EclipseGrafx is a premium provider of custom printed LEGO Minifigures and accessories. They have been in business for over 10 years and are a huge supporter of BrickNerd. I have had the pleasure of personally knowing the people behind the business for eight of those years, and this past April, I got the opportunity to visit their home and office in Georgia.

During my visit, we sat down for an hour and discussed their start in the LEGO community, what goes into producing one of their products, what the community means to them, and so much more. So here is that conversation, I hope you enjoy.

Billy: So for anyone unaware, who are you, and what do you do?

Victor: I'm Victor Fernandez from Eclipsegrafx. We customize LEGO. I'm the creative part of Eclipsegrafx and do the printing and designing.

Maggie: I’m Maggie Fernandez, Victor’s wife and I am the administrative part of Eclipsegrafx.

B: How long have you been in business?

M: Since 2009.

V: Yep, we’re about to complete 12 years doing this professionally, but we've been customizing I think 13 years.

B: What were you doing previous to designing LEGO figures that equipped you for this endeavor?

V: I was a graphic designer that worked in the corporate area and I grew to really dislike graphic design work in the corporate area because I wanted to do something more fun. Eventually, I worked for a News Station in New York called New York 1 News. You'll see them in Spider Man or any movie that shows New York News in it, that's usually the channel they go to. So I started by making commercials for them, and eventually illustrations which are the skills I use now to design Minifigures.

B: What is the origin of the name Eclipsegrafx?

V: I had been doing freelance work since I was 16 or 18, I can’t remember at this point. I guess I did the work for fun but I still consider that time as freelancing because it was a part of building up my skills. The name Eclipsegrafx really was supposed to be a media sharing website back when the word “E-” anything was a gimmick for any brand name dealing with technology. So it was “E-clips” not really one word, and it was not Eclipse. Then I quickly realized how much work it would take to actually get photos and videos for this site where you can buy them so I just moved on and kept the E-clips name. A friend of mine at the time had a website for freelance graphic design and used the word “graphics” with a unique spelling and I really liked it so I decided to add it to my name of e-clips. So there you go, it went from E-clips to E-clipsgrafx, to Eclipsegrafx. And then eventually, you have Getty Images and all these other people, making millions of dollars off of my idea! Haha.

B: What got you started customizing LEGO?

V: My Dark Ages ended while we were on our second honeymoon, with our son. There we found the LEGO store at Disney Springs and as we were there, I decided to buy LEGO for my son, but in a way, it was really for me. So we went through the whole store like two or three times for the first time buying LEGO and I didn't realize how overpriced it was at that store because I thought it was just normal pricing. But anyway, we were going on a cruise that week so we bought a few sets for my son to play with during that, which he didn't end up playing with on the cruise haha. But when we got back, we both had a little spark for LEGO so I started doing research on eBay to see if I could find Lego cheaper. Apparently, it was more expensive. That is when I discovered custom LEGO figures that kids or adults could buy, but couldn't play with, and they were like $65 or $75 a figure, but for light play and display use only. So I was like, well, who the heck buys a figure for $75 for their son and they can't even play with it. I thought, let me see if I can do this myself because I'm a designer, I could probably do a better job than some of these guys anyway. As I continued researching, I found and joined an online community where I met Tyler/Clonearmycustoms and dived deeper into the custom world. I started making my own stuff and after sharing it, people started to notice and want some of my stuff for themselves so it just grew from there, that's the short story.

B: And you mentioned you had your own Dark Ages, that's what got you out of them?

V: I mean, technically speaking, I never owned any LEGO because I was too poor. I played with LEGO in third grade, and once I left third grade nobody else had LEGO for me to play with so the dark ages began haha.

B: What was that customizing group that you discovered in the beginning and joined?

V: It was called cabbage, CABG, Clone Army Builders Guild, it was a Star Wars/LEGO website with a custom section on it, but eventually it became more of a customizing website and moved away from the Star Wars stuff. When it started moving away from that, you could find some tutorials on customizing. I think Tyler/CAC created a brief one and Fineclonier had made one that was much more descriptive. So from there, I started painting and decalling figures and eventually people started to say, ”Can I buy it?” “Can I buy it?” And since I didn’t have a job at the time I thought “Okay, I guess so.” I needed to make some money somehow.

B: Was decaling your first attempt at customizing?

V: I actually started out with Sharpie, as we all do. I was trying to see if I could seal Sharpie so that you can actually play with it. I liked Sharpie because it was a lot easier to use than anything else but I learned fast that you couldn't seal it with sealant, it would just make the ink run. Then, before decals, I wanted to try out my design skills on label paper and once I figured out how I could do it that way, then I went on to try waterslide decals.

B: What was the transition like out of waterslide decals into digital printing?

V: So for our first event, it was a small one in our local NY area that I don’t think is around anymore. I spent a whole week just preparing fig-barfs and doing a lot of decaled Minifigures and if you spend a week or weekend making over 100 decaled LEGO Minifigures, you quickly learn to hate decaling haha. So even though everything pretty much sold out, I said I was never doing that again and quickly began looking for somebody to print for us. Funny enough, it was Tyler, Clonearmycustoms who did our first prints but those prints were really REALLY bad. He didn't realize how bad they were. So anybody who has any of those original prints, I deeply apologize for all the rubbing off ink, it was a learning process. Don't judge us by those, we’re still here and making far better stuff!

