Most of them are smiling in the face of death… either they are very optimistic… or you have the same problem as BOTD-Dave and you too have trouble with the limited expressions of your minifigs.
BTW I like the angel in the last two panels. It puls you right into the group.
I like to distinguish my figures with unique faces, too, so I’m often limited on facial expressions. I am putting together a library of mouths which can be photoshopped onto the face, but I like to keep that to a minimum. For starters, it’s hard to do it well. I’m of the opinion that the limitations of the minifig are part of the charm of working with Lego. Working around it is part of the art, but when it comes to altering things beyond Lego (like photoshopped faces), then one has to ask why one is using Lego in the first place.
I agree concerning the photoshopping of faces or whatever else of Lego. I thought about it once, but decided against it very quickly, precisely for the reasons you gave. I do use photoshop, but mostly for special effects like explosions, smoke and color-corrections and stuff like that. But I never change the essence of the Lego in itself.
I also agree with you that it is the charm. I have to admit that I spend a lot of time and money on collecting all kinds of minifigs, just to get expressions…
I was thinking of trying to find a company who could make produce different facial expressions, but with the same facial features for my Guard character. I am ‘guilty’ of using photoshop to change expressions on a Lego face sometimes, but it’s usually only the mouths. If a character is in pain, he / she shouldn’t have a big grin on his / her face. If on the other hand if a minifigure is an extra in the story, then I’m not too bothered about them having the same expression throughout the story. Sometimes I find that I have the correct facial feature for a minifigure, in a particular situation, which I find amazing.
Well, let me know if you manage to do it. I know Lego is very secretive about the method for printing the faces (so much so that a documentary I saw was not allowed to film the machine they have do it), so I imagine it is easier said than done.
When I made minifigs of all the people I work with to hand out at the office (yes, I’m that strange strange), there was one person who needed a smile on a face that just couldn’t be substituted, so I carefully removed the grimace with an X-Acto and used a teeny-tiny paintbrush and a loupe to put a smile on it. I’m sure you could do three or four non-standard mouth expressions for The Guard that way without too much trouble, as long as you kept it simple.
Ballinabricky 
Most of them are smiling in the face of death… either they are very optimistic… or you have the same problem as BOTD-Dave and you too have trouble with the limited expressions of your minifigs.
BTW I like the angel in the last two panels. It puls you right into the group.
Thanks!
I like to distinguish my figures with unique faces, too, so I’m often limited on facial expressions. I am putting together a library of mouths which can be photoshopped onto the face, but I like to keep that to a minimum. For starters, it’s hard to do it well. I’m of the opinion that the limitations of the minifig are part of the charm of working with Lego. Working around it is part of the art, but when it comes to altering things beyond Lego (like photoshopped faces), then one has to ask why one is using Lego in the first place.
I agree concerning the photoshopping of faces or whatever else of Lego. I thought about it once, but decided against it very quickly, precisely for the reasons you gave. I do use photoshop, but mostly for special effects like explosions, smoke and color-corrections and stuff like that. But I never change the essence of the Lego in itself.
I also agree with you that it is the charm. I have to admit that I spend a lot of time and money on collecting all kinds of minifigs, just to get expressions…
I was thinking of trying to find a company who could make produce different facial expressions, but with the same facial features for my Guard character. I am ‘guilty’ of using photoshop to change expressions on a Lego face sometimes, but it’s usually only the mouths. If a character is in pain, he / she shouldn’t have a big grin on his / her face. If on the other hand if a minifigure is an extra in the story, then I’m not too bothered about them having the same expression throughout the story. Sometimes I find that I have the correct facial feature for a minifigure, in a particular situation, which I find amazing.
Well, let me know if you manage to do it. I know Lego is very secretive about the method for printing the faces (so much so that a documentary I saw was not allowed to film the machine they have do it), so I imagine it is easier said than done.
When I made minifigs of all the people I work with to hand out at the office (yes, I’m that strange strange), there was one person who needed a smile on a face that just couldn’t be substituted, so I carefully removed the grimace with an X-Acto and used a teeny-tiny paintbrush and a loupe to put a smile on it. I’m sure you could do three or four non-standard mouth expressions for The Guard that way without too much trouble, as long as you kept it simple.