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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The problem with most CGI brickfilms is that they don't use the CGI to any advantage, so they just end up being a film that could easily be done with real LEGO. That said, this is my favorite CGI brickfilm.
The problem with most CGI brickfilms is that they don't use the CGI to any advantage, so they just end up being a film that could easily be done with real LEGO.
I don't know...
Try rigging multiple minifigs in the air in a tight set and mask all those rigs out manually
Try to keep track of every light flash from laser/bullet fire, every engine flare, and build a ship that is to scale to those fighter.
Try and build a robot that probably can't stand upright physically and animate it.
Or build sets and ships that no average joe can house in a single bedroom.
I guess my stuff don't count as most CGI brickfilms 
and I'll be sure to not get my films categorized as such 
.
Last edited by Lechnology (April 7, 2010 (07:58pm))
Littlebrick wrote:The problem with most CGI brickfilms is that they don't use the CGI to any advantage, so they just end up being a film that could easily be done with real LEGO.
I don't know...
Try rigging multiple minifigs in the air in a tight set and mask all those rigs out manually
Try to keep track of every light flash from laser/bullet fire, every engine flare, and build a ship that is to scale to those fighter.
Try and build a robot that probably can't stand upright physically and animate it.
Or build sets and ships that no average joe can house in a single bedroom.I guess my stuff don't count as most CGI brickfilms
Notice he says most Lech
I think Littlebrick means in terms of character animation. I mean, in the Squad 42 example it's a stop motion film with CG effects shots. The place that the medium isn't taken advantage of is where you have all the CG animated minifigs moving like real ones instead of having any sort of squash/stretch/bend to them.
Exactly.
The problem with most CGI brickfilms is that they don't use the CGI to any advantage, so they just end up being a film that could easily be done with real LEGO. That said, this is my favorite CGI brickfilm.
I think Littlebrick means in terms of character animation. I mean, in the Squad 42 example it's a stop motion film with CG effects shots. The place that the medium isn't taken advantage of is where you have all the CG animated minifigs moving like real ones instead of having any sort of squash/stretch/bend to them.
Exactly.
Sounds more like "exactly" opposite.
"Don't use the CGI to any advantage" sounds like having flexible arms and legs like how LEGO does their clips and video games instead of the "real" minifig arms which is stiff and has only one axis of rotation. Littlebrick's preference to Nice Pants supports this.
"[E]asily be done with real LEGO" sounds like why bother animating in CG animation if you're staying within the physical minifig's movement box. "The place that the medium isn't taken advantage of is where you have all the CG animated minifigs moving like real ones instead of having any sort of squash/stretch/bend to them" sounds like CG minifigs should be animated like an actual minifig.
Sounds like we have two different preferences in how CG brickfilm animation should have, realistic and unrealistic minifig armatures. Don't see how that is "exactly" what you meant, Littlebrick .
Example: my Mythical Bailout goes in the direction of realistic minifig movement in CGI, which doesn't "use the CGI to any advantage" but takes advantage of "CG animated minifigs moving like real ones"
Last edited by Lechnology (April 8, 2010 (08:06pm))
Your post is really confusing, but yeah, what I (and I believe Littlebrick too) am saying is that if you're not using real minifigs, you might as well take advantage of the freedom CG allows instead of confining your animation in the same way real minifigs are limited. I tend to expect/want computer animation to have some life and cartooniness to it that is a weakness of LEGO minifigures, so I'd rather see stuff like the LEGO video games' animation or the "Nice Pants" video, personally.
I can certainly see why you'd do stuff like spaceships, robots, that sort of thing in CG, but I think the look of stop motion animation is a lot more appealing for the main body of a film about LEGO minifigures, if you're going to keep the animation constraints of real minifigs anyway.
I understand you're defending your work here, so I'll go ahead and say I don't really like the whole idea of CG brickfilms where the minifigs move just like real ones. Your videos have a lot of work put into them and there are redeeming qualities but the idea of making a film with LDraw models as the characters isn't very appealing to me no matter how well it is done. It feels to me that it's like stop motion brickfilming but not as good visually, leaving me wishing it was done in stop motion instead. Using CG when necessary for certain kinds of effects and visuals, obviously. For the purpose of sharing them on this site, I'd still consider them brickfilms, though.
Yay for one of the more successful brickfilming-related discussions on this site in a while...
what I (and I believe Littlebrick too) am saying is that if you're not using real minifigs, you might as well take advantage of the freedom CG allows instead of confining your animation in the same way real minifigs are limited.
That clears up my confusion on how I read the two posts.
I'm less about defending my work (can't please everyone, don't expect everyone to love my work) but more about defining this bridge that I stand on between plastic construction toy stop-motion animation and CGI animation. CGI brickfilm is pretty much just CGI. It's only Jason (our God) and RevMen who defined CGI minifigs and brick sets animation as as brickfilm that you all even let folks like me post art that imitates the brickfilming art. What I am defending is my CGI brickfilm philosophy (as James W coined it) and my approach (i.e. staying within the minifig armature box).
