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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You could highlight other brickfilmers on your channel. Or do a collab with someone, hopefully once I release Barry's Show It will help direct people to Holding Our Owns's work.
I wouldn't worry about that. Viewership isn't the most important thing. I personally think PongOwl's animations are very professional.
I don't think the brick filming community has enough attention.
Look at animators like Pongowl . They're very high quality, yet, they have very little support.
Is there a solution to this problem?
I've had my youtube channel since early 2010 and have been a part of the brickfilming community for almost as long. However, my channel has only 150 subscribers, and I rarely get over 1,000 views a month. A lot of this has to do with how youtube promotes channels based on upload frequency and how quickly they've risen within a year - neither of which would help out someone like me (or most other brickfilmers, for that matter).
But still, any viewership is better than none. All you can do is work at improving your skills at storytelling, animation, and presentation. If your content's entertaining, then someone's bound to watch it. If you hone your skills enough (or just get lucky) than you may end up entertaining millions...
There isn't really one solid solution to this problem.
Weasel Animations wrote:I don't think the brick filming community has enough attention.
Look at animators like Pongowl . They're very high quality, yet, they have very little support.
Is there a solution to this problem?I've had my youtube channel since early 2010 and have been a part of the brickfilming community for almost as long. However, my channel has only 150 subscribers, and I rarely get over 1,000 views a month. A lot of this has to do with how youtube promotes channels based on upload frequency and how quickly they've risen within a year - neither of which would help out someone like me (or most other brickfilmers, for that matter).
But still, any viewership is better than none. All you can do is work at improving your skills at storytelling, animation, and presentation. If your content's entertaining, then someone's bound to watch it. If you hone your skills enough (or just get lucky) than you may end up entertaining millions...
There isn't really one solid solution to this problem.
I wouldn't really blame YouTube for this. Yes, their algorithm supports frequent and consistent content, but the fact remains that the majority of people simply aren't watching original brickfilms. Parodies and trailer recreations are what's hot. People share those. Thus, people don't even learn about small brickfilmers that really deserve more. Then there's the dumb videos that are just minifigs doing boring things (see: LEGO Shopping by any random youtuber). These two are "safe" videos. Not necessarily in content, but people know what to expect when they click on the video. Either a parody or a boring vid.
Now, I know that I sound like an old man who has corn flakes under his dentures, but that's my two cents anyway. Yes, improving your skills is vital. But don't place all your eggs in youtube's basket for promoting your video. To get your video seen, you have to share it around as much as you can. If it's a good video, it'll pick up momentum and people will watch it.... hopefully. Its a gamble, but not as much as it has to be. You can really take your video's promotion into your own hands. It just depends on how far you want to go, and how many people you want to start ignoring you for your shameless promotion efforts. 
High YouTube views doesn't really count for much. It's nice to have a good audience of fans that will enjoy your content, but when you worry more about what is currently popular on YouTube more than on the content itself, then that's not good.
I used to think brickfilms were kinda a niche market - but let's face it, it's not! It is a type of brickfilm, as in the brickfilms that are actually short films with proper narrative structures, that we at BiM enjoy most that is the niche market. The 'Lego Supermarket' people, like rioforce put it, are big youtubers with hundreds of thousands of subscribers that regularly hit the 1 million + mark when it comes to views. They are the safe, unchallenging market, that sell what they know will be successful. In order to take risks, you're going to have to accept that you're not going to be a big name any time soon. Slowly, you will gain an audience, and even if that audience is small - if they enjoy your content and want to come back for more, then that accounts for a lot!
You keep putting out good content and slowly you will gain a wider audience, and who knows - maybe you will inspire another generation of content creators. Of course, we all know that if you take filmmaking seriously, it does take time and it is difficult to keep to a regular schedule, but however slowly your channel grows, it will find it's audience!
I know that even though I haven't made a legit Brickfilm yet I have still been entertained and inspired by talking to people on here. Even if I never hit the one thousand mark(or the one hundred for that matter) I will still enjoy making films, being helped and helping others make films and making friends.
... Look at animators like Pongowl . They're very high quality, yet, they have very little support.
....
I'm not sure if you know this, but Pongowl is relatively new to the brick-filming world, the oldest film on his channel is just over a year old, and he has still managed to do quite well with subscribers, views, and contest results all things considered. If you look at most bigger youtubers they started out small and grew by consistently putting out good content, and I feel that Pongowl is on track to continue building an audience. On the other hand I do feel that SlothPaladin is somewhat under-appreciated.
