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.
Ad
You are not logged in. Please login or register.
It's not often these days that you hear about brickfilms anymore. I remember a few years back, you had all these famous youtubers--forrestfire101, Blobstudios, ZachMG, Nathanwells, etc. Now, they're like, all gone. And it seems like the only lego stop motion animations you see are amateur, or made by very young kids.
I don't think this is the case at all. I can think of a lot of notable things that have happened in the brickfilming world recently. Houdini for example went wild. Brotherhood studios took off and became massively popular within a month or two. ZachMG still makes videos.
Brickfilming has never been easier with all the technology that is out today. Because of this, there are tons of young people doing it, often not very well. Perhaps the presence of so much mediocre material is just distracting people from the stuff worth watching and noting.
Sure some of the old brickfilming "legends" may not be active anymore, but we should be looking to all the new aspiring artists that are coming up instead.
I tend to agree and disagree. I disagree because you have all these great Youtubers that aren't getting noticed as well as most of the live action filmers. So there are plenty, but you just don't notice them.
I agree because when you look in the films section of BiM and you see as you said "Amateur" brickfilms made by young 11 year olds. (Not that there is nothing wrong with that.) I wish I did see a few more serious brickfilmers around, though. But those take more time as well.
But we can still look forward and be excited for the next big Lego Film.
There are still some classics out there.
We had a discussion a little while back on this subject, and the general consensus was what RP was saying, YouTube is flooded with bad, amateur brickfilms, so a lot more sifting must be done to find the good ones. There are some very big brickfilms in production right now, The Squire and the Scroll being the biggest one.
Yes, YouTube is inundated with particularly poor quality, generic brickfilms made by inexperienced 8-12 year olds with unoriginal ideas. It's been made possible by the advancements of technology - now nearly every kid has access to a computer, some mismatched old Lego bricks and the ever present, cheap option of a webcam. It's to be expected, and it's really a shame that the tide of crappy brickfilms is drowning out some really good stuff. The art form isn't a niche little grove anymore, now basically anyone can join in.
But no, it's not true that there is a apparent lack of famous brickfilmers creating great stuff. The basically new Brotherhood Workshop is simply fantastic, and some of the older 'classic' brickfilmers like Forrest, ZachMG, SpastikChuwawa, Filmyguy etc are still making videos.
You've got to really distinguish yourself and your style in the brickfilming world to stand out. That's how it is now.
Nowadays, because there are a lot more brickfilmers, there are a lot more good brickfilms. This kinda just means that the status quo is going up, and a lot of really great artists don't get the same recognition as the classics (because there are more of them.)
So how come I've never heard of the Brotherhood? They are pretty good! 
Eventually all those bad filmers will become good. Assuming they keep at it. Its really hard to get worse over time then the opposite. Just be patient.
The brickfilm isn't dead. Still having people how make amazing videos. If you wanna be one in a million make animations like no one made before, because have million videos about "LEGO BATTLE" "LEGO DANCING" "LEGO PIRATE" "LEGO NINJA" you can make these videos, have million views, or make what you like, your style, have few views but make your history, your lego history. My videos - for me- are amazing, make me happy and I love make their, don't are so famous, don't are usual - and even unusual- but you never will found something in youtube like theirs.
While brickfilming is not dying off ("brickfilm" gives about 89,000 results on youtube, and LEGO gives 13,500,000), it's just getting ignored.
Most people on youtube watch the videos of the popular people (many of which make good content, but most either don't or have degraded in quality over the years), and the other creative videos are ignored or get barely any views at all. Youtube was made for people to share creative or funny videos, not to share videos of their trip to Costco.
Almost all the popular brickflimers started in the brickfilming golden age (if you don't know, it was a time period between 2005 and 2009, when brickfilming was becoming popular, but was ended by the downfall of brickfilms.com, and the rise of BiM).
TL;DR: Brickfilming is NOT dying, but is instead being largely ignored. Most American teens have gotten rid of their LEGO, and most Europeans (especially in eastern Europe) don't have LEGO because it's expensive.
BTW: IT'S BEEN SAID, but many of the great brickfilmers are still around, and the newer Brotherhood Workshop are amazing, go check them out, because their LOTR stuff is pretty funny.
Last edited by Troodon (March 30, 2013 (07:51pm))
Eventually all those bad filmers will become good. Assuming they keep at it. Its really hard to get worse over time then the opposite. Just be patient.
As awesome as this would be, I don't think it will happen. Most of the kids who create the bad brickfilms will get bored of it when they grow "too old" for LEGO, and will stop brickfilming. The reality is that most people are not willing to put in the effort required to make really good brickfilms. That's the way society works.
yes
it is slowly dying in agony
let us all watch it as it screams in pain and falls into it's grave
watch me as i bury it alive
Well, I agree that the most popular brickfilmers are slowly dying out. But maybe we are all the next big batch of brickfilmers to take over the brickfilming world! 
Is Brickfilming a dying art?
No.
Really, really bad Lego Muveys have always existed. Ever since I first started watching them back in 2005 (this website keeps making me feel old), the majority of films I saw were just awful. Of course, I was 11 years old. so I thought them to be utter genius.
The great thing about Brickfilming is that the technology has remained the same. Unlike the games industry - where they hit a sweet spot with PS2 graphics (you could make any game you wanted and it would be easy to do so) but have been struggling because current games are so expensive and difficult to make - to create a Brickfilm all one needs is a computer, capture/editing software, a webcam, and some Lego. It's been like that since when LEGO's Moviemaker Set came out in the late 90's.
Until the inevitable day the Lego Company goes crazy and kick all of us off-of YouTube, Brickfilms are not dead (its ironic that Lego are so touchy about copyright when it was their Moviemaker set that really started this whole thing)
Is Brickfilming a dying art?! Brickfilming has only just been born!
I just posted something on this forum that addresses the original question: the dwindling of the number of brickfilmers. It's about being proactive in drawing people to this site.
Posts [ 17 ]