The bulk of my perspective can be read here but I'll reiterate a different way: there are many communities in the LEGO realm (train collectors, Star Wars LEGO fan, model builders, purists, brickfilmers, etc.). There's also a lot of ideology involved. I am a moderate LEGO purist (I've marked up and cut a piece or two when I was a kid, but I got wiser) and I carried on that ideology when I started brickfilming and that continued when I moved into CGI. Hence, me staying within the minifig limitations as much as possible.
Now we're seeing more people interested in CGI but lack the artistic skills that professional computer animators have (an Art background or degree). I should know, I've looked into Computer animation degrees, art skills are a basic requirement. Until recently, CGI brickfilmers was an exclusive club, very few members. It's a recent phenomenon, with Rocketmen vs. Robot being like the only known full CGI brickfilm out there back in 2003*. Can't expect an artistically-impaired person to take full advantage of CGI if they're just starting out as a hobbyist toy animator moving into CGI.
As of now, fully CGI brickfilm animators are few and most are beginners. We've seen just a few perspectives on CGI brickfilms (purist minifig animation (me), flexible minifig animation (LEGO™), non-brick set and environment (David T. Krupicz), full-brick set and environment, mixed brick set and environment (James W, me), stop-motion/CGI integration (Smeagol, Nick Durron, Leonardo, Gareth Pugh)). I'm sure other philosophies will emerge as this area develops.
I should point out how offtopic I've taken this and suggest cutting the philosophy stuff from here and from the other thread between me and James W and merge them onto a separate thread.
*Rocketmen vs Robot brings up another issue regarding how far from the plastic construction toy can you go before it's no longer counts as a brickfilm.
Last edited by Lechnology (April 9, 2010 (03:00am))
If this discussion is off-topic, I think it should be split, so we can discuss it further. I would personally like to see this site get to the point where CGI films can be accepted into the contests run here; stop-motion or CGI, they're all technically brickfilms, it's just taking everyone a long time to accept it.
CGI films aren't allowed in contests on this website?
I would personally like to see this site get to the point where CGI films can be accepted into the contests run here; stop-motion or CGI, they're all technically brickfilms, it's just taking everyone a long time to accept it.
I would defiantly like to see some type of guidelines and reason. I've got absolutely no problem if people want to keep the contests for "pure" brickfilms, because lets face it, they aren't the same and they require different skill sets. This forum/website was made for "real" brickfilms so no reason to not keep it that way.
Having said that, there should be some guidelines set for the contests and reasons for those guidelines. Are you allowed to mix CGI and real bricks in films for contests. If so, why is that OK but 100% CGI not OK? Are you allowed to create effects in post processing? Creating a lightsaber effect in Adobe After effects is just as "fake" as using CGI bricks. So why is that allowed but not CGI brickfilms? Some reasoning behind the guidelines would be nice.
Well, yes, CGI lightsabers are just as "fake" as CGI itself, but having a lightsaber appear for 30 seconds in a 5 minute film isn't 100% CGI, whereas a 5 minute CGI brickfilm would be (obviously) 100% CGI.
Well, using lightsaber effect is a effect put ON stop motion, so that is a whole different thing. Here there is still more stop motion then effects work. A CGI brickfilm has no stop motion at all.
I also think the contests would be unfair. With CGI you are far less limited with what you can do. For example; you can make a large scene in CGI far easier than in a "real" brickfilm.
But on the other hand, the term "Brickfilm" means a film made with Lego or other similar related products. And if the CGI uses Lego, then it should be able to be called a Brickfilm, and the contest entries have to be brickfilm, right?
I can also see why some/most people don't really accept 100% CGI as a real Brickfilm, because they think the person didn't have to animate at all, they didn't need to work to make it as smooth as possible, and they didn't have to actually use their hands to manipulate the film, and all the CGI artist would have to do is enter a few numbers for perfectly smooth animation, and that's it. Since most animators think that animation is the most important part, they might think of CGI as cheating (for a good reason also). I'm just not sure why they aren't allowed to be entered into contests. (Unfair advantage maybe? Just a thought.)
Edit: You guys beat me to it! 
I guess this discussion begs the question: is a virtual facsimile of a LEGO product still to be considered LEGO?
Split into a new thread.
is a virtual facsimile of a LEGO product still to be considered LEGO?
When you put it that way, I'm inclined to think no, of course not. It's like the old Magritte painting:
It's not a pipe, it's a painting of a pipe. CG brickfilms mimic LEGO, they do not have any real LEGO in them. A stop motion film on the other hand is a graph of the light actually reflected off of the bricks, so it is in a sense more real to me.
The reason I don't think CG brickfilms should be allowed in site-wide contests is the basis for comparison becomes very tough. Storytelling should be analogous, but categories like animation and cinematography that we often use in judging films are extremely different when you're trying to judge what are really two completely separate mediums alongside each other.
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