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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Interesting frames. Looks like it could be a weird hospital or a retro space station?? Definitely like dose currved walls tho.
It looks like you're prepared to do Inception type moves. Good idea.
I am digging the details Pritchard, nice to see some sweet looking sets are being built for THAC! I really love the use of the 2x2 tiles for that diamond pattern, I was thinking of doing that but you beat me to it.
This is the latest set I have been working on for THAC, back when I was building the villains lair for Beyond someone told me I should get lots of tubes, and while I ordered a bunch I didn't use many in the final design, now I am making up for that in spades.
That set is crazy awesome. You guys... you're making my set look super simple... (And I haven't even posted a picture of it on here yet).
The lighting is awesome and the mini lens flares in the windows are cool. Great use of the tubes. I would imagine an alien bug would live there.
Well if you pay attention to the lighting like you did in Christmas Puppy Love a simple set should look great, just having little things like light sources from windows brings a lot of life to a set.
Thanks!
Here is how to build the curved wall.
I found it while drooling over all the awesomeness in the "LEGO Techniques" Flickr Group.
I had a hospital in mind while building it, but then it just became a case of "Ooh, this looks cool, let's do it!" until it turned out like that. So, yeah, I'm not quite sure what it is, but at least that doesn't have be decided until THAC starts.
Sloth, thanks, but if I may say so, your set there puts mine to shame. The great industrial look, plus the amazing lighting, just looks fantastic.
Rioforce, I agree that Puppy Love had some great lighting. And remember, it's not always having a great set, but knowing how to present it that makes the difference. If you do half as well as you did in that, you'll be fine.
Ok, so here's my main set. It's some type of office. Right now, it's a police office. It could be all kinds of different offices with a little bit of furniture change. The lighting is inconsistent between the pics, so is the white balance, because I am still working it out.
Preparing for THAC XII by rioforce, on Flickr
Heroic Desk Shot - THAC XII by rioforce, on Flickr
Interigation - THAC XII by rioforce, on Flickr
Celing Shot - THAC XII by rioforce, on Flickr
Couch - THAC XII by rioforce, on Flickr
And here's a jail. The steamy-looking fog is actually a great big lens flair.
The lighting looks really nice and I like that a lot.
Perhaps smooth off the whole table. That can be a nice way to get things looking fancy.
That person in the jail is too ugly though. It's disturbing.
RIO, That jail I saw on flickr and was like "damn that's a really neat design"
Thanks for the comments. I put flat tiles on the table to cover the exposed studs and it looks much better. I have a question, which White balance should I use? I might go with the more yellow one on the right, but I guess it's according to if the office is supposed to seem cold and un-welcoming, or if it's supposed to be warmer in there...
White Balance - THAC XII by rioforce, on Flickr
That person in the jail is too ugly though. It's disturbing.
Yes, I know. 
He's actually a character I made a few years ago for an 80s music video brickfilm, and I try to cameo him in all my brickfilms, but I tend to forget to put him on-set, so I stuck him in jail so I would remember. 
Do you really think the statue looks weird, Osom? Though, actually, I'm not sure as to which statue you mean to indicate, as there are two graveyards, the North one and the South one. The south one, the main fenced one, has one, he's go a scythe and a fancily printed cracked statue body and robe from a Hobbit set. The North graveyard isn't fenced and has two statues, the light grey bearded guy with a cup, and then the dark statue in the hood and robe. The latter is actually brown, but I used him to take advantage of this film being in greyscale.
So which one did you mean? Or did you mean all of them?
.
Oh didn't know there were different graveyards. They all look a little odd to me. But thats totally just my opinion. And its really just a very small thing. I think you asked somewhere about tree placement to, and I think it looks good. But if you were to move some trees out from the town square it might make the middle skeleton tree look more menacing. But I'm really not sure about that. Over all though its an amazing set!
Hope that helps
OsomStudios
The only thing I'd suggest is that you use some plates, cheese slopes, flat plant elements (of the sort you've used on the trees), and suchlike to put on the ground in front of the gravestones, to show that the ground has been dug up or overgrown. Right now I feel like just putting the gravestones on the ground like that looks a bit odd. Also, I'd give the statues (especially in the North Cemetery) a small decorative base or something like that, as it looks a bit odd having them just stuck directly on the ground like that. Aside from that, I think the slopes with hollow studs that you've used for the landscaping should have their studs covered, since seeing them exposed looks a bit off to me.
I'm not sure about covering the hallow studs since there's not a good way to do that without making it look weird.
But I really like the idea for altering the graveyard, I could try that out. The statue in the South graveyard already has a base, but it just happens to be covered in the other pictures.
Could you take a picture of the whole set, so we can see the scale compared to the desk?
Also, as always, could you take one in color?
I also took a colour version to be released after the film.
