I was interested in stop-motion with Lego, and I have some ideas, so I thought I'd give it a shot. I love Lego and I've always liked it in stop-motion, but I'm not too sure if it will work for me.
At least I can say I had fun building my big Lego Little Hoot. He should have been all yellow, but I did not have enough bricks to make that happen.
I'm not too sure if this will be the final cut of the opener, so see if you notice any differences when it is put together with my first lego stop-motion story.
This is really only half of the film. Rest of video to follow. Red and Blue Hoot are on sabbatical.
This is a very personal film based on some experiences while I was in London, Summer 2011. The first scene is where Red and Blue meet at an airport. They are slightly shocked and curious about one another, and decide the natural thing is to spend some time together. They go to the London Film Museum and enjoy exhibits featuring Medusa and a Tardis. While there, Blue surprises Red with a small and very appreciated gift. Then, they visit the Natural History Museum. While Red is enjoying the various rocks and dinosaur bones, Blue makes a couple attempts to show how he feels by going up and hugging her. But poor Blue can't quite work up the courage to do it.
This film was a huge undertaking for me. In it, I experimented with moving camera angles and different forms of Hoot expression (blinking, eye widening, head movement). This time, the Hoots were made with actual modeling clay (except the white fronts, eyes and beaks). The Hoots needed to remain posable after days and weeks of their creation, and clay is the only way to do this. Just about all of the other background props are made with play-doh or a play-doh knockoff. Most of my troubles were in the first scene, where the wall in the airport fell down, and one of Red's eyes fell off once.
One bad thing about using clay for the Hoots is that after some time, the Hoots became shorter and fatter. I took nearly a month to shoot these first few scenes, so perhaps if I did this project faster, their body shape wouldn't have succumbed to gravity as greatly as it did.
I took my time to capture as many frames as possible to make the movements seem as fluid as I could. This made for long shooting days and frustration over progress. I both love and hate shooting days. I love them because the film is actually getting made, but I hate them because they take so long and I'm already afraid that my shaky hands will cause disaster.
The music I like to call "Red and Blue's Theme". I'm very attached to it and think it fits this montage nicely. Sadly, I cannot play the piano, so this is about as complex as I can make the music, but hopefully over the next few months I can teach myself a thing or two. Mainly, how to play with two hands at the same time.
The other half of the film will feature 3 more scenes, tying everything up. Filming has not yet started, but it has next billing.
I had a simple idea of a video of a flower growing and blooming. When I sat down to start making the objects, I thought it would add something much more interesting if I had suns and moons moving behind the flower to show the passage of time.
The sun/moon was placed on a cardboard cutout, taped onto the blue background, and moved with every frame. This seemed to work well for the moon, but the sun kept falling down. The sun also kept falling apart, as my construction wasn't entirely stable. The actual blooming of the flower is quite quick, but this was because I felt the sun was going to give out at any moment, and the flower was getting too top heavy and kept falling over itself. I didn't intend on this video to be an all-day shoot, so the quality isn't as good and the film isn't as smooth as it could have been.
After I shot the movie, and edited the frames, I recorded the song. It came to me in about a minute, and somehow was the exact length of the film and flowed fairly well.
The text at the end is something I just wrote as I was typing in my credits.
I sometimes feel like these films are not made, but just happenings. I sit down with a vague idea, and animation just happens. I turn on my keyboard and appropriate music just happens. I go to type in ending credits and a little text just happens. It's not to say that creating these films is effortless, it's overall very time consuming and sometimes stressful. But when it comes to ideas itself, whether it be for the film or music, they just magically happen.
Little Hoot needed an opening sequence. I made a much larger Hoot for this, and first experimented with animation other than Hoot sliding across the floor. The resulting wing flap is slight, but a good start.
Sadly, much of this is quite blurry as I was only taking one shot of each frame I was going to use. I now have learned to take 2-3 shots of each frame to allow for accidental blurryness or lighting issues.
My first claymation film. I owned no clay, but had an idea, so I rummaged around the basement and found a couple small containers of old play-doh. Most of it was very dried out and it took me several hours to make it usable.
This was first shot on top of a box, but it was not level and poor Little Hoot's head kept falling off and rolling away. So, I took my materials to an unused desk, which is where I do all my work now. I do not have a tripod, but I simply rest my camera on my desk and take shots from there. Luckily, the size of the characters I work with allows for this to film fairly well.
To edit, I use the Windows Live Movie Maker that is on my laptop. It's proven relatively easy to use, but I find that the options for transitions and credits aren't that great.
In 2006, thanks to iTunes and my new video iPod, I stumbled across a video podcast. It featured varying types of homemade Lego stop-motion films. Some were a few seconds in duration, some were several minutes. Some purely comical, some intensely dramatic. My wonder and curiosity were captured by all.
As Lego created video games based on popular movies, my interest in stop-motion grew. The cut-scenes and levels within the games provided the perfect combination of heroic epicness with comic relief.
At 2am on some random night in 2012, I decided to find some play-doh and make my own (very) short film. With the encouragement and support of my closest friend, I explored the world of stop-motion a bit further and made longer and more involved films.
In primary school, I had art classes at best once a week. For nearly every one of those years, we had no specified art teacher and our general homeroom teacher had to provide instruction. In high school, I took one mandatory art course, for which I was absent about half the year. I've always been terrible at drawing and making art in general. My family laughed at my attempts, even at a young age. On the whole, I've always considered art a waste of time and a cheap shortcut for people with lesser mental abilities.
So yes, I know I am not good at art and no, I do not care. I do stop-motion because it is a challenge I do it because it's the first time in my life I sit down at projects and 12 hours quickly pass before my eyes. I do it because I have stories and this is how they've decided to let themselves out. I do it because it is entirely my creation from start to finish. I do it because it makes me smile and I do it because I hope that somewhere in the world I can make someone else smile, too.
