We still haven’t seen an official trailer for “Solo: A Star Wars Story” (and it’s possible we never will).

In the meantime, you can whet your appetite with “Lando’s Deal“, a wonderful film starring everyone’s favorite smooth-talking space pirate. I’ve seen a number of live-action Star Wars fan films, but none of them seem to capture my interest and attention like this one did.

There’s a lot to like here—strong cinematography, dynamic blocking and staging, solid sound and voice work, neat bits of animation, and an overabundance of in-camera effects and lighting (the telltale red-and-black Brickstuff wire is a giveaway). And that’s basically all ignoring the fact that it’s a brickfilm; I’m not even sure that ‘the LEGO of it all’ factored into my enjoyment.

Overall, it’s just a simple, fun film, and it feels like Star Wars—you can tell that director Adam Nies has a particular fondness for that old card player / gambler / scoundrel.

And of course, the easiest way to win me over is with a behind-the-scenes video.

LEGO Star Wars: Lando’s Deal – YouTube

San Diego Comic Con was this past weekend, and it gave us a look at the second trailer for “The LEGO Ninjago Movie”. Putting aside the constant LEGO Movie “parental issues” plotlines, there are some solid gags in this preview—as well as a tease at how this film will integrate the live-action world, which is something that was almost completely lacking from “The LEGO Batman Movie“. I am intrigued.

The LEGO NINJAGO Movie – Trailer 2 – YouTube

The Golf Channel website has a couple of brick re-creations of moments from golf history; apparently created in anticipation of/to promote the 146th Open which starts this week.

These don’t seem to be anything close to a cross-promotional tie in with The (all lower-case) lego Group, but they are officially branded with the rainbow peacock logo. (I’m picturing an NBC page animating these in a spare office.)

Anyway, here’s minifigure Jack Nicklaus beating Doug Sanders at The Open in 1970.

And here’s Henrik Stenson’s win at Royal Troon—with one of the most unusual attempts at minifig lip-sync I’ve ever seen.

As (nearly) always, the viral intent of these spots means that we get no credits and no attribution for the animators. The style here is perhaps a bit too simple to be able to recognize the animators by sight, but maybe some of you internet sleuths can figure out who was behind these.

EDIT 07/21/17: Thanks to my co-editor and some smooth simians, we now know that these spots were made by Jared Jacobs, aka Gold Yeller! Check out some more spots (as well as some behind-the-scenes) here.

I was all set to write a review of “The LEGO Batman Movie” way back in February, before the film even came out. The first of 2017’s two sequels to “The LEGO Movie” focused on not only a beloved character from the first film, but on one of the most popular fictional characters of all time. Batman is a pop culture institution. So is LEGO. Combining them is a sure thing.

And for the most part, that’s accurate. The film did well; it’s got a 90% score on Rotten Tomatoes. The product line was robust and full of beautifully designed sets and characters. There was even a lovely Making-of book for the film (though it’s really more a collection of concept art book than it is a comprehensive look behind-the-scenes).

So why did I find it so hard to write anything about this film? Why didn’t I have the same vigor I had while writing my in-depth review of the first film?

I think it’s because a “LEGO Movie” is no longer the gamble it once was. This sequel was another fun, well-made film in the LEGO Movie universe, with a great cast and some wonderful designs. But unlike the original, the marketing for this film definitely had the vibe of “yeah, come on… we know you’re all gonna come see this.”

On top of that, the “Batman” of it all is nothing new, either. All of the familiar motifs are here:

• A gang of Gotham’s worst criminals (led by The Joker, natch) is loose in the city, wreaking havoc and conspiring against our heroes,
• The Gotham City government and police force struggle with this excessive amount of crime. And, of course,
• Millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne dresses like a bat man to clean up the town and work through the pain of losing his parents at a young age.

On paper, this might sound like a recipe for a dull film. But as with the first LEGO Movie, what makes it all work is a wonderful dose of humor, self-awareness, and an obvious love for the property. LEGO Batman is definitely a fun watch, and if you liked the original, you’ll probably like this one, too.

But unfortunately, this all means that I don’t much else to say about The LEGO Batman Movie itself. Dave Pickett and I talked at length about it on my YouTube channel back in February (see above), if you’re interested in some further random discussion.

However, I will say this: I am curious to see what comes next, given the fact that we’ll have “The LEGO Ninjago Movie” to watch and think through a few months from now. As far as IPs go, Ninjago is certainly no Batman…

You can catch The LEGO Batman Movie on DVD, Blu-ray, iTunes, and elsewhere.

We’re a little less than one month out from the North American release of “The LEGO Batman Movie”, the first of this year’s two (!) sequels to 2014’s “The LEGO Movie”. In the time since our last post about it, there have been a number of trailers for the film, as well as a few TV spots with additional footage. Let’s review.

Teaser Trailer #1 – The Batcave

The first teaser sees Batman introducing us to his Batcave, general solitude, and the overall concept of the film. It also features an opening prologue, which suggests (albeit jokingly) that the film was written and directed by Batman himself. I would love it if that conceit carried over to the actual film.

Teaser Trailer #2 – Wayne Manor

The second teaser followed only a few days later, and gave some insight into LEGO Batman’s parentage (spoiler alert: Batman’s parents are dead) as well as how this film fits into the overall Bat-continuity. The Wayne Manor fireplace room is a gorgeous design, and the animation of Batman flopping around the floor like some sort of fish is very entertaining and well-posed. #ABR

Comic Con 2016 Trailer

The Comic Con trailer was the first to feature Michael Cera’s Dick Grayson/Robin, as well as more looks at the Batcave and Batman’s expansive costume collection.

Trailer #4

The succinctly-titled “Trailer #4” serves as an amalgam of the previous previews, while also showcasing more of the plot and characters—including Rosario Dawson as Barbara Gordon, and Zack Galifianakis as The Joker.

Extended TV Spot

Finally, the Extended TV Spot confirms something that I was curious about—this film will take place in “Gotham City” (or a reasonable brick-built facsimile) and not Bricksburg (home of Emmet from the original LEGO Movie). We also get more of the Dark Knight’s rogues gallery, including The Riddler, Catwoman, Penguin, Gentleman Ghost (real), Calendar Man (very real), and the Condiment King (really really real). Of course, my favorite villain (seen here in a quick glimpse) will most likely prove to be Killer Croc, if only for the retro LEGO crocodile head he sports in this film.

What are you most looking forward to in The LEGO Batman Movie? Did we miss any of the trailers? Let us know in the comments!

There’s some nice stuff going on here, from the dogs playing fetch to the idling crowd outside the Today Show studio. It’s always interesting when TV personalities and celebrities get “LEGO-fied”; something I expect we’ll see a lot more in the coming year with “The LEGO Batman Movie” and “The LEGO Ninjago Movie” on the horizon for 2017. (EDIT: or right now.)

I wasn’t quite sure what this campaign was all about, but it seems like it’s an NBC News promotional drive. Not quite a charity fundraiser, and not to be confused with this non-profit. I like the sentiment of it all, but it could be a bit clearer. Maybe it’s just because I don’t watch the Today Show.

(And of course, despite the YouTube description touting “the super creative folks behind LEGO’s legendary stop-motion animations”, there is no attribution to Kevin Ulrich or his team. For TLG, “Sharing Kindness” apparently does not include giving credit where credit is due.)

NBC TODAY Show: KLG, Hoda and LEGO Get Animated About Kindness | Hulu

This whimsical piece came to my attention through a message from Thomas Panio, a student in a brickfilming class I taught way back in 2011. He and one of his classmates, Malibu Taetz, crafted this lovely “Fantasia”-like film (which was one of the finalists in Cine Brick 2015).

There’s a lot to like in this four-part short; from the well-timed brick-and-plate abstractions in the opening to the lush greenery of the later narrative segments. I also noticed some clever workaround techniques—using a cape to hide disconnect minifigure limbs is a pretty effective solution.

“I just wanted to let you know that I still make brickfilms and your class definitely helped me make better films,” Thomas says. I am very proud.

Sinfonia VI: A LEGO Animation – YouTube

Today is the 15th annual International Animation Day (as begun by ASIFA back in 2002). And what better way to commemorate the occasion than to highlight this super sweet brick-built Zoetrope by Alan Mann?

For such a simple form of animation, it’s a deceptively intricate build. Of course, I especially love the brick-built run cycle of the character within. Well done!

You can check out more photos at Alan’s Flickr page.

(PS: Now that our book is on the shelves, we’ll be slowly (but surely) picking up where we left off here at The Set Bump. Thanks for waiting!)

Warner Bros. has released some promotional images for its forthcoming, aptly-titled film: “The LEGO Batman Movie.” (Not to be confused with “LEGO Batman: The Movie”, a home video release from 2012.) The caped crusader, once again played by Will Arnett, will be swooping into theaters on February 10, 2017.

Batman in a new version of the Batwing, flying over… Gotham? Bricksburg?

A Batcave detail, with costume variations like the “Raging Bat” boxing outfit, and “Excalibat”, which seems to be a Castle-themed suit of armor. (I also see “Bat By Gaslight”, “Glam Bat”, “Current Bat”, and “New 52” signs at the bottom.)

It appears that the brick-built explosion motif will carry over from the first film, and I couldn’t be happier about it.

Batman in his cowl and dinner jacket, microwaving a lobster. Nothing weird about that.

The man himself.

According to ComingSoon.net, a trailer for the film is supposed to drop today. No word on that so far, but we’ll update you as soon it hits the web.

How will this film tie into the established LEGO Movie continuity? We’ll just have to wait (though not quite as long as last time) and see.

Sneak peek: ‘Lego Batman’ shows his brick-made lair | USA Today

Here’s the first look at Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s Lego Batman movie | Polygon

The student has become the teacher.

It’s no secret (or is it?) that I love teaching; there’s something fun and special about sharing what you’ve learned with other people. Over the past few years, Dave and I have done just that—leading numerous workshops on LEGO Animation (we even went so far as to compile a BrickJournal issue about it).

