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Topic: Brickfilm of the Week: 1xY (November 14, 2015)

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This week’s Brickfilm of the Week is 1xY by Errol Elumir.

1xY is a 2003 action brickfilm by Errol Elumir. It is Errol's first brickfilm and was created for and won a competition held by his workplace, The Children's Technology Workshop. It is known for its use of LEGO plates as characters, rather than minifigures (a necessity due to Errol's lack of LEGO at the time), and its minimalistic approach went on to help influence the 2004 10 Brick Contest.

Though he did not release many films, Errol was active in the communities of Brickfilms.com and then BricksInMotion.com from 2003 to around 2009. He is also known for the Stikfas and LEGO film Fight, which was nominated for 3 awards in the 2007 BAFAs.

Watch 1xY on YouTube

There was also a sequel to 1xY planned and a trailer was released in 2004, though ultimately the film was cancelled by the end of that year.

What are your thoughts on 1xY? What did you like about it? Did you have a favourite moment?

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Penta's Website

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Re: Brickfilm of the Week: 1xY (November 14, 2015)

I gave up halfway through. Originally I thought it was going to be some Lego equivalent of "Flatland", but it rapidly degenerated into a series of meaningless 'fight' sequences which were even less interesting than usual. Why were they 'fighting'? I just didn't care...

  • Joined: December 26, 2008

Re: Brickfilm of the Week: 1xY (November 14, 2015)

I guess it's a lot harder to impress people now than it was in 2007 because of the general YouTube explosion. 1xY isn't an amazing piece of storytelling but at the time I thought the fights were so creative, and it was just neat to see somebody do a film with characters that weren't minifigs. I'd still like to see more inventiveness in that general direction with brickfilming.

http://i.imgur.com/wcmcdmf.png

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Re: Brickfilm of the Week: 1xY (November 14, 2015)

It's not obvious now, but at the time this was ground-breaking.  Although there have always been a lot of fight brickfilms, the choreography in 1xY was beyond anything we'd seen at that point.

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Re: Brickfilm of the Week: 1xY (November 14, 2015)

That was great! The fight scenes looked like they were thought out very carefully and flowed seamlessly. I really liked the dramatic scene where the monster was about to appear. It seemed like it was purposely drawn out longer than necessary in order to be comical.

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Re: Brickfilm of the Week: 1xY (November 14, 2015)

1xY is actually a pretty impressive little brickfilm! With not much to show for in the way of sets or characters, Elumir really balances the film with his witty characters, interesting choice of music, and parody heavy action sequences. Most brickfilms do tend to use minifigures, or, like in the case of Robota or the Pokeballin series, use anthropomorphic arrangements of bricks for their main characters. However, 1xY is different in that it mainly features 2x4 and 1x4 flat bricks for the main characters.

I really appreciate the minimalism at work here, and, think it's an all together nice brickfilm. I'd certainly recommend that newcomers to animation check it out, especially if they aspire to make brickfilms, but lack a large enough collection of pieces to do so. Actually, I'd even recommend that seasoned brickfilmers try out something like this as well. I'd certainly love to. It really looks like it would be a lot of fun, especially due to the creative limitations and more freedom of movement that would come with doing so!

https://i.imgur.com/Z8VtGae.png