlarge). My Slimer consists of just 7 elements - a lime green robot body sandwiched between a 2 x 2 dome top and a boat stud, with phone handsets for arms which are joined to the body by way of Technic half pins. He's then been beautifully brought to life by a couple of Minifig.me custom stickers - I have to say I'm delighted with him !

To finish things off there was one last thing I needed - the Ghostbusters' equipment, and specifically their backpack particle accelerators. I quickly threw together a simple design for the backpacks at the same time as I was experimenting with designs for Slimer (LDD screengrabs below - click to enlarge).

Ever since the release of Series 11 of the Collectible Minifigures I've had the Welder stood on my desk, and I was never in any doubt about which element I'd use for the Ghostbusters' wand, or particle thrower, which fires the charged particle beam. The only downside was that I couldn't find the element ("Minifig, Utensil Welding Gun") in LDD in order to add it to my design above, so until I finally got to assemble the backpacks out of real elements I just had to use my imagination and hope it would turn out OK.

You can see Peter Venkman complete with his particle accelerator backpack and wand in the pictures above (click to enlarge). That welding gun works pretty well I reckon. The main downside of all the kit is that once the backpacks are attached the Ghostbusters need to be mounted on a minifigure stand, or stuck on a baseplate, to stop them toppling over. All four guys plus Slimer can be seen posing below with ECTO 1 (click picture to enlarge).

With everything finished I could finally bring together all the different parts of the build - ECTO 1, the Ghostbusters HQ building, the Ghostbusters minifigs and Slimer - and take the photograph below (click to enlarge). I've obviously taken a few liberties with the design and relative scale of the various components, but all things considered I'm pretty happy with how it turned out in the end.

So that wraps things up, then. I hope you've enjoyed reading this series of Ghostbusters-themed posts, and if you have any comments or feedback about the models then please feel free to share. Anyone interested in getting a set of Ghostbusters minifigs (or indeed any custom minifigs) should drop Nick and Caroline an e-mail at contact@minifigs.me. All that's left is for me to wish all Gimme LEGO readers a Merry Christmas - have a good one, folks - and I'll be back with my annual round up of the best and worst of the year with the 2013 Gimme LEGO awards.

"I ain't afraid of no ghost !"

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