I have a frame for you guys:

The above frame is part of it.
It starts in an alley where Batty is running of to someplace, as the camera very gradually pans to the left into the room where I have a news report on a telly playing to give the viewers some background info on King Tut and what's happening at the moment (voiced by Pritchard).

Some detail on how this was done:

I first animated the news guy

Then, I edited the frames to add Mouse Droid's overlay onto every frame and changed the colour it so that it would come out nicely after it went through the iPod and the camera again. Because I put them onto the iPod as individual frames, I had to edit each picture individually. EVERY. SINGLE. FRAME. It took a very long time.

To make the TV work, I put the iPod behind the screen frame, attached by kneedable eraser and took a picture.

Before cranking the mechanism for making the dolly move a tiny increment, I would take another picture with a stand in TV so I could put them together and mask out the end of the iPod.

Between each frame, my bother would change the picture on the iPod to the next, showing the news animation.

And that's how I did it. It took so long, but it's a pretty interesting effect.

Unfortunately, as usual, it came out with some flicker and a bit of bump on the screen. But I'm not going back because I never want to animate that again nor edit those frames. If I spend to much time on this I've never get it out.

Also, because you guys really want a date, I'll give you another estimation for release.
As of now, I'm thinking 2014. Probably. And if you want a month, then I'll throw a guess at April.
Because I've been going far to long, I've cut down on some of the scene I had planned since I want to finish this before some possible unpredictable thing comes up and stops the project.

I shall soon be recording King Tut's lines and the lines of Bill the thug for a scene in Tut's Hideout as well as building the sets. I expect the next proper update to be about that set.

Really clever use of the iPod. I'd imagine it'll look nice animated, what with all of those reflections you wouldn't get from a digitally superimposed TV.

So I'm a little confused by why you did certain things. How come you edited each frame individually? I'm not sure what your software is capable of, but I would think you could create an image sequence, add the news overlay to everything at once as a different video track, and then do color correction to everything at once. Then simply export the entire clip as JPEG images. I know you use Premiere Elements, an older version, so perhaps some of these features aren't available on it. Either way, I can see how much effort and work you put into this! It'll make watching it even better cause I know how much work went into it.

Edit: Also, what kind of a rig do you use for a dolly shot for a DSLR? Id like to make a better one and I'm curious as to what you do.

Last edited by Repelling Spider (December 7, 2012 (03:29pm))

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Yeah, I did leave the room very dark, but the TV is the focus and the only really important thing here.

The best rig ever. I need to take some pictures of it sometime. The Most important bit of it being the crank mechanism which allows for extremely smooth animation.

I would agree that the angle's not too great. I should have leveled it out or made the tilt my typical heavy slant. It looks pretty nice in the beginning part of the shot' though.

The Set for King Tut's hideout is complete.

I posted some more pictures of it in the Sets and Props Critique Thread.
And even more on my ANP Facebook page

I' recently recorded all of my lines for this scene, and July last year already had Stan the LEGO Man record the lines for Donald the Thug (It's not often I plan that far in advance, he he).
I'll need to get the lines timed for frames, then I should be able to animate.

Last edited by Squid (December 19, 2012 (06:26am))

I like that set. It reminds me from pyramids etc. (< sorry bad english )

Big update everyone.

We've finally finished animating King Tut's Hideout.  Here's a frame:

That scene was about 1000 frames total, and all of what I've animated thus far adds up to about a minute and fifty seconds.
The next scene I plan is the duel between Batty and Tut, but I won't be animating that for a while.

I'm going to have to move in late may/early June, and I don't want to move mid scene.  I'll have a bunch of packing to do.
But there are some advantages to my move.  I'm going to have a bigger animation studio, and I'll be able to have all my LEGO in one room.  It also won't have that annoyingly low ceiling, and I'll live a reasonable distance from a LEGO store.

In the time leading up to that, I'll still animate some tests, and I've made a huge bit of progress on the script and finished Acts 2 and 3 save for a few needed revisions.  I'll need to arrange for Doug to come over and record his lines for Batty soon since I'll be moving two hours away from him.

Also, my current rough estimates on length which I can now more accurately guess with the completed script:
Act 1: 3 minutes
Act 2: 10 minutes
Act 3: 5 minutes

I'm not sure how long it's going to take after I move.  It heavily depends on how much time I also put into other projects.

The frame looks great. 

Too bad it's still going to take quite a while, though if it'll be better for you I'm sure it'll be worth it.    Eighteen minutes is a very impressive length, and having seen your previous work and all of the effort put into this already, this is going to be amazing.

Oh, and this is probably way too late, but if you're interested I could do some voice acting.  I can do really great Batman and Joker voices, as well as lots of different accents (German, American, Scottish and a bit of Irish, and a few others).  I can also do quite a few creepy voices, too.