B: What does a typical day of work look like for you guys?

V: I don't think there's any typical day of anything for us.

M: I think it depends on the day of the week.

V: Yeah, it depends on where the pressure points are coming from and that's what we focus on, whether it be personal, or business. If we are drawing near to a release date, or end of the month, I focus more on business, but it's hard to try to balance family and business life when you're working from home, because they all kind of mix in together. So if a typical person works eight hours a day, I think I work 16 hours a day, but that's with the family mixed in there.

M: My typical day for the business is prioritizing the orders and getting them ready and picked up by the USPS on time so that all the customers get their orders promptly.

B: How many employees do you have?

M: Two and a half, it’s Victor, myself, and a part-time employee.

V: We also have a few freelancers online and will have a full-time intern soon.

B: How do you come up with ideas for future products?

V: A lot of it has to do with stuff that I like, video games, movies, etc. I'll take suggestions from the community if I like the reference material, but mainly, it's stuff that makes me laugh, or that I think will look cool as a Minifigure. When it comes to the little accessories that we do, walking in the supermarket and picturing everything as LEGO. Literally, just in your head, it’s like I turn on a shutter and I just see it all as LEGO. Once it’s all made, I hope that somebody will buy them all and make a big LEGO supermarket MOC with these parts since I don’t have the time too.

M: And sometimes Maggie's ideas get approved.

V: Yes, yes, you know… occasionally.

M: It takes two years to get approved! Haha.

B: What do you feel limits your business the most?

V: Time. Maybe some technology because I would like to branch off into other things but time is the big one. With more time everything would have a faster turn around and we could generate more funds to do more. Oh! The other limitation is definitely that it's just me who prints and designs.

B: What other technologies would you like to branch out into?

V: I would love to do some injection molded stuff, pad printing, cloth, and all that other stuff. But for now, I'll just do what I know how to do best and outsource the rest.

3d printers used to create their new microscale galactic vehicles

B: What is it like to partner up with other big third-party brands, like Brickarms for instance?

V: It's funny working with Will because from the outside, most people will see the front end, typical businessman stuff, but on the back end when he is designing and working, you get to see the excitement and passion behind all he does. Getting to collaborate and see that side of him actually fuels my passion for it as well and all we do. Because for some of us bigger name companies, it is all about bringing quality to the community and I like working with people who have that passion and desire for quality. I remember when I met him, he had a bin of prototypes sitting in his shop that he said weren’t good enough to give away to the fans, and as anybody who knows the prototype community knows, they don't care haha. Those fans will see the imperfections and still marvel at it, but he doesn’t want to provide a subpar product.

B: Are there any upcoming items that you are especially excited about producing?

V: I mean, we're usually excited about everything that we release, like for instance, those vending machines that Maggie's packing right now.

M: Shhhh, it's an interview, don’t tell them that I am packing orders! Haha.

V: I was really excited about them because I put a lot of time into designing them and I treated them probably better than I do some Minifigures in terms of designing the art and trying out our new printer. Otherwise, I'm excited to start actually sticking to the print schedule. Typically I print whatever is a priority or whatever I am most excited about first, and then whatever is leftover at the end of the month gets cut off and hopefully rolled into the next. Coming up though, we definitely will be doing a more military-themed release because it’s been requested a lot and I’m excited to start working on that.

B: Why do you guys do what you do?

V: Because we can… haha. It depends on which part you're talking about. I've told this story before to a few people at events, but I started doing conventions, not because I wanted to make money at the conventions, but as a way to spend time with the community and show my wife who didn’t understand it at the time that there is a whole community out there. Saying “Let’s go to this event that I don’t know anybody at and spend a couple thousand dollars doing so” didn't sound as alluring as say, “Hey, there's a LEGO convention happening and I think we can make some money there. Yes, we'll spend a couple thousand making the trip but I think we will double our money or at least make enough money to enjoy ourselves while we’re there.” and that's how that aspect started. I think the business stemmed out of the friendships that I started making online. I recently was talking to somebody named Luke who was one of our first customers ever and has definitely remained one of our most loyal, and it's not because we're a company that he shopped with that made him loyal, it's because we were friends before I ever even sold anything. And for me, this business has always been about relationships first, to us, the money comes second. There are relationships that we don't make any money off of and that's perfectly fine because the money is second. It's not about making money, it's about making friends and memories for us. Maggie can chime in and correct me on that haha.

M: Yeah definitely, it’s about doing right by people by providing good quality products, good customer service, and a good experience within them using LEGO, because you know, it's supposed to be a good experience when you use LEGO.

V: Yeah, it's just about being part of a community that is supposed to be a happy community, because LEGO is a happy thing. So as a business we want to be an extension of that.

B: You started to touch on it at the end there but going more in-depth, what does the LEGO community mean to you?

