I completely agree. Quite often when I'm watching a brickfilm with simple, uncreative movements I'll get a bit bored. So what if it takes twice the effort, brickfilms could be much more lifelike and less childish than what they reputably seem to be at times. I can't wait to see what you do, I may start trying this as well pretty soon.

Is this in the right thread?

I guess in some way it is production of animating and such.

Look personally for me, although I do find these interesting. I feel these kind of shot's are meant to be just shots or better yet ''Frames''.

I do feel this is a very unique idea, but one thing we have to remember is that looney toons is a cartoon (3D animation and being drawn up) while brick films are live stop motion so their very different and brickfilm's aren't as leaniant and are more limited than a cartoon. We can't psychically make a minifig bend his legs, or make him hold another minifigs hand, however we can do it in the name of illusion, changing camera view and perspective, changing view of appearance/shot.

Although I don't agree with you GHB, on the fact a brickfilm with simple, uncreative movements I'll get a bit bored, and that their childish. Most brickfilms that are made by professionals such as Smeagol, minifig051, Squid, pritchard studios all do fantastic brickfilms, yet you say they are uncreative movements? You know I find this rather interesting and funny, because before Sloth posted this picture and thread, no one was complaining about brick films having ''uncreative movements'' or being ''childish''. Yet now that a new idea has come to mind people think differently of brickfilms and find them dull and boring?

Don't forget how hard and how long it takes to make a brickfilm my friend. It is a lot of work and patience. Sure it's nice to do new ideas and try different techniques, but the fundamentals to a brickfilm are what they are today, being simple yet elegant and very effective.

Doing these techniques would take A LOT more time, not only to practice and get right but all together in animating as well. I find it intriguing but unnecessary. As you know a lot of people on here are teens, and they go to Uni or School, or have RL obligations. It's hard enough to produce a normal brickfilm as it is, as it's time consuming.

All in all I do find it intriguing and interesting, and like the photo. But as said this is better used as a frame, or Shot rather than to be animated or used for anything more would be really irrelevant.

This is of course my personal opinion it's not to say I wouldn't attempt it, or try it out. But I don't think people should just opt and change to this kind of technique I think it would really change the brickfilming community as a whole, and would effect a lot of the new members to brick filming. Brickfilming is enjoyable cause it can be put simply and easy to do, its only time consuming and requires a lot of patience.
Let's not turn and forget the main concept behind brickfilming and change it into something it really isn't.

Sincerely,
Divine.

I'm going to address the specific topic of non-standard arm movements here (taking them out of the sockets).
I wish I could do more specialized arm movements, but there are two big problems with them:

1: Taking the arm from the socket risks permanent damage to the figure.  If the torso is old, the figure may be irreplaceable.  The damage may cause the arms to no be able to stay stead in a normal position, making it unusable for the remainder of the film.  If one has already animated a significant portion of the film, this will cause a great problem with continuity as you will be unable to animate that character anymore.

2: While it works well for still pictures, there's no way to transition betwixt the arm being fully in the socket and fully out of the socket in animation.  Thus the arm will just pop out awkwardly without easing in and out which, of course, is not a good thing to see.  Also, having the arm out to where it can freely rotate also makes the arm stick out a whole lot, effectively increasing the visual size of the arms and making the subject look like he/she has REALLY big shoulders, which is very strange considering that a moment ago the figure did non have such broad shoulders.

I've seen people use specialized arm animation in brickfilms before and I've not been pleased with the effect, and with that on top of the reasons I don't ever plan to risk trying it.  I don't think it's worth the risk of damage, and even if there were no such risk it wouldn't look good anyway unless you could get rid of the spheres in the arms like how they're all missing in The LEGO Movie.

However, there are some other good options for specialized movement.  Particularly using the joining betwixt the legs and torso to make the figure stretch out like the homeless man from The Citizen of the Year.  That's a thing I would really like to do more, however, I'm always forgetting that I want to do it, or I can't think of a good way to implement it.

Another thing I'd like to do is the headless clone helmet technique, where one takes a helmeted figure and removes their head, replacing the head with stick and thus allowing the head to look up and down some.  However, this only works with fully helmeted figures.  I've seen it done quite oft in photography, but I believe that it would work easily in brickfilming (and, as an added plus, no detriment to the figures).

Here's a novel approach to animating that I wrote about in my brickfilming guide:

BRICK-BUILT CHARACTERS.
  Now, David Pagano of paganomation.com created a template for a large articulated figure.  You may like that, but how about going in the opposite direction?  Build your characters solely from bricks, plates, and slopes, avoiding all the specialty pieces that have arisen since the advent of the minifigure.  You can model them from Miniland
scale figures, or just build something abstract, as those like myself and other children of the 1970s, who had a
limited range of brick types.  ... it is more work than animating a minifigure, but lends itself to making animations that are more artistic and abstract, and you might have an award-winning conceptual piece when you're through.

I personally think that a lot of the special movements people use seem non-purist. I don't know how many brickfilmers try to maintain LEGO purity in their animations, but I'm trying. Now, if I reeeeally needed a minifigure to look down at him/her self, as SlothPaladin was saying, I would probably do it with an image editor, or try to fake it via a couple of close up shots (one of the head moving, and one from the minifig's perspective?). But I cringe when I see someone cut LEGOs.

