In this week’s Insider, I’ll discuss the concept art development process for the MiniCrate models for the Legend of the Five Rings’ characters and showing previews of the miniatures in progress!

The first of these miniatures is Togashi Yokuni.

Above are the initial design sketches for Togashi Yokuni that present several options based on his existing art. Before we send out any images out for approval, we discuss which pose sketches have the most potential to make an awesome-looking miniature. The feedback we received from Fantasy Flight Games was that they liked almost all of number one, but they wanted the tattered shirt from number two, and the ropes around his wrists and the forearms from options five, six, and seven. The last decision to make was the pose itself, and the final choice was number three.

Fantasy Flight provided us with some visual feedback on the options they preferred as well.

With a bit of cleanup, Andrea Uderzo proceeded to final and presented us the concept you see above. Below, you can see the final painted miniature in all its glory.

Next up was Daidoji Uji, Male Crane Samurai. Andrea did two designs with alternate details for the collar and armor trim styles. Ultimately, Fantasy Flight chose version two but with modifications to give it a stronger center of gravity…and that wrapped it up.

Check out the render of the sculpt-in-progress.

For the Crab Samurai concept art, Andrea sketched up three separate armor concepts—version two’s armor with the legs from v1/v3—and pose three was the choice for the final model.

Renders of her sculpt-in-progress are equally engaging.

Then, for the Lion Samurai Matsu Tsuko, the first concept presented her sans helmet. Fantasy Flight encouraged us to add her helmet and change up the arm positions from pose one. Once that was established, we explored three alternate directions with the detail on the back of the helmet.

For the final version, we eliminated the hair hanging down the length of her back and went with a nice tie setup on the rear of the helmet.

Have a look at the Lion Clan miniature-in-progress.

And there you have it! Four of the finished concepts for the L5R MiniCrate line and a little glimpse behind their creation! Now’s the time to get your subscription—to get it from the very beginning, you need to sign up before December 5.

Time is running out! Go to www.mini-crate.com/L5R to get your subscription now!