Whenever we discuss storytelling in our classes, I caution folks against things like making a film “about the person who couldn’t come up with an idea for their film,” on the basis that “it’s been done to death.” Now, without even knowing it, Harrison Allen has proved me wrong.

“Ella’s Tale” is charming and well-made, and is wholly worth your time in spite of being based around one of the more overused film school tropes. It was an entry into the recent BRAWL 2015 contest over at BricksInMotion.com—meaning that it all came together in one week. Plus, it’s got a hidden ninja.

Just goes to show: any idea can become a memorable film in the hands of the right creator. I hope you learned your lesson, past-David.

Ella’s Tale – YouTube

Ok, “we” didn’t build it, but it was built by someone.

We’ve got some catching up to do here, so let’s start by drawing your eye to this “LEGO City” promo made for LEGO China a few months back. Directed by Rogier Wieland, “LEGO_Adventure in the City” is a fantastic mix of traditional miniatures, really impressive brick-built replacement animation (check out that dino!), and goofy minifig business. The live-action bits are a treat as well; all of the disparate media meshes well together into a fun story that perfectly captures a post-“The LEGO Movie” brickfilm world.

There’s even a sweet behind-the-scenes video here! Good stuff.

LEGO_ADVENTURE IN THE CITY on Vimeo

We’re still alive. Things are happening. More posts coming soonish.

This year’s “BrickFlix Lite” screening will be part of BrickMagic 2015, in Concord, North Carolina. The bad news? The screening won’t be in a movie theater, as it has been in past years. The good news? The restrictions on films with licensed characters are relaxed, so you can finally submit those epic fan films you’ve been sitting on. (I’m looking at you, Dylan Woodley).

Deadline for submissions is May 1st. Send in your best! FAQ here; submit here!

BrickFlix Lite at BrickMagic 2015!

It may be a bit too quiet here lately, but nothing stops the brickfilming community from pressing onward with impressively cool stuff. (We’re working on some cool stuff of our own, I promise.)

This Jurassic Park tribute was helmed by the father-daughter team of Paul and Hailee Hollingsworth, aka Digital Wizards. They (along with folks like Sean Willets, Forrest Whaley, and Garrett Barati) spent several months on the piece, re-creating some of the most memorable scenes from the classic 1993 film. My favorite bit is the stop-motion inclusion of Mr. DNA. Gotta love brick-built animation.

It’s always a point of pride for the community as a whole when brickfilms get high-profile attention, and this one certainly made the rounds—being featured on NPR, Mashable, USA Today, and elsewhere.

What else can be said? Check it out, and be sure to watch the behind-the-scenes video as well.

LEGO JURASSIC PARK – YouTube

A “Save the Arctic” campaign video from Greenpeace has been making the rounds, calling on The LEGO Group to end its partnership with multinational oil and gas company Shell.

The video features a vast arctic landscape, where humans and wildlife are swallowed up by a gigantic amount of oil released by a brick-built Shell oil rig. The piece ends with a caption that reads “Shell is polluting our kids’ imaginations”, and the whole affair is underscored by a haunting cover of “Everything is Awesome”.

In some ways, this campaign is brilliant. Between The LEGO Movie, the “Beyond the Brick” documentary, and the usual promo releases from TLG, 2014 has squarely solidified LEGO video content into the zeitgeist. This production plays right into that — not only through the music, but with some well-designed builds, artfully composed shots, and sweeping camera work. (For the moment, let’s ignore the blatant inclusion of a Mega Bloks Brickforge Halo figure, and GoT-looking figs that may or may not be the ones from Citizen Brick.)

As clean as the cinematography is, though, the actual message of the video feels a bit more muddled. I understand what the goal is: Greenpeace wants to convince LEGO to end its partnership with Shell. That’s the “what”. But the “why” of it all seems less clear; at least as far as this video and the associated website are concerned.

When I first heard about this online movement a week ago, my initial reaction was “does TLG even still make Shell-branded sets?” Apparently, the answer is yes. Here’s a bit of history on TLG’s partnership with Shell:

• Shell-branded LEGO sets appeared as early as 1966.
• According to Brickipedia (which could really use some better attribution), the majority of the Shell sets were not available in the US. It seems as though Shell-branded LEGO products only started appearing stateside in 1986.
• Prior to 1986, TLG also released a few Exxon-branded sets in the US.
• In 1992, Octan began to replace Shell as the main (albeit fictional) gasoline brand of LEGO Town (and later, City) sets.
• 1999 saw the last of the official wide-release sets with Shell branding from TLG.
• The Shell logo continued to be prevalent in LEGO kits until as recently as 2012, due to the partnership between Shell and Ferrari.
• Additionally, LEGO products continue to be offered as exclusives at Shell stations to this day, though they are not always available in all regions.

However, none of this information is included in the Greenpeace “Save the Arctic” website. Nor is there much information about what Shell is doing, or documented evidence as to how the environment is being affected. And for what little content there actually is on the site, there’s basically no attribution or sources. (Although some digging did turn up this PDF that goes into a bit more detail.)

What we get instead as the main hub of this campaign is a weird, heavy-handed, confusing-to-navigate site that approaches “LEGO CL!CK” levels of poor web design. Selecting the “more information” button on the site continues the mixed messages: should readers be concerned about advertising’s influence on the children, saving the Arctic, preventing global warming, or Shell’s use of licensing partners to distract from its other corporate ventures? It feels like Greenpeace wants folks to simultaneously think about all and none of these things, and instead get so riled up in a ball of knee-jerk emotion that they sign the petition without a second thought. 

Personally, I’d rather do some research and make well-informed decisions. Is Shell involved in some unsavory business practices? Seems like it. Does a partnership with Shell fly in the face of TLG’s commitment to environmental responsibility? Maybe. Should a petitioning crusade eschew sourced information and individual judgment in favor of reactionary tactics to make its voice heard? Probably not.

As a footnote: My research here is by no means exhaustive. If you’ve got thoughts or facts to contribute, or articles to reference, feel free to post them in the comments below. This campaign has already seen coverage in the International Business Times, Forbes, CBC News, and elsewhere.

This isn’t the first time LEGO video content has been utilized in the service of activism, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.

EDIT 7/11/14: Looks like the video was pulled from YouTube due to a copyright claim from Warner Bros.

EDIT 7/14/14: The video is back up on YouTube, and currently has 4.2 million views.

LEGO: Everything is NOT awesome. – YouTube

Something is happening in outer space…

Peter Reid’s Exo Suit is the latest release from the website-formerly-known-as-Cuusoo, LEGO Ideas. To announce the impending arrival of this set, TLG put out the above CG animated video, “co-created” (whatever that means) by Chris Salt of Oblong Pictures. I think having promotional videos for upcoming LEGO Ideas sets is a great concept on TLG’s part, but as with so many of their releases, this one suffers from being about twice as long as it needed to be.

Oddly, I don’t think the running time would have stuck out to me as much if the video had been done with stop-motion. As much as I’d love to see the real Exo Suit kit get animated (and I’m sure we will), it is a fragile-looking design. TLG tends to use CG when there are clear advantages to having a weightless wire-frame model, and that makes sense here from a production standpoint.

Except… none of those advantages are really utilized, and there’s large swaths of time where we’re basically looking at a video of a still image. It’s neat that the characters adhere to real-world minifig limitations (the influence of The LEGO Movie continues to be felt), but there is just SO MUCH DEAD TIME in this piece that it makes me wonder why they bothered making an animated video at all. When Exo Suit pilot Yve punches the keypad at 2:00, and the door starts whirring open with all the quickness of an inebriated turtle, I literally yelled at my computer screen for it to hurry up.

Anyway, I can certainly appreciate the effort that goes into making an animated video of any kind; this one just didn’t do it for me. Despite the less than stellar (space pun) execution, I’m hoping that promo videos for LEGO Ideas sets become something we see more of in the future. At the very least, it did get me excited about the set itself.

LEGO® Ideas #007 — Exo Suit – YouTube

Bricks by the Bay is the latest LEGO fan event to add a brickfilming component to their schedule. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I’m involved with this one, too (though only as a judge).

Here’s the lowdown on the festival:

Show off your LEGO animation skills at the Bricks by the Bay Brickfilm Festival. Create a film that exemplifies the convention theme, or send us your most recent stop-motion masterpiece, and it might be part of a screening for convention attendees.

Winners in the following categories will be announced during the Bricks by the Bay Convention awards ceremony, and will receive a brick-built trophy and a LEGO set:

• Best Film
• Best Film in the convention theme (2104: “Fun & Games”)
• Best Story
• Best Technical Achievement
• Young Filmmaker Award (12 and under)
• Special “Sweatbox” award to the best Film by a convention attendee

All of the rules and regulations for entering the festival can be found here. The submission window closes July 1st, but it’s open to everyone (including non-attendees) and any film made in the past year is eligible. There’s literally no reason not to submit. Do it!

Brickfilm Festival » Bricks by the Bay

2014 is shaping up to be a great year for LEGO fans, and for fans of LEGO motion pictures in particular. April 20th saw the world premiere of “Beyond the Brick: A LEGO Brickumentary” at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City.

Not to be confused with the podcast of the same name, or the previously released short-form LEGO documentaries, “Beyond the Brick” is a charming, playful look inside the worldwide LEGO fan community. Despite being moderately involved with the film (insofar as I was interviewed for it), I found the film’s content quite surprising; going in, I was expecting a more storied history of TLG as a whole. In fact, the film turned out to be more focused on AFOLs and other folks who take this children’s toy and do interesting, creative stuff with it.

Among those highlighted in the film are:

• Alice Finch
• Stephen Pakbaz
• Nathan Sawaya
• Dr. Daniel LeGoff
• Jan Vormann
• Søren Eilers
• Jonathan Vaughan
• Me

The film’s proceedings are led by a stop-motion minifig narrator, voiced by Jason Bateman. He serves to introduce each segment, as well as bridging some gaps between events, locations, and people. Having a narrator like this in the film was paramount — the LEGO fan community is widespread and varied, and “Beyond the Brick” makes the bold attempt to cover as many facets as possible within its 95 minute running time.

