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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Through The Time Tunnel [Past and Future]
My entry to Bricks in Motion's Past and Future Contest Contest. It's the year 1981, and a brave adventurer embarks on a quest, which if successful, will change history. He will be the first person to ever travel through time!
This was so great. Loved the set design and the pace of it. The only thing i did not like is that now I want to see where he goes lol. But nice job.
Great job!
While the "time tunnel" effect is actually simple, I absolutely love it. That was a great idea for an complex looking, in-camera portal effect. Spot on!
Like Antonio, I appreciate the pacing and flow of the film. The story is told just fine without any dialog, and the actions happening are clear and understandable. Your sets are great, and 0:42 is where the lighting really shines. (I'm always impressed by actions taking place in small hallways; and those clips are flawless. How did you do it?)
If something is lacking here, it's a clear motivation. The shot at 0:29 tells us they are travelling in time, but not really why.* (Unless I'm missing something) It would have taken only a shot of two to show us what the traveler wants. (Visit a historical event, prevent a personal tragedy, adopt a dinosaur, record the lost episodes of Doctor Who...Something like that.) That would have added some more emotional weight to the film, rather that it relying solely on the cool visuals and great camera work.
*Stupid me forgot to read the YouTube description. If, then, they are living in 1981, is there anything in the film itself that actually tells us they are travelling in time, not in space like Stargate? Again, if this film was missing something, it may be that.
Nice! I like films with no dialogue. The Time tunnel effect was awesome. Did you swap out the pieces every frame or did you add it in with CG?
Good Job!
Awesome. I definitely enjoyed this entry. While there wasn't much of a story, what was there worked fine for a short film. I must say that the sets were great but my favorite visual aspect was the portal effect. I've never seen that sort of effect done before in a brickfilm.
Thanks for the great comments, guys!
@Prichard Studios The hallway scene was by far the hardest to complete, as it required the most amount of post-production work. The ceiling was made up of 2 white plates. The top of the walls were mostly tile pieces, with a few studs spread throughout, to keep the plates in place, so I could remove them easily each time I moved the minifigure. Because of having to constantly remove the ceiling, I cropped around the ceiling on one of the frames and overlayed it on the entire shot. Once his head started to cover some of the ceiling, I had to manually mask around the area, frame by frame. The entire shot in total took around 2 and a half hours to animate and roughly 8 hours in total to edit. I’m glad it came out well.
Regarding the plot and motivations; I don’t want to spoil anything, as it’s currently under wraps, but I guess it’s worth explaining that this is the opening scene of a feature-length collaboration between me and a few other brickfilmers. We will get to see where he travels and learn more about his motivations for embarking on the journey. I look forward to releasing this and will soon be resuming work on it. There are a few visual elements that hint at what the project is, so I’d be interested to see if anyone picked up on what it could be 
@BrickAnimator724 Thank you. The time tunnel was animated without the use of CGI. Unfortunately, I didn’t take any behind the scenes photos of the tunnel in detail, but as we see in 1:05, behind the wall there was another wall, made up entirely of black bricks. In the wall, there was a 1x2 brick with a peg attached to it. At the back of the brick-built tunnel, I included a 1x2 technic brick, with a hole in the centre, which allowed me to clip it onto the wall and rotate it like a wheel.
William Osborne Wrote:
The time tunnel was animated without the use of CGI.
That's what I thought, but thanks for explaining how it was done.
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