Maybe I just have weird opinions.

I think it may be a case of putting the cart before the horse here.  A lot of people seem to think that the limited movement of minifigs is a disadvantage, but what if it is, in fact, an advantage?  I recollect reading something in which 0ldScratch/Chris Salt (I believe) mentioned that he was able to animate two minutes of footage in a day, whilst professional stop-motion animation companies such as Aardman, which utilize puppets with many more points of articulation, could only animate five seconds of footage in the same period of time.  Finding ways to creatively express movement within these limits is far more interesting and impressive to me instead of starting to pop arms out of sockets and suchlike.  (Incidentally, this is the same thing that I like about LEGO itself, namely finding ways to build new things out of the same bricks.)  Not to mention, you're not risking damage to the bricks.

Plus, using excessive non-standard movement in a brickfilm can begin to look awkward and unnatural, in the same way bad post-production camera movement/artificial shaky-cam or poorly integrated digital effects can look in brickfilms.  To be honest I don't see why it should be absolutely necessary to use non-standard movement.  After all, people tend to move in similar ways in real life.  For instance, most people walk in the same way--there are subtle distinctions in speed, the size of steps, pace, etc., but the basic motion is the same (unless, say, the person has an injured leg, a limp, etc).  Thus I don't think it would be inherently bad for minifigures to have a fairly standardized set of movements (which, of course, are adjusted depending on the character--it would be boring if everyone moved exactly the same way).  To me, the image that SlothPaladin posted as an example looks very awkward and off to me, because the troopers are bending and twisting in ways that are physically impossible in normal LEGO construction.  As such it feels very artificial and makes the minifigs look as if they're being mangled.  Similarly, if an animator constantly broke the "rules" of minifig articulation it would be jarring to me, just like if everyone in a serious live-action film suddenly started walking like this with no explanation.

Now, I'm all for experimentation and finding new animation methods, so I'm definitely not saying this shouldn't be attempted.  However, I hardly think that using non-standard articulation is necessary for making a good brickfilm, and in some instances might be more trouble than it's worth and could come across as trying to be different for the sake of different, rather than being genuinely innovative.

Last edited by Mr Vertigo (September 29, 2014 (02:47pm))

FlyingMinifig: (Not quoting, because I'm referring to your whole post, which is pretty long)

Very well said! I think the storm troopers are okay if they're supposed to be... odd little storm troopers, but by disconnecting all of their parts and posing them like this, they become no longer minifigures. Minifigures have a skeleton all their own, and it is the challenge of the animator to make them BEHAVE as humanly as possible. Using rioforce's example of a minifigure pointing West, the minifigure doesn't really have to turn his entire body 90 degrees, but can gesture toward the West by turning his body only about 45 degrees, and extending his arm. By making it more of a sweeping gesture, and positioning the camera carefully, the animator can make these simple movements appear astonishingly human. It's all in the creativity and skill of the animator. But the worst thing you can do is stop using them as minifigures, and turn them into... something else.

Here's my thoughts, since I'm already doing this, albeit in CGI. One of the things I like about non-standard mini-figure articulation is that poses read much better with greater articulation. Pause any regular cartoon character on a frame, and you could get a good idea of what is going on in the shot just by looking at that single frame (even in silhouette). It's a lot harder to do that (not impossible) with the regular limitations of a mini-figure. So as an animator, I really like the extended freedom.

The downside to this is that it's a lot harder to get movements looking smooth and realistic with so much greater range of motion. That takes much more time, also. I've got a fourteen second shot I've been working on for a while now. I recently scrapped the whole thing and completely redid it and more in two days. Realistically, if I were a better animator and I took more time on it, and I had a much better workflow, I could get a decent looking shot in a couple hours. So if you're a pro animator and know exactly what you're doing, it might not take as long as two days to do a fourteen second shot, but a lot more thinking has to go into it. I imagine doing it in stop-motion would add take more time.

So, there's what I know about the subject. I personally like the freedom, but I have to plan the shot out much more than I did animating figures with limited articulation.

To throw in my two cents...

I believe that such movements, if done to a high enough quality, may enhance a short and/or give it a unique and special feel. BUT, I believe that such things may easily be done poorly, as well as over-done.

Brotherhoodworkshop has done these kinds of things in the past, and done them well. He has also done them in such a way as to accomplish the movements, yet not draw attention to them. Hence, they blend in well and only serve to enhance the normal movements found throughout the shorts. Thus, there is great evidence that these things can be cool.

On the other hand, there are many, many brickfilms that stay within the normal Lego movements. They don't draw attention to the fact that they have such limits, and the animation quality and movement choices keep you from thinking of the limits. They do everything they need to do, and no viewer ever questions such things. People see Lego figures and just subconsciously accept the small number of joints. It's never really a factor, and folks just don't think about it.
Thus, it is not obvious that they are held back.

In the end, I like out-of-socket and other such movements, but more often than not they look awkward and unnatural.
If you can pull them off, go for it. But if not, you are not losing anything, and you should concentrate on your own style.
I prefer doing normal movements myself, and dislike out-of-socket movements when they call attention to that fact, or do it just because they can.

So I recommend concentrating on normal moves unless you just really, really want to try something else.
It can look fine, but if you want more movement on a regular basis, perhaps you should consider using Megabloks figures or some other sort of puppet.