The animation for the film was done by Tommy Williamson (aka BrickNerd) and James Morr (aka Spastik Chuwawa), with some help from Kevin Ulrich (of Brotherhood Workshop). I also noticed a few other familiar names in the credits, including Marc-André Caron and Zach Macias. I assume that a number of the animated clips probably came from the ReBrick “Show us an AFOL” competition. Unfortunately, the less-than-stellar ReBrick archival approach makes it difficult to find any specific information about which entries won the contest and were included in the film. (If your entry was included in the film, please let us know in the comments below.)

In addition to being featured in “Beyond the Brick” (the documentary), I was also a guest this past week on “Beyond the Brick” (the podcast) to discuss “Beyond the Brick” (the documentary).

…Yeah. For those interested, I go a bit more into detail about my thoughts on the film, as well as a little bit of behind-the-scenes info:

Overall, if you have the opportunity, I highly recommend checking out “Beyond the Brick: A LEGO Brickumentary”. The next stop for the film is the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF), where the film will be playing on:

• Friday, May 16 @ 4:00pm – Lincoln Square Cinema, Bellevue
• Saturday, May 17 @ 3:30pm – SIFF Cinema Uptown Theater, Seattle
• Sunday, May 18 @ 2:30pm – SIFF Cinema Uptown Theater, Seattle

After that, we’re not sure where the film will go next, but as soon as we know, you will, too!

Beyond the Brick: A LEGO Brickumentary

As of this writing, the most-viewed article on The Set Bump is this short-and-admittedly-more-snarky-than-helpful piece entitled “No, ‘The LEGO Movie’ isn’t stop-motion”. I posted this commentary last year, as a response to several articles that jumped the gun by describing the contents of The LEGO Movie trailer as stop-motion when it was clearly done with CG.

Now, when I say:

It was clearly done with CG.

I of course mean:

Based on my 20+ years of study; and my knowledge of the limitations of LEGO stop-motion, film scheduling, and cash money; I (and my well-trained eye) can say with 99.9% certainty that not one shot in “The LEGO Movie” trailer is pure stop-motion photography.

Of course, motion pictures are illusions by definition, but I was still confident in my assertion that The LEGO Movie wasn’t stop-motion. Further adding to the confusion were contradictory comments from the directors and filmmaking crew, which skirted the line between actual information and marketing hype soundbites. What we really needed was hard evidence in the form of behind-the-scenes featurettes and footage.

And over the past month or so, we got just that.

First up was this “Behind the Bricks” mockumentary featurette, which was basically just a promo piece and not anything about the making of The LEGO Movie itself. Funny, but not helpful. It all still looked like 100% CG.

Next was this weird footage dump from ScreenSlam of some LEGO Movie making-of clips. Still no sign of stop-motion. (They did release some fun behind-the-scenes bits of the dialogue recording session with Chris Pratt, though.)

Then came this (veeeeeery dry) episode and article from fxguide, featuring interviews with Animal Logic crew members who detail (greaaaaaat detail) the CG approach and pipeline used for The LEGO Movie. Vindication was mine!

Finally, earlier today, Art of the Title gave us a look at the creation of the end titles from The LEGO Movie, and — lo and behold — they actually are stop-motion. Annoyingly, I can’t embed the videos here, but you should definitely check out the link. There’s a ton of cool making-of goodness to pour over.

On the set of the full end title reveal.

So what does this all mean? Well, it means that technically the directors weren’t kidding when they said there was some stop-motion in the film. Although it does still feel a tiny bit disingenuous to describe the entire film as “part-CGI and part actual real LEGO bricks in stop-motion”.

To be honest, having seen The LEGO Movie for a third time this past week, I still wasn’t sure myself as to whether the end titles were stop-motion or not. The animation and physical built pieces looked like stop-motion, but the structure of the “cubbyhole” layout seemed too CG-like to me. Knowing now how much CG pre-vis was done on the sequence, that assertion makes total sense.

Anyway, I guess the most important thing to take away here is that it really doesn’t matter what medium is used to make a film; as long as the story is compelling, memorable, and filled with characters who invite you to join them on their journey. Of course, I’ll still be waiting with bated breath for The LEGO Movie on home video… despite being CG, there are some amazing builds that I really want to go through one frame at a time.

I’ll also be checking the DVD featurettes veeeeery carefully for any signs of stop-motion.

What makes a LEGO movie a “LEGO Movie”?

In response to the release of “The LEGO Movie”, Fancy Pants put together this assortment of clips from 15 popular brickfilms. It’s a great showcase of some of the best the medium has to offer (we’ve covered a few of the selections here before), but something about the sentiment behind it seems off.

Here at The Set Bump, we can certainly be somewhat snooty in terms of what makes something “true” LEGO animation. On the other hand, as I said in my spoilertastic review: The LEGO Movie is, for all intents and purposes, a brickfilm in the truest sense of the word.

What do you guys think? Are there definite criteria for what makes a “real” LEGO movie? If so, do you think The LEGO Movie qualifies?

The REAL Lego Movies – YouTube

Here at The Set Bump, we’ve been keeping tabs on the progress and development of The LEGO Movie for a while, compiling what morsels of information we could to try and satisfy our curiosity. The announcement of the film (waaay back in 2009) left many unanswered questions in our minds — what would a LEGO motion picture even be about? Would it be done in stop-motion? Could it possibly be as boring as Clutch Powers?

Fear not, dear readers, for we now have answers and so much more. Sound the spoiler alarm (I’m about to spoil pretty much everything), and let’s dive on in.

Story

The LEGO Movie tells the story of Emmet Brickowski, a construction worker minifig who lives his average life in the average LEGO city of Bricksburg. Using very familiar-looking instruction booklets, Emmet helps build skyscrapers for the Octan Corporation, under CEO President Business.

But President Business has a secret alter-ego: Lord Business, a tyrannical despot with designs to conquer the entire LEGO universe by — what else? — gluing everything together.

Fortunately, a group of minifig Master Builders (i.e. our main cast and some licensed supporting cameos) has found the key to foiling Lord Business’ plan: the fabled “Piece of Resistance”. Unfortunately, that piece just happens to be glued to Emmet’s back. And thus, the odyssey begins…

There’s a larger story at work in The LEGO Movie, too (both figuratively and literally), but I’ll get to that.

Characters

Emmet (Chris Pratt) is the focal character of the film. Pratt plays the LEGO everyman to a T — his mastery of goofy charm (refined in his role as Andy Dwyer on “Parks & Recreation”) makes him a perfect fit to carry a LEGO film.

Emmet’s a simple fellow, but his eagerness and sincerity make his adventure a joy to watch. And in the standard “hero’s journey” manner, he picks up a variety of allies along the way…

• Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman) is the wise old sage and inveterate foe of Lord Business. Having failed to protect the LEGO universe in the past, Vitruvius foretells of a prophesied chosen one — “The Special” — who will unlock the key to Lord Business’ eventual defeat.
• Wyldstyle, aka Lucy (Elizabeth Banks) is an ambitious and headstrong Master Builder, who’s actively trying to become The Special by finding the Piece of Resistance. You may remember my considerable dislike for the name “Wyldstyle”; fortunately, it turns out the movie agrees with me (via lots of “what are you, a DJ?” jokes at her expense). For better or worse, a lot of Wyldstyle’s character centers around a sort-of love triangle (a “like triangle”?) between her, Emmet, and her current boyfriend…
• Batman (Will Arnett) is the Dark Knight as a hilarious parody; as if the Christopher Nolan films featured Adam West-inspired dramatics. Arnett is perfect in this role, and although much of his funniest material is in the trailer, there is one great sequence where millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne becomes integral to the plot.

Other helpful side-characters include Benny, a 1980s-era LEGO spaceman who REALLY wants to build spaceships; Unikitty, an anime-esque cat/unicorn hybrid with some serious anger issues (and some terrific brick-built alternate faces); and Metalbeard, a giant cyborg pirate who holds Lord Business responsible for his half-minifig, half robot condition.

In the villains’ corner, there’s really only President/Lord Business (Will Ferrell); his underutilized right hand man, Good Cop/Bad Cop (Liam Neeson); and an endless supply of robot police, robot feds, robot swat teams, and robot skeletons as cannon fodder for our heroes.

And then, there’s “The Man Upstairs”…

Design

The design of The LEGO Movie is where things really shine; it’s an amazingly gorgeous film. Every single setting has beautiful detailing and tons of NPU, almost to the point where it becomes distracting. There are dozens of visual nods to LEGO fandom, builder inside jokes, and some great micro-scale gags. Dave pointed some of these out in his review of the trailer, but that’s really only a small fraction of the insane beauty the filmmakers have packed in. That ocean! (I can’t wait to pause and frame-by-frame my way through the Blu-ray.)

For those of you who were worried about the use of computer graphics over stop-motion, I can honestly say that the film does not suffer one bit for it. The framing of many of the shots, as well as the overall texturing and lighting of scenes, really gives you that tactile feeling of being immersed in a brick-built LEGO world. There are one or two shots where the scope of what you’re looking at belies the film’s tiny toy-scale nature, but these are few and far between.

In many ways, the design of The LEGO Movie feels like not only a celebration of LEGO products and the hobby as a whole, but also of the craft of animation. Every major animation technique is at work here:

• The stop-motiony quality to the cinematography and character movement really helps set this film apart from things like Clutch Powers and the other CG releases. It’s super fun, and it feels like LEGO. I’m sure this approach will inform many stop-motion brickfilms in the future, and I would also have no problem with it becoming the new paradigm for CG LEGO animation. (Please and thank you.)
• There’s also some fantastically fluid 2D facial animation on all of the characters. The CG artists went so far as to give depth to the “paint” of the character face designs, as if the faces had been printed on like real LEGO minifigs. As someone who’s spent hours and hours staring at minifig heads through a macro lens, I truly appreciate this consummate attention to detail.
• And then, finally, the CG polish and shine brings everything together.

