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Bricks in Motion
Bricks in Motion
We are a friendly filmmaking community devoted to the art of stop-motion animation using LEGO® and similar construction toys. Here, you can share your work, join our community of other brickfilmers, and participate in periodic animation contests!
A place to discuss, share, and create stop motion films.
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As I said on Youtube, one of the best brickfilms I've seen in a while...
What I didn't say on Youtube is that immediately after seeing this video, the song got stuck in my head, I bought the album the song was on, and I've been listening to it pretty much nonstop for the past 24 hours or so....
Good film-making+ catchy song= memorable experience. Thank you. :]
Tried to comment on YouTube, don't think it took. At any rate, as Dew intimated, this is one of those rare brickfilms that comes along and inspires as well as entertains. It seriously took all I had after watching that not to break out the old brickfilming equipment.
- Colin, going to look up Fight Like Apes.
Hmmmm I didn't like it.
The song wasn't for me and it got a bit repetetive.
The animation was all great though, and nice mouth skillz.
Very nicely done! The facial animation was well done and convincing, I only saw a few parts were it seemed to slide on the face. I liked the use of the rock monsters as back up singers, appreciated the straightforward and effective camerawork and was blown away by the set. Amazing stuff.
I actually really enjoyed the song. I think Chris did an excellent job of matching it up with the Power Miners.
The lip syncing in this is excellent. I've been planning to use that same technique for my forever in progress zombie film however I don't think I'll be able to do as good a job at making all the different facial movements so faithful to the original face.
One thing I'm not sure about - how did you map the face to the head when it was turning (in AE)? That, and did you color match it manually? It looked perfect, and your attention to detail is inspiring for example making sure the shadows on the head carry across to the expressions. One last question, how long did that lip syncing take you? I'd guess about a day of work?
In regards to the stop motion itself, it was very much up to your usual high standard and the chorus of Rock Monsters made me laugh, as did the Power Miner desperately trying to escape.
This is my favorite animation I have seen in quite a while. The only possible way I think it COULD have been better is if the male Miners also had lip syncing however their lack of mouth movements in no way detracted from the experience.
Once again, Chris, you are my inspiration.
I tried a couple of different approaches when mapping the face to the head and ended up with something that's probably not the most efficient way but worked for me. In AE, I had the main composition with the raw stop motion, a separate "face" composition and then three separate compositions for eyes, eyebrows and mouths. The face comp contained the time mapped eye, eyebrow and mouth comps, and also a solid yellow fill and a square black border. While I was mapping the cylinderised face in the main composition, I kept the solid yellow fill on at 50% opacity and the black border on at full opacity. As long as the yellow fill exactly covers the whole head area, you know that your head is the right size and orientation. You use the black border to check rotation - it's a lot easier to line up a moving square than it is to line up eyes, mouths, etc. Before the final render, you just hide the yellow solid and black border layers and you're left with the face.
Hmm, not sure how much sense that'll make if you haven't actually looked at how stuff is laid out in my project. You can see an early version of the face comp here before I figured out to use the black border. Notice also the handy facial reference of me singing along.
I didn't do much colour matching at all. I changed the cylinder light source to a light yellow and tried to match the direction to what was used in the scene, and I set the overall face opacity to 85% - that let some of the shadows through and made it look a little bit more natural.
The final lip synch, once I'd discovered this method through lots of trial and error, took about a day. Previous attempts took longer and didn't look anywhere near as good.
I deliberately left the other miners with regular heads for a couple of reasons. I wanted it to be a surprise when the woman suddenly bursts into song, and I didn't want to have to draw three other sets of faces. Drawing the faces was the biggest challenge for me because I'm not very good at it - I find it it quite hard to make all the mouths look like they belong on the same face.
Wow, thanks for the in depth reply 
What you said regarding you method in AE made perfect sense to me, although my previous attempts at bending a comp into a cylinder were met with a big fat FAIL stamp. I'll just have to turn to the almighty Google, or Creative Cow 
Kudos on the idea for using the black border.
Fair enough regarding you comment about not animating the other faces. Actually just after I made that post I watched the clip again and thought about how the mumbling voices of the men with no moving mouths contrasted beautifully with the coherent voice of the woman.
I think that drawing facial expressions will be my biggest stumbling block too, when the time comes. If it means anything, I think the job you did on all the different mouth shapes and facial movements were perfect - I couldn't imagine them being any better. Trial and error tends to be how I work too, so the fact that you produced something so terrific makes me hopeful that I can do the same one day!
I also just read your post in the techniques thread. Sorry for doubling up on some questions, but in my defense your video got me awfully excited 
I didn't totally understand what that guy was doing at the beginning, but I am not sure that I want to know. 
I really liked the animation though. It looked very nice, and you did a great job with making your minifigures. I especially like how you have not only lip syncing, but the faces change completely! That looks great! How do you do that? Is there some kind of program that you use for it?
I also loved the miners reaction when she starts singing, and how he's trying to escape and she keeps closing the doors on him and bringing in more monsters! 
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