The starting of my love with brickfilming began in a place called YouTube. It may seem cliche, due to the fact that YouTube is one of the biggest reasons that many others became enthralled with the art of brickfilming, yet it is true. I opened up the internet browser and typed in the url for YouTube, and hit enter. A few seconds later I arrived at the site and moved the mouse onto the search box. I typed in “lego,” and pressed enter. The videos loaded onto the screen and I searched through them all. None really held my interest, most were horribly done--however, then they were quite proffessional--So I continued to search through the pages... then a pair of names showed up on the top of the third page I had gone through, it read: “w00t" by NathanWells.

    The video looked like it would be good, so I watched it. With a jaw dropped. I loved it, even though there were some flaws, I still was so excited by it! The animation was the best I had seen! So I went onto his channel and watched every single one of his videos. However, I saw his favourite box. A person named Zach Macias, also known as ZachMG, or MindGame had one of his films favourited by Nathan, so I hiked over to his channel and was... like: Daaaaayamn.

I wanted to be as good as Zach Macias like hell. So I tried making animations with my moms cell phone I thought they were okay, but then I looked at Zach's animations and... I think you know how I felt. So I gave up for a little while, until, I heard about another website, a magical place called Brickfilms.com... I immediatley headed over and signed up, under the name: “BrickByBrick” (Lately their was a member on BiM with that name, I have no idea how that came about.) But for some reason they would not let me on. I didn't know how to contact the administrator, so I just sat and watched, and read peoples posts, longing to be part of the group. Then something happened. Everyone began to argue and leave! Why? I thought? They had said they were going to start a new site called IloveBrickfilming.com, “No, I should stay faithful to my site!” I said. But as the months passed, no new videos came in, or any activity. On top of that, I still wasn't a member, I learned about the Refugee Camp on the now known BricksInMotion.com, but I still wasn't sure what to do.

But then on January 10th 2009, I signed up on BricksInMotion.com.

I thought it would be cool to make LEGO videos so I held them up in front of the camera and made them talk. Then what I did is I took my digital camera and would start recording a minifig. Then I would move them and pause the recording. It shook way too much but I though it was awesome. I just did that for a few months until I finally started browsing YouTube. I thought YouTube was like of the devil because all the adults around me were saying how horrible the things on there were. But I sucked up my fear and looked around. I found some pretty sucky animators FF101 (which I stopped after I heard the word crap (I thought crap was a terrible swear word), Darthmilo77, and some SpongeBob animators named RobnJake. They all sucked though but I still thought it was incredible. I started doing stuff on the LEGO site and ended up seeing The Han Solo Affair like JK. That shoulda an eye opener but instead I went back to watching dumb stuff on YouTube. My dad wouldn't let me sign up for YouTube so I had to resort to building a website. Being the ignorant little imp I was I never thought there was a LEGO film makers community so I made my own. It was called MyLegoFilms. It obviously didn't work. I think it was around the time of the BF to BiM split. I eventually found Brickfilms from Nathan Wells, I tried signing up there over and over again, but I never got in because I didn't know it was dead. Somehow I found BiM and signed up as MyLegoFilms. But I totally forgot about that account and made a new one that was TBDude. I got a message from Hazzat saying it was ban-worthy and it freaked me out. I never posted on the forums, but I did go in the chat, I don't chat anymore though. So now I'm just another BiMer. That's my story.

Wow, I'm such an idiot for not posting my story in my own thread! [/face smack]
anyway, without a-further-to-do........
I was introduced to making "LEGO MUVEYS"(as I first called them, remember JK?) by my friend, Jonathan Philips, aka Just Kidden. This was around the beggining of the summer of '08. The site wasn't converted by TaaB yet, but RevMan might have been consoling with TaaB. Anyway, I lurked around the directory until the takeover by TaaB. then, in '09, JK introduced me to BiM, I lurked here for a month, then I joined. The rest is history.

It started for me in 2004...

I stumbled upon claymations (Or Klaymations) by a guy called Knox on Flashplayer.com(Now UgoPlayer.com).

I loved them, but couldn't work out how he did them. I started making videos on my ad's mobile, by moving "LEGO men" with sticks, like a puppet show.

A little while later my best friend who also made those videos (Copying little... ) made a video where a LEGO guy cut off another one's head. BUT there was a difference... The head in the video just CAME OFF!!! He didn't use his hands. I was amazed (I was 9 people) and asked him how he did it. He showed me. He had paused the video recording, pullled off the head, and restarted the camera.
It was the most awesome trich I had ever seen. Pretty soon I realised I could make my playdoh blobs move "by themselves" using this trick, and I loved it. My family thought they were funny and told me (More like pretended lol) that they were amazing, and got me to keep trying so I did. But I had one problem. My older brother was an ass. He kept ruining them when I made them, and deleting them off the phone...

So, I kept trying anyway, and eventually found "Animateclay.com". There I learned the proper way of animationg stop-motion. I found our old webcam, and downloaded Anasazi SMA.

I made a few animations of clay blobs walking around and falling off things, and showed them to my dad. He liked them , and was happy that I had improved so he bought me a new webcam, and six blocks of Newplast.

That was an awesome day...

So, I kept on making them. I loved it.

Then, one day, I found a "Steve & Dave" Bluntmation on Youtube.

I thought "Olol cool. I shud use lego agen lol" so I did. I made loads of pathetic animations for about a year, and in that time I discovered Brickfilms.com. I just lurked until one day I noticed that "LEGO Prank call" had been on the front page for ages. The site was dead.
So somehow (I can't even remember how) I found this site.

I made a few posts, and then entered THAC.

A few members (Hazzat, and JK were two of them) posted nice comments on my entry, so I carried on and tried to improve...