There’s a fourth filmmaking medium in the film as well — live-action photography. This was another detail made public by the filmmakers early on, though no one really knew what the implementation of it would be. As it turns out, the live-action sections are where the real story of the film lives.

Themes

In a broad sense, The LEGO Movie is built around a few overall motifs:

1. LEGO creations are not meant to be glued together, but to be continuously rebuilt into whatever cool models a creator can imagine.
2. You don’t have to build the greatest creation ever, as long as you’re building together with the people you care about.
3. Embrace the things that make you unique.

These are the main themes as depicted in Emmet’s character arc; though, as we find out, Emmet is not really the main character of this story.

About 2/3 of the way through the movie, Emmet sacrifices himself by tumbling out of Lord Business’ tower and down into a swirling vortex. Having blacked out, Emmet wakes up to find that he’s a toy LEGO minifigure in the human world, being played with by a young boy named Finn.

As the live-action scenes unfold, we come to understand that the events of the film up to this point have basically been a dramatization of Finn’s LEGO playtime scenarios. This makes sense as, earlier in the film, Emmet has a vision of “The Man Upstairs”, as illustrated by his mental construction of a distinctly humanoid hand. Additionally, Lord Business’ collection of non-LEGO human-scale artifacts (erasers, band-aids, highlighters, etc.) tells us that the LEGO universe must be somehow tied to our world.

Finn, however, is not “The Man Upstairs”. In a further twist (one which I found really enjoyable), it turns out that “The Man Upstairs” is actually Finn’s father, the real owner of the tables full of LEGO displays that make up the worlds of the LEGO universe. Finn’s father is quite unhappy, as those LEGO displays are part of his very adult hobby, and are NOT meant to be played with by Finn. When you consider the fact that Finn’s father — a businessman in a suit and tie — is also played by Will Ferrell, the central conflict and meaning of the story becomes unmistakably straightforward. Lord Business’ super-tall legs aren’t just for show.

(I’ve heard some comments from fans who question this portion of the film; saying that it’s a little insulting to AFOLs to be portrayed in such a way. Personally, I thought it was really funny.)

It’s at this point that The LEGO Movie becomes not only a action movie for kids, or a toy advertisement, but a fable about the relationship between AFOL and KFOL, parent and child. The film is fundamentally a feature-length “Build Together” spot — a series of LEGO TV ads that, perhaps coincidentally, began right around the time this film was announced.

A Few Gripes

I’ve already mentioned the somewhat distracting and complex artistry of the LEGO universe itself. The story, by contrast, is rather simplistic. To be fair, the way that story plays out doesn’t have a lot of padding or unnecessary scenes — everything is aptly cut — but it does feel slightly too fast-paced at times.

Which is crazy, considering the film runs for about 100 minutes in total. (Maybe I’m just getting old.) Plus, the notion that the entire tale comes from the imagination of a young boy really helps to lampshade a lot of the less satisfying story elements.

Another thing that made me a bit uneasy was the idea of “The Special”. I’m all for empowering kids to use their imaginations, but the word “special” is immensely overused in our cultural consciousness. As a concept, it just made me think of that line from “The Incredibles”:

When everyone’s super… no one will be.

However, given that the intent here is to embrace those things that make us individually special (and the fact that the prophecy is all but thrown out as malarkey in the third act), I’m willing to give The Special a pass, too.

The only thing in The LEGO Movie that I couldn’t find any rationalization for was the utter dearth of female characters. Seriously. Where are all the women?

• We’ve got Wyldstyle as the the only lady character with any real agency, though her role is not much more than that of Action Girlfriend.
• Unikitty (Alison Brie) is female, but is technically an animal and not a minifigure. Plus, she doesn’t come into the film until around halfway through, and even then, her presence is not terribly significant.
• Wonder Woman is on the poster, and they went through the trouble of casting Cobie Smulders in the role, but the only thing she does in the film was already shown in the trailer. I honestly can’t remember if she had more than one line of dialogue in the whole film. (EDIT 2/16/14: She speaks literally eight words in the entire film.)

If you ask me, an easy solution would have been to cast a woman in the role of Vitruvius. There’s honestly not much you would have had to change about the character. It’s great that we now have a recording of Morgan Freeman saying the words “Taco Tuesday”, but I would have gladly given that up to have this film pass the Bechdel test. Wyldstyle is essentially Vitruvius’ apprentice, and it could have been interesting to have a female-female relationship stand in contrast to the live-action father-son relationship.

Given the recent furor over LEGO Friends, and the fact that a lot of the film’s tie-in sets include female minifigures, I expected a lot more from The LEGO Movie in that regard. (EDIT: I feel like this girl might agree with me.) I think I might have cheered aloud when, towards the end, Will Ferrell tells his son that he’s going to have to let his sister play, too.

(Hilarious Duplo payoff notwithstanding, I don’t think it would have been too much to ask to actually see the sister on screen, though, even if just for a second. You can’t be what you can’t see.)

Putting it all together

One of the inside jokes of the LEGO fan community is that of the “Rainbow Warrior,” a name fondly given to those weird-looking multi-colored models we all built as children.

In some ways, The LEGO Movie is a bit of a Rainbow Warrior itself. For one thing, it ably tackles the unique problem of tying all the disparate LEGO worlds together; presenting the various play themes as parallel dimensions (and eschewing the nonsensical “play themes as planets” approach that Clutch Powers attempted to put forth).

But more than that, it manages to capture the fun, ubiquitous crossover vibe of every child’s playroom. Batman shooting his grappling hook at the Millennium Falcon in order to steal some spaceship parts from Han Solo and Lando Calrissian? That scene definitely happened in my backyard when I was a kid — and it happened in this movie, too.

Similarly, I couldn’t help but react to every pop culture reference and film allusion —

• Terminator (“Come with me if you want to not die”)
• The Matrix (Real/dream world analogies, The One, and the “Think Tank” room)
• Total Recall (The “Think Tank” again)
• Robocop (“Where are my pants?” is this film’s “I’d buy that for a dollar”)
• Super Mario Brothers: The Movie (Random dancing as a way to disable enemy forces, “cause everybody loves to dance, that’s why.”)
• Star Trek (“The Kragle” might as well be “V’Ger“)
• Clash of the Titans (“Release the Kragle!”)
• They Live (The subtle “Conform!” propaganda posters, and a few of the skeletal robot feds)
• Hot Rod (I kept waiting for Batman to do this towards the end)

And that’s not even including the official LEGO licenses. In a normal film, such an overabundance of seemingly random references might have felt lazy or unwarranted; but here, they somehow felt justified. I’ve already referenced “The Hero’s Journey” in this review, and maybe that’s all too appropriate — the minifigure might be the most literal encapsulation of The Hero with a Thousand Faces ever.

Overall

If I haven’t made it clear already, I thought The LEGO Movie was really fun, well-made, and an absolute delight to watch. The stunning visuals alone make it worth the price of admission, but the story is efficiently told and has some legitimate stakes, too. It’s not a perfect film, but as far as I’m concerned, there’s something for everyone to enjoy.

Those of us who do LEGO stop-motion (myself included) can admittedly be a bit snobby when it comes to the relationship between CG and “true” Brick Animation. When discussing brickfilms in interviews and at workshops, I tend to describe them thusly:

Brickfilms are a way for LEGO fans to tell their stories through the use of film and animation techniques. They can use any style, and can be about anything, but they all have one thing in common — the use of LEGO bricks and elements!

If that’s true, then I think it’s fair to say that The LEGO Movie qualifies as a brickfilm. Given the nature of the film’s story — a child whose imagined LEGO worlds are directly translated into on-screen action — The LEGO Movie might be the most ambitious, high-concept brickfilm ever. A meta-brickfilm, perhaps.

At the same time, The LEGO Movie also feels like a love letter to the entire brickfilming community. The directors have stated these intentions in interviews, but there was one other fun touch I noticed in the film’s live-action sequence: the aforementioned swirling vortex that Emmet tumbles down is, in the human world, an over-sized kaleidoscope with the words “Magic Portal” written on the side. Kind of reminds me of another Magic Portal…

But that’s not so important. What IS important is that this film is going to get a lot of people building. And animating. Heck, I left the theater and immediately went to the LEGO store to pick up one of the sets.

Go see The LEGO Movie.

“The Adventures of Clutch Powers” is like so many LEGO CG releases — a lumbering mass of basic tropes, non-jokes, and now-retired LEGO products (none of which feature the actual main characters of this film). In essence, nothing more than one giant commercial.

At least, that’s how I remembered it. I hadn’t seen the film since it was released direct-to-DVD in 2010, after which I immediately retired it to my bookcase for some dust-collecting action. Four years later, the trailers for The LEGO Movie seem to imply a similar storyline and vibe, so I though I’d take a second look at Clutch Powers.

(Spoiler alert: my memory did not fail me.)

Story

The story of Clutch Powers somehow manages to be extremely simplistic and extremely confusing at the same time. Clutch, our main character, is “the greatest LEGO explorer ever” (think a blander Indiana Jones/James Bond) and works for LEGO — which, in this film, is not a toy company but an interplanetary organization that does, um, something.

Peg: “Well… it’s about helping others!”
Brick: “Fighting the good fight!”
Bernie: “Engineering better solutions!”
Clutch: “Doing whatever it takes, wherever it takes us.”

Delightfully vague.

After a throwaway cold open, the LEGO Organization sends Clutch and his team to investigate an incident on a space-prison planet. Finding that the most dangerous only three inmates have escaped, the LEGO crew then heads to a Castle… planet… to capture a wizard who had been one of those prisoners. There, Clutch attempts to instill confidence in a young prince, while also learning to work together with the members of his own team, so that they can all stop the wizard from doing… something. 