Picture of me, victor, and their dog DVa from this visit

V: As I mentioned, it’s the friendships. I've met so many great people through this business, through the community, they’re lifelong friends that even if they drop out of the LEGO community itself, I still talk to them, they're still friends. Some of them are even more than friends or family. I've mentioned Tyler/Clonearmycustoms before and for my kids, they don’t call him Uncle Tyler by name but they look up to him and are close with him as if that was the case. He's family, even outside of the business, and we've made a lot of close connections like that. Like you Billy! Or William, whatever your professional name is haha. We met you, I don't even know how long ago, maybe seven years?

M: He was a wee little boy! Haha.

B: I think it’s gotta be longer than that, it could be approaching 9.

V: Right, and who knew that we were going to be this close with you and your family or getting to the point of even doing this interview right now. But yeah, it's really just being part of a community. My vision for the community is a group of people who just support each other, whether it’s good or bad. It always breaks my heart whenever I hear people passing away in the community, even if I've never met them because I know that they made an impact in the community for whoever their circle of friends was, and I know there's a lot of pain in that hole. To be in a community where strangers feel that strongly about anybody who's in the family, the LEGO familia, it's a big thing.

B: What is a memory from the LEGO community you’ll never forget?

V: Hmm, that's a good question, a hard question.

M: I got one. A few years ago, we went to Brickfair Virginia, and our daughter ventured off as she normally does during the private hours before the crowd came in, and then as we got ready for the crowd to come in, we started looking for her, and we couldn't find her. So I just remember the community coming together and everyone started to look for Sarah. It was like every vendor was looking out for her, they told me “Don't worry, if I see her, I'm going to let her know that you're looking for her.” And there were people just walking around seeing if they could find her somewhere. We eventually did find her, she had fallen asleep at the beanbag reading area, but by the time we did, the doors were already opened for the public and they had started coming in. So to see a community come together for my child, who is not theirs, and we were no more than strangers to them, that meant a lot.

V: There are plenty of memories. We are very big supporters of our men and women in the military, we couldn't do what we do if it wasn't for them. I remember there was a family, it was a mom, and I think four or five kids that came to our booth to shop. She pulled out a credit card that had maybe the Air Force logo or something on it and I asked “Do you serve?” She said “No, my husband serves and he's deployed at the moment” and I immediately wanted to cry. Here's a mom of four kids and God forbid anything happened to the husband, she's left alone with these four kids. How the heck do I sell something to them? Normally we give a 10% discount to the families of active members or inactive members of anybody who serves, but in that moment I couldn't charge her, I ended up giving her the stuff as well as extra to send to her husband. I had tears running down my face and I was thanking her for that because she's sacrificing her husband to go protect the country. He's sacrificing his family to go protect the country. It's a big deal for us and that really stands out as a personal memory we had with a customer.

B: How have you adjusted the past year with fewer LEGO conventions?

V: We've adjusted very well. I’d like to say I've gotten more sleep, but that's not true haha. The community has been great though. I haven't really seen the taxes yet to confirm but I think our business has been doing better during COVID than us going to events and trying to make the money there. My theory is that because we're not doing events, I'm able to stay back and produce more new stuff that drives up business and keeps the community happy. I mean, we've been selling out a lot faster as well.

M: We like being home and resting haha.

V: Yeah, and spending time with family. Because honestly, before COVID our family really needed some quality time for us to spend together, but we never had the time while doing events almost every other weekend.

M: Yeah, the children had to sacrifice a lot for the traveling.

V: Yeah, and we've been grateful that they've been understanding. They miss the traveling now actually.

B: Are you guys looking forward to conventions starting up again?

V: I'm looking forward to picking and choosing which one we go to, versus thinking that we need to go to all of them. I think the kids look forward to conventions too, but it has less to do with the convention and more to do with a break from school haha.

M: Yeah, they definitely want to see some of the familiar faces and the friends that they've made with other vendors' children.

V: When we first started the business, I heard one of the vendors say that the other vendors had become more of his family than his real family. At the time I thought that was the weirdest thing to ever say that these strangers are your family and that you barely ever see your real family. Here we are now, 10 years later, and I'm like “Ooooh, she was right.” I'm closer to a lot of the people at the events than I am to my “blood”.

B: Thank you both so much for your time, is there anything else you’d like to say?

V: Thank you all, we really couldn’t do this without our fans, if it wasn't for you I would just be some guy playing with LEGO than haha.

M: Yeah, we really just want to thank the fans who support us and have supported us beyond just purchasing our product. We've had people reach out to us when things would happen in Georgia to make sure we were okay. We've had people reach out to us when we've posted personal stuff, especially last year we lost a few family members, and we've had people reach out to us just to make sure we're okay. So yeah, I think they deserve a lot of credit for what they do for us because it's a two-way street, and we’re so thankful for them.

Thank you for reading! Check out Eclipsegrafx on social media, or support them by purchasing from their website. They will be vending at Brickfair Virginia at the end of this month, July 31st through August 1st (for public attendees), so stop by their booth and say hi!

What are your thoughts on customization, from do-it-yourself Sharpie stuff to a real professional job? Let us know in the comments section below!

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