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!
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That's The Way It Goes! - A Collection Of Short Stories
A collection of short stories about nothing in particular.
I think, without hyperbole, that this is one of the best brickfilms of this year.
When I helped out with visual effects, I had NO IDEA this was a 20-minute brickfilm. So when I opened up the link, I was surprised, pleased, and worried. Not many brickfilms can maintain a good pace for 10 minutes, let alone 20. But my fears vanished. This film, despite its claim to be about "nothing in particular," is excellently plotted and paced.
Congratulations are also in order for featuring women characters who actually have depth, stand on their own merits, and essentially carry the story for second half of the film. I particularly enjoyed Jessica and her story arc.
Some of the jokes and goofy voices weren't too my taste, but others made me grin ("We could try origami!"). Animation was good throughout, though I personally don't like the method of having the characters bob back and forth every time they talk. Sometimes I felt there was too much movement on screen, and I'd suggest considering whether or not a character needs to move their whole body when talking all the time. Also, I do like the swapping out of faces for expressions, but I think you might have overused the "worried" a bit too much, especially since you used it for both characters.
Set design was bright, colorful and detailed. The coffee shop set was my favorite set, and the spider terrarium was my favorite prop. You've definitely nailed your bright, bold, cartoon style. I'd been interested in seeing you branch out and try a darker style at some point. My only other critique, which is something I'm also often guilty of, is resorting to very basic "sitcom" lighting, where everything is bright and evenly lit, even outside and in "dark" corners. Scenes with Jessica might have looked more thematic if you had experimented with some lighting and shadows. The same goes for the speed dating dinner scene.
One final quibble: I didn't really care for the transitional text, though I understand it's a popular thing to do nowadays.
The arrival of this film couldn't be more perfectly timed. It's so refreshing to see a great original brickfilm. Fantastic work!
Story
This doesn't have an overall story, but it does have multiple shorter stories. Each one is very enjoyable. I love how you had characters with very distinct personalities. It is something I wish there was more of in brickfilms and adds a lot of great humor. Speaking of which, the humor is quite funny. There's a lot of it too.
Animation
The animation isn't the greatest I've seen this year, but still holds up well. I really liked the phone vibrating.
Set Design
The sets in this brickfilm are quite impressive. They have a good amount of detail without being distracting. There's also a nice variety of them. However one small nitpick would be that the sky was a bit too bright.
Overall
Quite an achievement. That's The Way It Goes is one of my favorite brickfilms of year. Maybe even my number one.
Great job Walter Benson!
Story 9/10
Animation 8/10
Set Design 9/10
Overall 9/10
I thought this was so good. The episodic style worked very well, and each set was aesthetically pleasing. And of course, it was just so much fun to watch!
You couldn't have picked a better time to release this; it feels good to watch something so original and creative during the barrage of Star Wars trailers. 20 minutes is very impressive and it didn't feel dragged out at all. I can see you put great care and effort into the dialogue as the voice acting, timing and head-changing are all spot on. It is amazing to see a brickfilm achieve comedy through facial expression alone in parts so well.
The area that stands out the most has to be the storytelling. This really feels unlike any other brickfilm and it really works wonderfully. I liked a lot of the jokes, particularly the name tags but I wasn't mad about the couple of cut-aways. Oh well, with such a long film that didn't harm my enjoyment. Animation, sets and visuals were fantastic throughout.
Overall, I'd say you have one of the best films of the year on your hands. Bravo!
Well, that was something else.
The others have gone into more detail and technical things, but I'd just like to say that as a whole, it was a very well-made, long-lasting, brickfilm that had a lot of substance. Many shorter films seem to be "empty," and are easily forgotten. Yet this made great use of a longer runtime to develop the characters and give it a lasting impact. And to echo the words of others, it was very refreshing to see such a film.
The sets, animation, voice-acting and dialog are all top-notch, and it held my interest all the way through.
This is a beautiful example of just what brickfilming can offer when plenty of time and effort are invested.
My favorite jokes were probably the brickfilming/brickfilmer related ones, but the rest, while not quite as funny, were far from boring or dull. Some films make it hard to struggle through three or four minutes, but there was no issue with this. While the film was somewhat disjointed and episodic, there was still a sense of unity and a continuing narrative that allowed it to easily flow from story to story.
A big congratulations is due, as this is a wonderful masterpiece, and you should be very proud.
An absolute joy and wonder to behold.
There are so many things that I love about this film. It's difficult to pick a favorite.
The characters are engaging. It's almost as if you pulled them out of our lives and transported them into your film.