If it seems like I’m having trouble summarizing what happens in this film, it’s because I genuinely am. The whole thing plays out like an “And then…” screenplay written by a 6-year-old — not in a good way, like Axe Cop, but just the type of scenario a child might come up with while playing with some assorted LEGO kits. “And then MALLOCK THE WIZARD escapes from SPACE PRISON and they have to go to the CASTLE PLANET OF ASHLAR to catch him before he gets the GOLDEN SWORD OF KING REVET and takes over the whole world etc.” Insert spaceship swooshing noises here.

At the same time, the thinness of the plot is undermined further by some pretty obvious plot holes and contradictions. For example:

• When the LEGO Organization gets a distress call from the prison planet, the video footage shows Space Police officers who literally exclaim, “the prisoners are escaping!” Clutch and his team then proceed to wonder what happened… “it’s a bit of a mystery!” It’s really not; the prisoners escaped.
• The team arrives at the prison, where the Space Police watch commander says that the escaped prisoners can’t leave the planet, since he removed key parts from all the Space Police vehicles. That being the case, the prisoners end up stealing Clutch’s ship. It seems as though the LEGO team is stranded, since all the other Space Police ships are disabled. Except… they’re not stranded, since the watch commander could literally just replace the parts (which we see him carrying) and all of the ships would work.
• On the Castle planet of Ashlar, the Troll in charge of guarding the kingdom has built a giant wall to hide the castle so that Mallock (the wizard) can’t find it. I’m not sure why the Troll would need to do this, since Mallock has been locked up in space-jail for years, up until like an hour ago.

Characters

Clutch’s big character trait is that he always works alone; a habit he adopted after the loss of his father (Rock Powers, natch) a few years earlier. He even has a song about it.

At the start of the film, Clutch is put in charge of a team for the first time; and yet, none of the other team members are surprised to be partnered with him, even though EVERYONE knows Clutch (and the fact that he works alone) since he is also THE MOST FAMOUS PERSON IN THE LEGO UNIVERSE FOR REASONS WE’RE NEVER TOLD. Clutch’s arc seems like it should be that he learns to work with his team, which is sort of what happens — though out of narrative convenience, rather than character interaction and development. At a certain point, it’s as if they all just randomly decided, “ok, let’s work together now.”

Speaking of the team, I should probably introduce them:

• Brick Masterson is a Fireman, Weapons Specialist, and Demolitions Expert. He’s the muscle of the group, and kind of looks like Ron Swanson. Brick tends to destroy more things than he actually builds; the best weapon he makes is a glorified battering ram.
• Peg Mooring is a Biologist and a woman (FYI, this film does not pass the Bechdel test in any way, shape, or form). She uses her biology know-how to recognize footprints and tame a dragon off-screen. She also has extra hair that she brings with her, because girl. There are no other named female characters in this film, although we do catch a glimpse of a few extras from the Medieval Market Village who say nothing and do nothing.
• Bernie von Beam is an Engineer who does wacky things and wears a gear on his head for a significant portion of the film. He has an accent.

Jokes.

The teams’ terrestrial backup includes Kjeld Playwell (hah), head of the LEGO Organziation, and his in-house scientist Artie Fol (hah), who also does wacky things and is Clutch’s biggest fan (we know this because he tells us).

On Ashlar, there are some skeleton flunkies (one of whom is Chris Hardwick), a good-guy Troll who loves Monty Python references, and Prince Varen, heir to the planetary throne. Mallock the Malign is the main villain of the film, even though some other evil guy named “Omega” gets name-dropped and then immediately forgotten.

Design

The design of the film is pretty bare-bones. Like many of the LEGO video games, the locations and vehicles that are not official LEGO sets are rendered as generically textured 3D backdrops; lots of grass, trees, rocks, cement, and solid colors.

CHECK OUT THOSE GRAPHICS

There are a few things here and there that appear to have had actual thought put into them — Mallock’s stronghold comes to mind — but most of these are designed as a kind of weird kludge between brick-built and CG creations.

For the most part, though, the brick-built sets shown are actual LEGO products that were available in the time leading up to this film’s release. The same thing goes for the majority of the characters — the skeletons, the Troll, and Mallock (who was merely an ‘evil wizard’ in the 2007 Castle line) all appeared in official LEGO kits, as did the Space Police officers and all of the extras.

Ironically, none of the main cast were ever created as minifigures. In fact, Clutch himself cannot even be built out of existing parts, as his torso and pants have custom printing, and his hairpiece has never been made in black. Peg and Bernie’s wigs have never been made, either, and all of the faces are custom.

So, if you were a kid who watched this movie and wanted to build and play with the characters: not only could you not buy them in stores, you couldn’t even make them out of parts from your own collection. Even LEGO Universe wasn’t that bad.

If there were such a thing as un-synergy, I think this would be it.

Animation

The animation is fine; nothing to write home about. There’s some wonky mouth shapes and one or two floaty walks, but in general, the animation is effective and does the job it needs to do.

Acting

The voice acting in this film is decent, but it’s brought down by the poor writing and terribly stock dialogue. The biggest names involved are Ryan McPartlin (as Clutch) and Yvonne Strahovski (as Peg), both of whom are from the TV series Chuck. I’m not sure how they got involved with this film, since the target audience doesn’t exactly overlap. Maybe someone in casting was like “Chuck is about a secret agent. Clutch is kind of a secret agent. Let’s get some of those actors.”

Even stranger is the fact that, on Chuck, Ryan McPartlin’s character is not a secret agent or an explorer, or even a main character. He’s got a deep man voice with a nice sound to it, but it felt kind of wrong for the character of Clutch, who doesn’t really behave like a grown adult.

Again, part of that might be the writing. It’s obvious that the filmmakers wanted Clutch to be a cool Indiana Jones/James Bond type, but the way he’s written feels both immature and amateur. While watching the film, I wondered why they didn’t have the guy playing Prince Varen voice Clutch instead. Their story arcs are basically parallel, and even though the movie keeps TELLING us Clutch is famous and amazing, he feels just as young and inexperienced as the prince.

Overall

Clocking in at just under 90 minutes, Clutch Powers isn’t an offensive disaster, but it somehow manages to capture that rare combination of complexity and boredom. It unsuccessfully tries to be a movie by hitting those beats that other movies hit, and ultimately fails to be memorable, charming, or fun.

I did not laugh once.

Clutch himself is neither engaging nor lovable, and actually comes off as kind of a jerk for a significant portion of the movie. We never see or hear about any of his other missions, and most of what we do know about Clutch is merely what other characters tell us about him — even if that information contradicts the things we see him do on screen.

“I’m ambiguously mad at my father. It’s his fault for going missing under suspicious circumstances!”

The script is weak, and the majority of the dialogue has no subtext. When the characters aren’t spewing tired clichés (“Lock and load — we’re going in”), they’re either saying exactly how they feel or just giving mindless exposition. There are one or two attempts to tie in some LEGOish values (“We build on each other!”, “Time to get creative!”), but these are few and far between, and feel like an afterthought.

One of the strangest recurring subjects is the notion of a “creation spark”. This is apparently the equivalent of a minifigure soul, although nothing about it is ever explored or explained. In a practical sense, it seems to be a way for the writers to talk about characters being killed or dying without having to say “killed or dying”. But in a storytelling sense, I find it baffling — are these characters alive or not? Is the creation spark a physical thing? Are minifigures kind of like Transformers? We’re never told.

Other plot lines that lead nowhere include the fate of Clutch’s father, and the identities of the two other escaped prisoners. This film is very obviously trying to be the first part of a franchise, but in doing so, it fails to tell a coherent stand-alone story.

As with LEGO toys, I want the LEGO videos and movies that I watch to be of the highest quality; the kind of material I can return to and enjoy no matter how old I am. TLG’s target market of 5-to-12-year-olds may hold water in terms of toy sales, but there’s no denying the universal timelessness of LEGO products. A big deal is made of the fact that bricks and elements from the ’70s, ’80s, and so forth will all fit together with parts from modern sets. LEGO cinematic releases should follow the same long-range principle — films with something for everyone.

That’s not the case with Clutch Powers, which is just a plodding, meaningless exercise where we see some sets that you could have bought in 2010, and then it’s over. I bring up the irony of “Only The Best Is Good Enough” far too often when talking about LEGO home video releases, but TLG has set the bar really high for themselves with that motto, and as far as I’m concerned, has yet to reach it.

Fingers crossed for The LEGO Movie.

Where to watch this film

If you really must see this film, it’s available to stream on Netflix for free. You can also rent it on Amazon for $2.99, or buy the DVD for three bucks more. But I really don’t recommend spending any money on this.

The city of Edmonton, Alberta has been promoting bike safety and awareness with a LEGO stop-motion video campaign.

(A brick-animated biking PSA… what a novel idea!)

Anyway, they’re not the most technically proficient brickfilms ever, but they’re pretty neat and worth checking out. It’s always cool when organizations use brick animation for promotions like this.

You can check out all of the videos in the campaign on The City of Edmonton’s website.

Bike Attitude & Awareness – YouTube

As the holiday season draws to a close, enjoy this brick-built Yule Log from Kooberz Studios. Merry Christmas, everyone.

LEGO Yule Log – YouTube

I was intrigued to find this pamphlet tucked away inside the November-December 2013 issue of the LEGO Club Magazine. Billed as the “Special LEGO Video Guide”, it purports to feature the “top 2013 LEGO videos, free online games, apps, and more!”

In reality, it’s just one big advertisement for LEGO multimedia content (much like what the Club Magazine itself is for LEGO toys). But it definitely points towards increased coverage/awareness of LEGO films and animated content, most likely in preparation for the release of The LEGO Movie next February.

And since “increased coverage/awareness of LEGO films and animated content” is our middle name here, I figured I’d take a second to walk you guys through this “Entertainment Guide” brochure…

The Cover

• The cover is made up to look like an “Entertainment Weekly” magazine, both in terms of layout and font choice for the title. In fact, I’m kind of surprised they were able to get away with that. Parody… I guess?
• Chase McCain is holding a LEGO Clapboard tile, which says “Awards!” on it. I’m not sure what that’s referring to, since there are no awards given or listed on the pages within. It almost feels like a movie industry word association game. “What are some other Hollywood-related words… how about ‘Awards’?”