The desk is actually two tables put together, but they're mostly flat unlike my old table, so now the set can actually fit on it. Since my usually large looking background is actually comparatively small I usually have to use a more narrow field of vision so that it will work with the shots.
rioforce, I think which white balance you use depends entirely on the mood of your film. Comedy? The warm tone might be better. Drama? I'd probably go with the harsh cool tone. The lighting feels a bit more dramatic in the cooler frame, the sort of piercing rays of light are more prevalent.
I've updated the cemeteries with Mr. Vertigo's suggestions:
I feel like the goblet wizard chap looks significantly nicer with his new base. I think that was a very good idea to add one.
Any thoughts? I'm hoping to film tomorrow, animating at the same time as the Thackers to get into the merry old Thac spirit even if I'm not entering.
I like that! A cheese plate or two on the base might help unify the fig/base but otherwise that's a nice set!
Nice sets. I hope you light them with a little more contrast in the film, they look underexposed like a fake "day for night" effect almost.
I've updated the cemeteries with Mr. Vertigo's suggestions.
I feel like the goblet wizard chap looks significantly nicer with his new base. I think that was a very good idea to add one.
Any thoughts?
I was thinking more along the lines of some small slopes for the base; it still looks a bit low for me. I think one brick or slightly more is a good height. As for the graves, I was thinking having a 4x6 (or similar dimension) plate stuck in front of the grave to make it appear as though something has been buried there. Of course, it wouldn't be a perfect square, I'd add cheese slopes, small plates, etc. on top to make it look more natural, or create more irregular shapes using smaller plates instead of using a single 4x6 (which was just a general example). Also, maybe add small decorations, railings, or suchlike around the graves, or maybe even a low stone box in front of the gravestone (something like this):
Also, if you want to make it look like a really old cemetery, I'd recommend slanting and off-setting the gravestones themselves to make them crooked and old. For example, if you look at really old real-life cemeteries, such as the old Jewish Cemetery in Prague, the gravestones look really irregular:
(Obviously this is a somewhat extreme example, and it's very crowded seeing as Prague was/is a comparatively big city and not a tiny village, but it should get the point across.)
I guess that in a lot of cemeteries the ground where the hole was dug is indistinguishable from the surrounding ground so it should technically look fine, but the way you've rendered it in LEGO somehow makes the cemetery look a bit off to me for some reason. It looks like you've lined up the gravestones and statues on a baseplate, which feels a just bit too neat and tidy, almost clinical, to me.
Whew, that ended up being a lot longer than I thought, hope all this makes sense.
I'm hoping to film tomorrow, animating at the same time as the Thackers to get into the merry old Thac spirit even if I'm not entering.
Me too. I'm not going to enter THAC unfortunately as I don't have time, but I want to still celebrate the spirit by trying to animate as much of my film as possible tomorrow, in between the rest of my daily activities. I'm hoping I can finish my scene--I've animated a good chunk today and yesterday, so I'm feeling optimistic.
Ah, perhaps I'll try a few other things. I was wanting to tilt some of the stones, actually, but I couldn't ever think of a way to do it without making it look like it's not really deep in the ground.
I was thinking of adding lumps like a grave may have been dug recently, however, I already have one freshly dug grave, and I feel like reasonably a town of such a small size would rarely have more than one grave freshly dug simultaneously.
I might try one or two slanted graves, though. Also, I might add a 2x4 light grey tile over one of the graves with the light grey tombstones to get that thing from the second picture of yours.
Nice sets. I hope you light them with a little more contrast in the film, they look underexposed like a fake "day for night" effect almost.
Thanks!
This isn't the final lighting for the film, I took these pictures of the town more quickly just to show the details of the set. However, the lighting I am using is still rather close.
This is one of the frames from the early part of the film I did last year:
Since I've already started filming for that part of the film not in the town, I'm not sure I could really change the general night lighting setup that much, were I to do so, the lighting would be inconsistent. However, I could still pump up the contrast a little in post once it's already filmed.
Do you think I should? And by a little or a lot?
That still looks way better. Conventional wisdom with black and white would be to have the brightest parts of the image somewhat close to white, without blowing anything out. Obviously this isn't a hard and fast rule when you have significant changes in the light and dark composition of the shots mid-scene.
I'm excited to see some elaborate black & white lego animation like this.
Sorry for the terrible image quality, but I had to take this on my phone. This is one of the final sets for Avengers Tower: Invasion. I'm thinking it's basically just a room where they examine artefacts taken from incarcerated super-villains. What I'm not sure about is how to populate the rest of it. There needs to be quite a lot of empty space in front of the stairs and around the door-thing at the back, but I think the walls are bare and I'm not sure what to add. The black background is just black card that I'm using for the walls themselves, since I'm poor I don't have enough bricks to build an actual Lego wall. I'd rather not cut them up or damage them, as they're really useful, but blue-tacking stuff to them is fine. So does anyone have any suggestions?
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