Visually the backgrounds are excellent. I had to go back and watch it again just to marvel at the scenery.
Voice acting was spot on. I wanted to mention that Jessica's voice acting stood out for me the most.
It's very tough to be monotone and yet still put full range of emotion behind the character.
The actor's performance was perfect and I applaud her.
It's wonderful. Inspiring.
And I hope this film continues to be shared and remembered for many brickfilming generations.
That was great. I only wish I had a longer line in the film, lol. I also noticed that my microphone doesn't sound as good as all of the other ones in the film quality-wise. Hm. There are too many words that I can say about this film, so I'll keep it short. Great job, it was great, and it kept my attention and I was laughing all the way through. Keep up the great work! 
Great film man.
This is a great brickfilm, The animation was great, it made me laugh, there were very few flaws in it. Good job Walter.
Excellent work. The stories were engaging, the gags were funny (I especially liked the hobbies montage) and the sets were ace. Very well done.
Incredible! Set design was great! It was an honor to watch! Well done! 
This is a great film Walter! Your stories were great, your animation was on point, the sets were fantastic, and the general coloring of the whole film looked really great to me! Most of the voice were really good, though a couple were a bit grading.
By the way, where you referring to Charles Schulz in the credits, or someone you know named Charles Shultz? I was a bit confused, so I wasn't sure if it was a typo or not.
i watched this because everyone said it was pretty great, and it was pretty great! i enjoyed it a lot
i think my main beefs (beeves? idk) were that the pacing felt a little slow and the voice acting was a little monotone and annoying... i think thats a personal taste issue though?
a lot of the jokes were really good- i liked the execution of the gears spinning in the guy's head, the brickfilming joke and the montages... i really liked jessica and the puppeteer... some jokes were too boring for me to find them funny, but thankfully the bad jokes were outshined by the good ones (and there were some really good ones)
animation was smooth and fluid but unexpressive and slightly boring- while some bits were interesting (scenes where he was running away from jessica, frisbee kids, the changing of facial expressions for example), but i feel like the place where you're at with animation is a great place to start experimenting... you have a really good sense of fluidity and etc., i'd like to see you try and spice it up a little and develop your own animation style
i really liked the film overall! it's hard to keep me watching something for 20 minutes, especially brickfilms, but this kept me interested it was a really enjoyable brickfilm which i haven't seen in a while
great work walter!!
Wonderful little brickfilm. Really I hesitate to use the word little seeing as the things almost 20 minutes long, but that just demonstrates the amount of effort put into this. I really liked the premise, not done much in brickfilms, and most of the stories managed to keep me engaged enough to keep watching despite its larger than average runtime.
The animation was for the most part very smooth with some small little moments of jittery-ness, my main complaint would be along the lines of what JK said in that it seemed somewhat basic for the whole thing, but there still were some creative gags like the gears one.
The writing was solid and despite some jokes not really hitting me so well, there were others that I absolutely loved,
the puppeteer and the not-so-subtle Phil Fish jokes in particular.
Overall a very fresh brickfilm, definitely a contender for my favourite this year.
Really well presented and full of life and quirky moments, good job man I am most pleased to have been apart of this project. Well done. Congratulations are in order!
If you have any other projects or ever need voicing or help from me, let me know and I'll be more than happy to help out
This as Nathan Wells said couldn't have come at a better time, I also really like the use you made of the girl minifigs there just isn't enough of them out there in the lego brick filming World!
And the best thing about it is its original, I loved the emotions of the characters and the head changes, the set designs were splendid. I can't really complain about anything the animation was smooth, the lighting was pitched perfectly, the voicing was great.
Really good job bud!
Sincerely,
Divine.
Last edited by Divine (December 2, 2014 (03:53am))
Congratulations for this work!
I'm not a big fan of brickfilms based fully on dialogues but I have to say that this one is fabulous!
The story is really hilarious and that simple and elegant montage is one of the strengths of the film, too. Probably one of the best scripts of this year!
Definitely, it's an extraordinary story about ordinary things!
Thanks for the comments everyone. I appreciate your thoughts on the film.
When I helped out with visual effects, I had NO IDEA this was a 20-minute brickfilm.
For some reason I thought you knew it was a longer brickfilm, but I realize now that I never mentioned it to you. Hehe that must've been an interesting surprise.
By the way, where you referring to Charles Schulz in the credits, or someone you know named Charles Shultz? I was a bit confused, so I wasn't sure if it was a typo or not.
It was the comic strip artist Charles Schultz. This film was very much inspired by him, so I wanted to thank him in the credits.
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