Oh I see. That makes sense. I've made brickfilms on and off for four years now, though I'm pretty new to 15 fps. I've only
filmed with that maybe a year-oh sorry, I'm getting carried away. 
While I do personally think the community is overwhelmingly full of younger children making mediocre films, I think it's good that these young people are exploring such a diverse creative medium. Sooner or later, older members of the community that have been here for years will have to move on due to life; there has to be someone to pass the baton to.
I also think it's great that LEGO is recognizing brickfilmers and this community as a whole, and encouraging others to explore it. So I guess what I'm getting at is, I don't think the community is too crowded or already has enough recognition.
You could highlight other brickfilmers on your channel.
I have tons of a selection of animators I like on the side of my YouTube channel, along with some MOCers. I couldn't list them all as otherwise there would be hundreds. No joke.
About the YouTube popularity thing, (correct me if I'm wrong) but I believe that YouTube bases the amount of money you make from AdSense based on the time watched, whereas before it was based on the number of views. This is a big problem for people like us, since most brickfilms are short, and take a long time to produce, which puts us all at a big disadvantage. However, you can't take this personally. After all, everyone knows YouTube was made to share cat videos 
Can you think of any brickfilmers that I could subscribe to. I only have a little over 30.
I'm sure I could, being subscribed to exactly 182 brickfilm channels! However, I will name my favourites (you may already be subscribed to some of these people, if so let me know if you would like some more recommendations). You may recognise some of these people from the BiM community <3. In alphabetical order:
Aiwha
ALP
AKPstudios
Alexsplanet
Annoying Noises Productions
Aquamorph Productions
Asap Animation
Brick Dictator
Brotherhood Workshop
DigitalWizardsStudios
Dylan Woodley
Fancy Pants
ForlornCreature
forrestfire101
Hamster Productions
Jett Williams
Keshen8
MICHAELHICKOXFILMS
Mighty Wanderer
MindGameStudios
mobdeli
MonsieurCaron
NathanWells
Paganomation
pantsahat
rioforce
Sean Willets
Spite Your Face Productions
studiosepsilon
Titan Pictures (and his other channels)
I would also like to recommend a brick film that I think you have to watch. It's called BOUND by MonitogoStudios1 and is an amazing 50 minute animation at 12fps that took 6 years to make! A lot of effort was put into it, and it is one of my absolute favourite animations. 
Here is a trailer to give you a taste.
Last edited by Dragon Brick Studios (April 10, 2017 (02:40am))
The distinction between brickfilming in general and this community in particular is an important one. My original comment was about all of brickfilming, not just this community. That being said, the release forum has definitely changed over the years. I remember the days when I watched every film in the release forum, and when I waited to join BiM until I felt that my films were worthy of being put in the release forum. I'm not saying this was the right way for me to view the release forum, but I saw it as a place where the best brickfilms on the internet were.
For the past couple years the volume of films in the release forum has been large enough that only those who are still in their childhood have time to watch them all; and to be frank, the quality of the animation in most of them is below what I consider to be watchable. It's not that there isn't good stuff being made, I just usually hear about it via my YouTube subscription feed first. As a result I stopped using the release forum as a discovery tool a long time ago, and have probably missed some worthwhile stuff. I still try to look through it every once in awhile though, and I have been noticing a gradual increase in the overall quality, so I'm hopeful for the future.
So, is this why we don't see the "staff review" section anymore? 
The staff review in the directory has been gone for ages. Nowadays, we have a special icon we put by featured films in the Releases forum.
I see, It's just that the staff review felt more powerful to me for some reason, like an actual movie critic reviewing a film.
I have to agree with sebas here. With the old version it didn't just tell you it was a good brickfilm, but the different categories showed where the brickfilm excelled. Want to see the newest brickfilm with the most fluid animation/best set design etc.? Well you could. Now all we know is that generally the ones with the symbol next to them are the best of the most recently released brickfilms.
Maybe its as simple as having a featured section in the forums for the best films, if a film deemed worthy of featured it can be moved from the releases forum to the featured forum. Then the film page can just show the featured films.
I have noticed a lack of decent discussion around lately, but the forums still seem to be as lively as ever, not that I post anymore. I just skulk in the shadows.
Just throwing this out there, the gold stud is just a temporary fix until the larger site redesign is finished.
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