Pages 1-2

• The first spread is titled “Top 2013 LEGO Videos!”, though based on the content being presented, that’s a pretty arbitrary label. All the videos in this pamphlet are official LEGO releases, which means they’re somewhat limited in scope. How or why these particular videos were chosen to be the “top” videos, it doesn’t say, but there was basically nothing noteworthy I hadn’t seen before.
• Seeing the Paganomation-produced LEGO Superman and Iron Man videos listed in there was a nice touch, though.
• The only new content to catch my eye was not a video at all, but a notice for a “NEW FREE LEGO TV APP” available on iTunes. This was the first I had ever heard of such an app existing; though, thanks to similar notices on subsequent pages, it was not the last.

Pages 3-4

• More of the “Top 2013 LEGO Videos”, including the “first trailer” for The LEGO Movie. Didn’t the second trailer already come out?
• I can appreciate how repetitive it must be to write short blurbs about so many conceptually similar LEGO videos, but some of the grammar/sentence structure in this brochure is kinda wonky. “How did it go from idea to finished LEGO Specials?” How indeed.

Pages 5-6

• These pages focus on LEGO City video/game media from 2013. Page 6 is solely devoted to advertising a new LEGO City game for mobile devices.
• Page 5 does focus on videos; though oddly, they’re all CGI entries. What’s weirder are the “milestone”-type captions on a few of the thumbnail images: “First Appearance of Dalmatian Firedog”! Oh… okay. “Most Minifigures in a Single Video!” Well, that’s not really true; it’s CG, so technically there are no minifigures in that video.

Pages 7-8

• Pages 7 and 8 feature an ad for the Cartoon Network “Legends of Chima” CG series, which I have yet to check out in any capacity.

Pages 9-10

• The spread on pages 9 and 10 is entitled, “Mini Movies… Big Creativity!”
• Rather than focusing on specific video entries, these blurbs talk more generally about a few LEGO video genres — Microsquare (a series of Master Builder how-to videos), LEGO CGI Animation (technically a medium, not a genre), and Seasonal Shorts (Adventures of Max, the Brick-a-Brack Bunch, etc.).
• More strange sentences: “Featuring the Brick-a-Brack Bunch  on zany adventures, look for these videos during holidays and when the seasons change.” “A Club Member favorite, ‘Adventures of Max,’ from the LEGO Club TV Show have been an online mainstay for a few years, following the LEGO Club mascot on adventures that take him under the sea, into outer space, and follow him through almost every LEGO line.”
• And another ad touting “2 ways to watch: catch them all at LEGO.com/clubvideos OR Ask your parents to download the FREE LEGO TV APP on your iPhone or tablet.”

Back Cover

• Yet another ad for Legends of Chima.

Overall thoughts

• The biggest takeaway from this brochure is the existence of the LEGO TV mobile app, which I think is pretty cool. Anything that gets LEGO videos further out into the public eye can only be a good thing, I think.
• However, there are some inconsistencies. For example, our aforementioned LEGO Iron Man short is nowhere to be found on the LEGO TV app, despite the claim that all videos shown in the guide are available to watch on the app. I wonder how many other videos might have been lost in the void.
• The other interesting thing I discovered via this brochure is the existence of yet another outlet for LEGO Video content. When the blurb mentioned checking out club videos on the LEGO website, I assumed it was talking about the LEGO Club Videos page. In fact, it’s talking about something else entirely: a Videos page on LEGO.com itself.
• This newer videos page does seem to be more thorough than the Club Videos page ever was; though, on this new page, there is again a subcategory for Club Videos, effectively rendering the separate Club Videos page outmoded and redundant.
• I am again baffled by the ways in which The LEGO Group continues the fracturing of their video releases; especially when it’s clear from this brochure that they want more people to check out said videos. Now we’ve got the official LEGO YouTube channel, the old (dead) LEGO Club TV channel, the Club Videos page, the LEGO.com Videos page, the LEGO Movie Maker App “Movie Gallery” section, the LEGO TV app, ReBrick.com… sheesh.
• Why not just have ONE central location and drive all the traffic there? I get wanting to have as many people as possible see the video content itself, but this just feels like a big mess. I want to be able to come back to the same place every time and see all the video content there is; not have to figure out which videos were uploaded where, when, and then try to keep tabs on all of them.

Anyway, what did you guys think of the The 2013 LEGO Club Entertainment Guide? Are you going to check out the LEGO TV app?

Garrett Barati gets us in the Halloween spirit (pun) in this new animation with a very familiar scenario. Lou’s not like other guys… I mean, he’s different.

a Lego Halloween Secret! – YouTube

The LEGO YouTube channel has some new trailers for, uh… the upcoming new trailer… for The LEGO Movie.

There are “Meet” previews for both Emmet and Wyldstyle (a character I really, really wish had a different name), but not a ton of footage that’s terribly different from what we’ve seen before. I’m as excited for the movie as the next LEGO fan, but I feel like we’re in danger of being caught in an infinite hype loop.

EDIT 10/29/13: There’s a “Meet” preview up for President Business now, which is actually my favorite of the three so far. It’s a nice little bit of insight into a character we know next to nothing about; plus, shameless LEGO fandom in the form of Octan shout-outs.

The LEGO® Movie – Meet Emmet – YouTube

A host of new LEGO film and TV content has been added to Netflix. It’s all CG stuff, but cool nonetheless.

Among the new titles are:

• The first two Bionicle movies (joining the third one that was already available)
• The LEGO Atlantis 22-minute short that aired on Cartoon Network a while back
• A Hero Factory TV show two-parter called “Breakout”
• Season 1 of Ninjago
• A 22-minute LEGO Friends short called “New Girl In Town”

Of these, I’ve only managed to watch the Friends and Atlantis shorts. “New Girl In Town” has about as bland of a story as you’d imagine; though what really bothered me about it was the design of the thing. Every character has the same build and appearance, and can pretty much only be told apart by their hair and clothing. The men all look like 12-year-olds with beards (watch especially for the creepy mayor and his smooth dance moves), and everyone’s got bizarro mouth shapes that match their dialogue almost as often as they match the characters’ emotion.

Meanwhile, “Atlantis” plays out like a feature-length script that someone condensed into 22 minutes. It’s got no payoff, but it’s harmless fun with some neat characters and energetic voice acting. I’d say it’s worth checking out, especially for kids who dig the sets.

Atlantis actually reminded me of a more successful version of “The Adventures of Clutch Powers”, particularly in the structure and characterization. “Old Guy, Meathead, Nerd, and The Girl all go off on an adventure where they use building skills to do… something.” Clutch Powers is also on Netflix, but I’ll have to save my extended thoughts on that yawn-fest for another time.

Things to keep an eye out for:

• Croissant moustache
• Mangled LEGO highway ramp elements
• Hinge birds (hey, that idea sounds familiar!)
• Some fantastic mosaic animation work
• Brick-built sparkles

All in all, nothing less than what you’d expect from a Screen Novelties stop-motion piece. Fantastic.

EDIT: For those of you outside the USA, you can check out the video here. They’ve also posted a cool (albeit short) behind-the-scenes write up here.

Adventure Time LEGO Main Title | Geek Week | Cartoon Network – YouTube

I usually shy away from clicking “related videos” links — there are about 14.2 million LEGO videos on YouTube, and it’s way too easy to fall down an internet hole and never come out/get any work done.

This time my curiosity got the better of me, and I was delighted to find “Late for Work Again!” by Brick a Brack Studios. It’s your standard “Spider-Man on patrol” tale, but it’s got some neat touches. The dialogue and pacing are strong, there are some neat cameos (love the custom LEGO Marvel characters), and there’s a nice fourth wall break in the middle that leads to some interesting scale work. I think what really impressed me was how much it felt like a Spider-Man animated short — moreso than the last live-action movie, I’d say.

It may not be the most technically impressive short, but it’s definitely worth checking out. I guess Dave was right to be curious about the many hidden gems of brick animation waiting for us out there…

Late for Work Again! – YouTube

I can’t believe I’ve never mentioned The BrickFlix Film Festival before! It’s not like I co-run it or anything.

BrickFlix is a yearly screening held in Durham, NC at The Carolina Theatre. It started in 2010 as part of the BrickMagic LEGO fan festival, but has since branched off into it’s own event. As far as I know, it’s the only yearly screening in North America that showcases brick animation and other LEGO fan films in a real theater. And after each screening, there’s a Q&A session where directors are invited to answer questions and talk about their films.

BrickFlix 2013 took place last week and, in addition to the 122 audience attendees, also saw our largest Q&A panel ever! Directors from Aquamorph Productions, Animato Studios, Sonjira Central, Annoying Noises Productions, and Lucasetak J were all on hand to explain their inspirations, accomplishments, and techniques.

We’re still waiting on confirmation for BrickFlix 2014, but as soon as we have a date, we’ll open it up for submissions. Rest assured that when the date is confirmed, I’ll let you know here. In the meantime, enjoy this year’s playlist!

BrickFlix – The Annual, Unofficial LEGO® Film Festival

Garrett Barati brings us this LEGO version of the trailer for the new Sandra Bullock/Melissa McCarthy comedy “The Heat”.

What does this film have to do with LEGO? I have no idea, but there’s some cool stuff happening in here. I particularly like the brick-built 20th Centruy Fox and Chernin Entertainment logos, as well as the end title. I can’t find a 30-second edit of this trailer for comparison, but here’s the brick-free full version. 

The Heat – LEGO Trailer – YouTube

The first trailer to The Lego Movie is here. Shows fun, stop motion and Batman – Columbus Film | Examiner.com.

Lego Movie trailer shows off all-star cast, stop-motion goodness – SlashGear

‘The LEGO Movie’ Trailer: Lego Action, Lego Jokes & Lego Batman [Updated]

EDIT: Check out all our ongoing Lego Movie coverage.

The first teaser trailer for the much-anticipated “The LEGO® Movie” is out, and I have to say… it looks pretty great.