And here I am today, writing my post... Heh..

I was born with a desire to make Brickfilms.

Well, ever since I found out there were ways of making Lego move without touching it - which was back way before I could remember. I craved for the Steven Spielberg Moviemaker set...but my parents were cruel and mean and didn't buy it for me (well, how was I supposed to afford it myself? I was 7 years old, and the set was over £100!!), so I eventually was forced to give it up. Bloody parents, always crushing your dreams.....

I then made a crappy power-point presentation in late 2005, containing badly shot photos of Star Wars figures doing stuff (no, I'm not posting it here because I'm so embarrassed of it). I had to stop that because all the crappy pictures were clogging up the computer and my parents threatened to ban me from it. Again, dreams crushed......

But it wasn't until 2006 when I stumbled across google video, which contained hundreds of crappy Lego muveys with the occasional 'Spite Your Face' and 'Jay Silver' animation. Thinking they were genius, I spent a whole year trying to find out how the hell you actually make them. Finally, I stumbled across Brickfilms.com in early 2007, which STILL didn't tell you how to do them - although the Brickfilms on the site amazed me. I came across a poor instructional video showing how to use Windows Movie Maker to animate. I then made 'Revenge of Empress Tang' - which pretty much set the standard for the rest of my movies.

Finally, I found a masking tutorial by Stevie Collins which in explaining the masking process told of a 'capture software'. After some quick research, I stumbled across  'Stop Motion Pro', which - because I grossly mistrusted free software - was in my opinion the best way forward. I bought the software out of my own pocket, stole my families ancient web-cam, and began to make my long-planned Doctor Who series. It got a load of views, so I tried to use our ancient camcorder instead. Finally, I managed to find a connection and hey-presto...it connects.

And so we then had at the beginning of 2008, the apocalypse. Though I was there, I was still a noob, and had little understanding of what was going on - but I left and joined ilovebrickfilms instead. Then (mid-2008) the connection broke my laptops motherboard and crashed the entire system. But not before I made some more crappy crap. 'Gunpoint Negotiations' was a Western-Bricksplotaion made for BRAWL 08 (god, I miss that contest) - my contribution to the sudden boom of Western Brickfilms. I was so ashamed of it that I didn't even post it in the forums for discussion (there was no directory back then).

In my break, I watched 'The Magic Portal', which is now my favourite Brickfilm of all time (along with 'Zombie Attack 2' of course!). It didn't improve the qualities of my movies much, but it made me realise that animation and effects contribute very little to the overall enjoyment of the movie itself. I decided then to follow the advice of my ol' pal 'Richard III'. If I'm rubbish at being good, then I'll be great at being bad!

Armed with a new laptop, and a much more efficient fire-wire connection, I created the first 'Mr Socially Impaired'. It sucked, but people appeared to like it, so I created more Mr Socially Impaired installments.

I've had to take a break recently due to examinations in January, and more in June. However, I intend to enter THAC 8 (I have some ideas floating in my head, but it all depends on the theme). And I also have 'Pirate Pirate 2' (halfway through scripting) and 'Pirate Pirate 3' (still in concept - although I want it to be a parody of the western genre, kinda like 'Blazing Saddles' only completely different) to work on when I'm done.

Yeah, by parents hold me back sometimes too...

Well,this is quite obivious. Anyway,let's begin.

Back sometime in the fall of 2008,I watched some brickfilms on Youtube,and was like: "How did they do that?",and got out a Kodak camera,some LEGOs,and on the couch,is where I first began taking the pictures of the moving LEGO. Over the next few months,I somehow improved. But these animations didn't exist,as I didn't edit them on the computer (like everyone does).
The following year,in the fall of 2009,is where I began posting brickfilms on the then-new Youtube channel,indyboy4productions. Since then,the cameras I used were a GE Minicam,Mircosoft Lifecam,and now (and probably forever),the Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000. Plus,I have gotten some good friends from around the world (most of them come from the UK).
And on November 3rd of that same year,I joined BricksinMotion. And had become a proud member since.

Nothing to say right at this moment... yet. Maybe real soon?

No, it's just harder to have one.
Back on subject please.

Does it make a difference?
...

Anyway, I was about 8 years old, and my mom was running an RCX based Mindstorms class in my school district. She was looking for new things to add to her program and saw LEGO animation in somebody elses site. After much research she found the old LEGO studios set and she bought a whole bunch of the crappy cameras that came with it off ebay. I for one was excited and thought everyone of my movies were so awesome. I had seen mamshmam, biff and mario, and other things like Nathan Wells and MindGame. At that time I focused on my animation more and the things I thought were "hilarious" was the grim reaper saying want some cookies? After turning 11, I took a Lifecam with autofocus and animated claymations for a year. They were always weird looking and I never found out the problem. After a year of switching between clay and brickfilms, I stumbled on fancypants tutorial on easing in and out. I was astounded by his work from the start and looked up on the matter. I bought an animation book and read up on the features of animation. Later, I took an interest in actual filmmaking and studied various directors and such, sadly that didn't last that long. After a bad THAC entry which had absolutely no thought put into it, I took a break. I wasnt getting good ideas at all and was straining myself on the matter. After hearing about Avant Garde I wrote a huge script and it was really fantastic to me. Sadly it was way too ambitious, but hopefully I'll get back and make it one day. After making yet another terrible entry to Avant Garde, I was strained. I wasnt able to make a proper film. Only animate well. Before that Tripod had left a script open to take Advice From A Stranger. I took it gladly and I am finishing it right now. I am really proud of it and will actually be my first proper film, seeing as my other films were extremely bad. Now I hope to get better and better at storymaking and animation till I can be at par with a great legend brickfilmer.

Thats my story

-Tejas VIM