Topic: Tales of Terror (Bricks in Motion 2025 Summer(-ish) Contest)
THE TALES OF TERROR CONTEST - A HALLOWEEN BRICKFILM CONTEST
Artwork by Tiny Angry Dog Studios.
CONTEST
This year, Bricks in Motion challenges you to create a brickfilm for the Halloween season.
The contest will run from AUGUST 20TH to OCTOBER 31ST.
PRIZES
Dragonframe 5 + Controller
Dragonframe is the premium stop motion animation software that captured Laika's ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls and Disney's Frankenweenie. This software is easy enough for a beginner to learn, but offers a wealth of advanced features sure to meet the needs of any stop motion animator. Software and controller included. For Mac OSX and Windows. Thanks as always to Dragonframe for generously sponsoring our annual contest.
LEGO Creator 31167 Haunted Mansion
LEGO 43279 Wall-E and Eve
In addition, there is another separate prize category, the Promising Director Award. This will be awarded to a film that, while outside of the top 3, the judges feel displays the creator's passion for their work and their potential to become a great brickfilm director in the future, and from a brickfilmer who has not been releasing brickfilms for a long time already.
Promising Director Prize: LEGO 72038 Wario & King Boo
JUDGES
Entries will be judged on their overall creativity, quality, and spooky spirit by the 5 judges. Rather than scoring individual categories like animation or story, the judges will examine each film on how well it comes together, whatever kind of film it is, as a complete artistic work. Films will be discussed and ranked collectively by the judges until a consensus is reached. The top 3 films will be eligible for the prize pool.
Penta
is one of the admins of Bricks in Motion and the Brickfilms Wiki.
Gold Puffin
is known for brickfilms and other LEGO videos on YouTube, and creates top 10 lists of brickfilms of each year.
Twisted Bricks
is one of the most notable horror brickfilmers, having created the long-running LEGO Zombie Apocalypse series, and the feature length, BiMA-winning The Void War: Grey Horizons.
Nurtnaut
won first place in BRAWL 2025 with Who is Tying People to Train Tracks?.
World of Shrimpy
won second place in BRAWL 2025 with QUIET EXTINCTION.
RULES
• No mature/explicit content is allowed. This includes, but is not limited to: excessive swearing, excessive violence, overt sexual content, and blatant drug references. Mild language is allowed, and some blood and violence is allowed, but not to a gratuitous level.
• There is a minimum requirement of 30 seconds of animation. There is no maximum runtime. Remember, it is better to focus on quality and attention to detail than to make a very long and ambitious film, but let the quality suffer. A highly-polished three-minute movie is better than a ten-minute movie that falls apart because the director ran out of time to do it the right way. The judging system won't favour a film for simply being longer, but low production values will hurt a longer film when competing against a shorter film that is better made.
• CG brickfilms are allowed in this contest.
• Egregious use of generative AI will disqualify an entry.
• Submitted films must be new films. Even if you do submit a film you began working on before this competition was announced, that is fine as long as you haven't released it anywhere before this contest, and it fits the theme of this contest.
• Films may not be posted publicly until October 2025.
• The entry you submit to the judges must be the entry made publicly available to everyone else. This means you can't submit a rough version for judging then post a polished version you spent more time on as though it were your entry to the contest publicly. You may post reworked versions of your film once contest judging is completed and results have been announced.
• All music must be credited, even if you made it yourself.
• Entries that use characters from trademarked properties as source material are allowed, but it is encouraged to create your own characters or even use old works that are now in the public domain.
• An entry will not be accepted if you are banned from Bricks in Motion.
DEADLINE
The deadline for submissions will be Friday, October 31st, any time zone.
Films may be submitted any time from now, though they cannot be made public until October or later.
To submit your film, send a link to your entry to: [email protected]
It is preferred if you write the subject of your email in this format:
Tales of Terror entry, [Your Bricks in Motion username], “[Title of your film]”
For example: Tales of Terror entry, Skell-Boy, "The Werewolf Returns"
Our preferred method of submission is unlisted YouTube links. If you do not have a YouTube account, we also accept password-protected Vimeo uploads and Google Drive links (Be sure to change the privacy settings so that anyone with the link can access it.)
Q&A
Q: Are CG brickfilms allowed?
A: Yes; in this contest, CG brickfilms are allowed to be entered, and will be eligible for ranking.
Q: Are we allowed to use the contest logo in our entry? In the credits of our film, for example?
A: Yes, although this is not required. The logo can be found here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ … pVd0zrNE8t
Q: Can we collaborate with others to create an entry?
A: Yes! Collaboration is encouraged. However, we won't be able to divide up the prizes evenly for you, so you'll have to determine who receives the prizes in the case of a win. Entries may be submitted on the basis of one entry per director, so you can help with someone else's entry and still enter a film you've directed.
Q: May we post trailers, images, or other work-in-progress elements of our film publicly on the forum?
A: This is encouraged! Feel free to post about the progress on your film on the Discord or in the forums. You can even make a thread devoted to your progress on a film if you like.
Q: Can we use some non-LEGO elements in building our sets and characters?
A: Yes! This is a contest for LEGO filmmaking, but that could mean a minifigure with surroundings that aren't LEGO, etc. You are also allowed to use other LEGO-compatible brick brands.
Q:Are we allowed to release alternate versions of our films at the same time as the version submitted to the contest? (for instance, a version with profanity or other restricted content)
A: In order to maintain the integrity of the judging process, please only release the version you are submitting to the contest publicly at the time the deadline passes. Entrants who violate this rule may be disqualified. If you want to re-release a revised version of your film, you may do so after contest judging is completed and results have been announced.
Q: Are we required to include any "mod elements" like BiM's THAC contest?
A: No, there are no mod elements in the Tales of Terror Contest. Those are used in THAC to ensure films are created in the 24-hour period. You have over two months this time. Even if you did submit a film you began working on before this competition was announced, that would be fine as long as you haven't released it anywhere before this contest, and it fits the theme of this contest.
Q: How fast and loose should I play with the content restriction rules?
A: Ultimately, we want winning entries that won't earn us angry emails from parents, or concern from contest sponsors (present and future) if they win and are celebrated throughout BricksInMotion.com and our social media postings. This community has members of a diverse variety of ages and backgrounds in it, so for a competition we want to be respectful of that. These rules are undoubtedly going to be limitations for some filmmakers, but we believe it's still possible to make compelling, even dramatic stories within these limitations. Potentially, one could approach them as creative limitations that empower the filmmaker to find more original, inventive ways of conveying ideas in a film.
Q: When can we share our films publicly?
A: Previously, it has been once the deadline passes, but for this contest, the answer is any time from October 1st onwards, even though the deadline is October 31st. This is to allow films more time to be seen within the Halloween season, before it has passed.