Many of us (myself included) were dubious of the choice to go with computer graphics over stop-motion, but it seems like the filmmakers have embraced a kind of stop-motion style — minifigure characters with appropriately limited animation and ranges of motion. It reminds me a lot of the animation approach taken with the “Nicelander” characters in Wreck-It Ralph, which were given intentionally jerky movements to approximate a kind of 8-bit sensibility.

Anyway, between the fun animation, character designs, voice and fig choices, and overall vibe of the trailer, I am definitely sold. Might be time to go watch “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” again…

What do you guys think?

The LEGO® Movie – Official Teaser Trailer [HD] – YouTube

LEGO would never, ever make this as a real game. And yet, here we are.

LEGO Breaking Bad The Video Game parody – YouTube

Last month I got to attend the world premiere of the new LEGO direct-to-video film, “LEGO Batman: The Movie – DC Super Heroes Unite”. It’s a CG animated feature from TT Animation; an offshoot of Traveller’s Tales, creators of the LEGO video games.

The “LEGO Batman” screening was held at The Paley Center for Media in Manhattan, and featured a panel of guests including voice actors Troy Baker (Batman), Travis Willingham (Superman), and Clancy Brown (Lex Luthor), as well as director/producer Jon Burton and director of photography Jeremy Pardon.

Yes, you still need a DP on a production with no real cameras.

When this film was first announced, I heard many LEGO fans cry foul; wondering, “are they just going to edit the cut-scenes from the LEGO Batman 2 video game together and call it a ‘film’?” You can all rest easy; “LEGO Batman” is more than that. The TT Animation team has put together a solid film that ranks up there with TLG’s previous home video releases, even surpassing them in some cases (I’m looking at you, Clutch Powers).

Which is not to say it’s a perfect film. “LEGO Batman” is TT Animation’s first venture into film-making, and there are some artifacts from that crossover. You might think I’m referring to the visuals — the entire film was made using TT’s game engine, making it essentially a feature-length machinima piece. But “LEGO Batman” was rendered as a film and not as a real-time video game, so there are noticeable improvements in lighting, staging, animation, and picture quality. The director also called out a few set pieces that had been upgraded to CG LEGO brick-built status, having been simpler CG backgrounds in the game.

(One detail I found particularly amusing was that the production team added dust and scratches to the character textures, to make them seem more like real LEGO minifigs. While we’re constantly working at Paganomation to remove imperfections from real minifigs, the CG artists on this film spent time putting them in.)

In fact, it was actually the pacing of the film that felt the most like a video game. The story is entertaining and well-told, but it’s laid out in a strange, level-based way: action scene, story scene, action scene, story scene. This would work well in a video game, but it was a bit distracting at times to feel like I had to “complete” the action scenes in order to continue following the story. When the creators brought up the fact that they started working on this film before the LEGO Batman 2 video game, I was not terribly surprised.

Another thing that stuck out as a video game holdover was an unusual amount of violence in the film. Of course, it’s “LEGO Batman”, so it’s all very cartoony violence between super-powered heroes and villains, but it still struck me as odd. Nothing you’d need to shield your kids from, but kind of unnecessary at the same time.

All of this said, I really did enjoy “LEGO Batman”. It has a solid, funny, attention-keeping story, and some great voice acting. I think the voice actors were my favorite part of the film; probably helped in part by the Q&A panel after the film (which also confirmed my belief that Clancy Brown is awesome).

The film had a nice balance between familiar voices, like Clancy Brown and Rob Paulsen, and folks I’d never heard of, like Troy Baker and Travis Willingham (although they both have super-long IMDb credits lists, so what do I know).

Stealing the show in the voice department, though, was Charlie Schlatter as Robin. The Robin subplot got a bit uncomfortable at times; he’s not treated very well by some of the characters. But his performance was really funny, and his story has a satisfying arc that has him holding his own with the other heroes by the end of the film.

Overall, I’d definitely recommend checking out “LEGO Batman: The Movie – DC Super Heroes Unite”. It’s one of the better entries in the LEGO home video pantheon — probably helped by the decades of development all of these DC characters have had. The Blu-ray/DVD drops May 21st, and you get a nifty Clark Kent minifigure with your purchase, so it’s win-win.

LEGO Batman: The Movie – DC Super Heroes Unite (pre-order via Amazon.com)

You’ve heard us talk before about “The LEGO Movie”, the forthcoming motion picture from the LEGO Group and Warner Brothers. You’ve also seen our posts regarding various animation contests hosted by Rebrick.com. Well, now the two have become one…

Starting today, brick animators will have the opportunity to submit a video of their own for the chance to be featured in “The LEGO Movie”. From ReBrick.com:

Between March 25^th and May 6^th, submit your video on ReBrick. The top 25 films with the most community votes will enter a final round of judging, and the winning video will be included in the upcoming movie!

The setup is that the evil Lord Business (played by nice guy Will Ferrell) is going to destroy the entire LEGO world. Emmet, the hero of our movie, inspires all of the citizens of the LEGO world to go out and create cool stuff that will stop him.

We need YOU to help make that cool stuff in LEGO bricks and then shoot your character creating that cool stuff on camera to use in our movie.

To be honest, I found the contest summary a bit confusing, although the mods on ReBrick are answering questions in the comments section. Essentially, the entries for this contest are “video clips” and not “films” — that is, the point is not to tell a story, but to showcase some cool MOC quick-build action in a silent 15-30 second clip.  Here’s the rest of the guidelines as I understand them:

• The running time of your clip should be between 15 and 30 seconds long.
• The final frame rate of your clip should be 24 frames per second. You can shoot on “ones” (24 unique frames per second) or “twos” (12 unique frames per second) or anything you want (probably a good idea to stick to factors of 24), as long as the final render is 24 fps.
• Your clip should feature one “hero” character and one “prop” (the prop can be a vehicle, a piece of equipment, or some part of the hero’s environment).
• Your clip must be uploaded to YouTube, and then bookmarked on ReBrick.com.
• Don’t add any sound or music, and don’t have any dialogue. If your clip wins the contest and gets featured in The LEGO Movie, they’ll add the sound design later.
• Don’t use any LEGO characters, sets, or pieces from licensed products, i.e. Disney, Marvel, DC, Lucasfilm, Nickelodeon, etc.
• Keep your set together after you complete your animation — if you win, they might need to recreate it for additional scenes.
• The full rules can be found on the ReBrick.com post.

The contest is open for entries between now and May 6th — but, as with the previous ReBrick contests, the longer you wait, the less time you’ll have for people to vote for your entry. So get building!

ReBrick | Blog | The LEGO Movie Competition with ReBrick

I’ve had the first edition as an indispensable part of my library for years now. Without it, there might not have ever been a “Little Guys!” film, and who knows if I would be here talking to you guys right now! It was with this book that I first learned how to consider the different scales of my LEGO creations, to build curves, and to organize my collection in an efficient manner.

The sample sphere from the ULBG was used as a basis for the character designs in “Little Guys!”

What’s in the Book

The Unofficial LEGO Builder’s Guide is written as both an introduction to the hobby for new LEGO fans and as a reference guide for expert builders and AFOLs. The ten chapters of the book cover the various scales of building, different artistic media (sculptures, mosaics, etc.), and the planning, setup, and execution of whatever MOCs you decide to build.

The Skull Island design, from Red Brick Saga Pirates of the Caribbean — design grid and final version

There’s also the “Brickopedia”, an abridged listing of some of the more common LEGO parts and elements, sorted by category. This can be useful if you need a quick reference for a part name or number, or if you’re just looking for some inspiration for your own brick sorting approach. Granted, a lot of this information is also online, but there’s something to be said for the condensed economy of having a book in front of you.

Finally, the latter part of the book also showcases LEGO-scaled design grids, with an explanation of how they work as well as links to download and print them yourself. These can be extremely helpful if you’re trying to design something to fit within a certain space, or if you just want to sketch out an idea before committing it to brick. (We use these all the time over at Paganomation.)

Differences in the Second Edition

Having poured over the original book back when it first came out, I was curious to see what changes would be in the new edition. The most obvious one is plastered right on the cover: the second edition does have color photos and instructions. But I was a bit surprised when physically comparing both books…  the second edition is way thinner!

First edition: approx. 7/8″. Second edition: approx. 1/2″

The new book has 10 chapters, down from 13 in the original. Gone are the sections on sorting and storage, tools for building (a bit on brick separation has been rolled into chapter 2), and Technic building (probably because there’s a whole other new book devoted to it now).

The other differences are a bit more subtle:

• The Brickopedia has been whittled down, from 55 pages in edition 1 to 41 pages in edition 2.
• Some brief, potentially redundant bits on scale have been removed from the Microscale chapter.
• A section on writing reviews in the “Beyond Just Bricks” chapter is gone.
• Other assorted edits and minor rearrangements.

Overall, I wouldn’t say these changes hurt the book in any way. The ULBG has just become a more streamlined version of itself… which is the whole point of putting out a new edition of a book!

How this relates to Brick Animation

I came to the ULBG from the perspective of both a LEGO fan and an animator. Just like with any form of artistry, there are many tips, tricks and lessons that crossover from one medium to another. Here are a few that I took note of…

• Page 70 talks about Miniland scale facades, and how it can be advantageous to only concentrate on perfecting the parts of your model that will be seen by your audience. Hmm… sounds familiar.
• A section of the Jumbo Elements chapter (p. 78) mentions the importance of testing, tinkering, and trial-and-error to get the results you want.
• The chapter on Sculpture talks about using reference material when designing and planning your work (p. 109).
• Page 82 has probably the most helpful, universal advice any artist can use: “Make things only as complicated as they need to be and no more.” The bottom line? Simple is good.

The number of LEGO reference books has been steadily increasing in recent years, which makes sense given the flourishing LEGO fan community. Despite being one of the earlier entries in this catalog, I recommend The Unofficial LEGO Builder’s guide as essential reference material for any brick animator or LEGO fan; young or old, novice or veteran.

(Plus, it’s now also available as an ebook… hello, iPad.)

The Unofficial LEGO Builder’s Guide, 2nd Edition by Allan Bedford

Here’s a neat video wherein a minifigure waxes poetic about the potential and possibilities of LEGO bricks. While I think it could have benefited from being about 30-60 seconds shorter, it’s definitely worth checking out — it’s got lots of great animation bits, and some clever dialogue and gags.

I caught it on the official LEGO YouTube channel, which we’ve mentioned before. There’s still no sign of comments or consistent descriptions on these *official* videos… and therefore, I have no clue who made this video, when, or for what. Any ideas, dear readers?

Notes From The LEGO® Tub – YouTube

First up, in the ACTION/DRAMA ANIMATION category, is “LEGO Portal 2 Part 1/2” by Kooberz Studios. Director Alex Kobbs has made a name for himself creating LEGO versions of popular video game properties (you can check out more on his YouTube channel), so in many ways, this contest was tailor-made for his work. There are a few neat animation techniques in the video, but what I was most impressed with was the sets — some really cool, detailed renditions of Portal 2 environments and backgrounds, and a ball-jointed GLaDOS that works really well.

(Full disclosure: I’ve only played through Portal 1, though 2 is sitting on my shelf, waiting for a day when I actually have some free time.)

Of course, like many LEGO-animated video game adaptations, there’s not much in the way of story here. This video is billed as a part 1 of 2, and I honestly can’t imagine what part 2 would be apart from more of the same. The video plays out like a clips show of game scenes, presented in a sort of Robot Chicken-esque channel surfing format. If you’ve never played any of the Portal games (or Half-Life, which I am assuming is where those characters who show up at the end are from), there may not be as much for you here, apart from some cool MOCs and animation bits. There’s also a behind-the-scenes video, which is something I always love seeing from other artists.

Next we have an entry from The Four Monkeys: a pretty faithful recreation of the Grand Theft Auto 5 trailer. The audio in their video comes directly from the real trailer; and with it, a storyline for the game told in voice over. Again, we have some really great set pieces that are pretty well matched to the trailer they come from.

I was also really impressed by a few particular moments — the shot of the guy on the jetski, the microscale city shot at 0:49, and the driving scene at 1:00. There’s a surprising amount of chroma keying, but it works and isn’t distracting. This is a solid piece, with as solid of a storyline as the source material allows. (I know I keep bringing up storylines; more on that in a moment.)

Finally, there’s “LEGO The Battle of Helm’s Deep”, a Lord of the Rings-themed sketch from Brotherhood Workshop (whom we’ve mentioned once or twice before). The film has some really nice lighting and shot composition, sweet battle scenes (check out those crowds of warriors!), and consistently well-animated minifigs. Again, I’m not terribly familiar with the source material, but I know enough to say that Legolas is the star here, and his skidding-into-frame and “I’ve got the boooooox” animation are my favorite parts of this short. I assume the “get you a box to stand on” bit comes from one of the movies, and while I’m not sure it’s enough for 2-and-a-half minutes of story, it is a great excuse for some LotR homage action.

Overall, the entries here are heavy on visuals and light on story; perhaps appropriate for what I’m assuming was a video game themed contest (admittedly I’m still a bit confused as to how LotR fits into that). It looks like voting took place on Twitter and ended December 8th, so we should be seeing the winners soon!

If you’re a fan of these properties, I definitely recommend giving these entries a watch. If not, there’s at least some cool brick animation to check out!

Lego Portal 2 Part 1/2

LEGO Grand Theft Auto 5

LEGO The Battle of Helm’s Deep

Spastik Chuwawa is known for his bizarre, humorous, less-than-1-minute shorts.

“Monster in the Closet” keeps with that tradition, featuring voice work by The Four Monkeys and some great lighting.

Monster In The Closet – YouTube

• The building contest is open to all users 16 years and older holding a ReBrick account. The voting process is open to all users holding a Rebrick account.
• To submit an entry:  Upload your video on YouTube (we do not host content on ReBrick) and add a bookmark to the video in the special themed category: Building Challenge on ReBrick.
• Video must not exceed 3 minutes.
• Entries must incorporate the theme of spooky fun.
• The contest begins October 1st at 9:00 A.M. Eastern Standard Time (EST). Entries submitted to ReBrick before this date and time will not be accepted into the contest. Competition are open for submissions until October 29th 2012 at 8:59 A.M. EST.
• A panel of judges will review the five (5) bookmarks with most likes and select one (1) grand prize winner. The five semi-finalist videos will be reviewed based on creativity, originality and theme.
• Judging will begin at 9:00 A.M.  EST on October 29th 2012 and will end at 9:00 A.M. EST on October 31st 2012.
• Entries must only contain elements from the LEGO® collection.
• All entries and entrants must follow the ReBrick House Rules.
• We reserve the right to disqualify any entry that does not follow the official rules. Any form of cheating will result in a banning of user profile from ReBrick.

Grand Prize is a LEGO® Monster Fighters Haunted House signed by LEGO designer Adam Grabowski and a LEGO® Monster Fighters Exclusive Grab Bag — so that’s pretty cool!

I also asked ReBrick editor-in-chief Signe for a bit of clarification on the “Entries must only contain elements from the LEGO® collection” caveat, and here’s what she had to say:

• Q: Do the films have to contain things specifically from the “Monster Fighters” play theme?
• A: No, we just think the Monster Fighters theme is great for Halloween, and that’s why we chose to highlight that theme.
• Q: Or does it mean that the films in general must use only LEGO parts (and nothing from competing brands)?
• A: Yes, exactly. No competing brands. And don’t dress up in homemade Halloween Minifigure costumes, it’s only LEGO products you can use in the film ;o)
• Q: Can people make films using any LEGO sets or parts they want, as long as the topic is appropriately spooky?
• A: You can use any part/set from the LEGO collection you want. We want a Halloween film, so spooky with a twist of fun.

So there you go, guys and gals! Better get building… the contest is only open until October 29th!

ReBrick | Blog | ReBrick Flick Halloween Competition

The contest *officially* starts next week — and we’ll update you guys with the rules and prizes at that time — but if you’ve been toying with the idea of doing some mysterious and spooky brick animations, you might want to act on that impulse…

ReBrick | Blog | It’s Time for Some Spooky Fun…

Zach Macias (Mindgame Studios) brings us this minfig-styled Mad Men parody, made for a recent AMC video contest.

I know very little about the shows involved, so any humorous aside or snarky wordplay you might imagine will be better than what I would have come up with here. Cool sets and some NPU, though.

Mad Minifigs: The Dish Situation – YouTube

17-year-old Dylan Woodley of Insomniac Animations made this really sweet music video for the song “Houdini” by Foster the People. There’s nothing terribly noteworthy about the animation or story — the video does drag in a few parts — but the real triumph here is in the staging and lighting of the piece. There’s some really amazing camera moves and transitions, and the whole thing feels like a true live-action concert video. My only wish is that he’d secure permission to use the song — I’d love to screen this video at BrickFlix!

Foster the People – Houdini in LEGO – YouTube

Eric J. Nelson of Heavy Visuals brings us this cute LEGO City promo, which I assume was for one of the Tongal LEGO contests.

It’s a neat short, with some nice animation and cool music (which for some reason reminds me of Super Metroid). The use of a LEGO train to transition from live-action to stop-motion is particularly inspired — though Heavy Visuals’ work always seems to exist in some interesting middle ground between live-action and stop-motion. Apart from some minor technical failings (mostly color keying artifacts), it’s pretty solid.

Plus, it’s got graham crackers. Check it out, before the whole city is destroyed!

Siszilla — Lego Animation – YouTube

YouTube user Brotherhood Workshop brings us this short stop-motion LotR parody. Not too much LEGO (apart from minifigs), but good stuff nonetheless.

LEGO Lord of the Rings: Orcs – YouTube [via BoingBoing]

Technically, this won’t be the first official LEGO feature — there are the four Bionicle films, as well as The Adventures of Clutch Powers; though these are all direct-to-DVD releases. (Also, did you know they’re planning a live-action Hero Factory movie?) I’m sure we’ll cover all of these films on this site at some point, despite the fact that they’re CG animated and not what we classify as true “LEGO Animation”.

Anyway, from what we know, “LEGO: The Motion Picture” won’t fall into that category, either, as it will be mostly CGI with some live-action photography. Other information about the film that has been released thus far (some of it just rumors, I’m sure):

• The release date of the film (as of this writing) has been announced as February 28, 2014.
• The working title (according to the often-misinformed IMDb) is “LEGO: The Piece of Resistance”.
• The film’s story was penned by Dan and Kevin Hageman, who previously worked on the “Ninjago: Masters of Spinjitzu” animated series on Cartoon Network, as well as the forthcoming animated feature “Hotel Transylvania“.
• Also credited as writers are co-directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller, known for the surprisingly delightful “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” film adaptation.
• In an interview with MTV, the two directors discuss the plot of the film, and how it’s “weird, in a great way.” (Color me intrigued.)
• “Parks and Recreation” actor Chris Pratt has been cast as “Emmett”, the main character of the film.
• Will Arnett has apparently signed on to voice Batman (a minifigure Batman, I’m assuming). My gut is telling me “awesome!”… but my gut is also very hungry.
• Finally, there’s LEGOTheMotionPicture.com, where you can enter a vehicle design contest for a chance to have one of your LEGO creations featured in the film. There’s also a Facebook fan page if you’re into that sort of thing.

What do you guys think? Does the “LEGO Movie” sound like something you’d go see?

UPDATE [08/29/12 11:00am EDT]

Apparently production folks’ ears must have been burning as I wrote this post, because just as it went live, some new casting and plot information started floating around:

• Morgan Freeman has been cast as someone called “Vitruvius”; possibly named after the Roman architect (or a Da Vinci reference)?
• Elizabeth Banks has been cast as someone TBA.
• Australian animation house Animal Logic will do the CGI work.
• The film’s plot on IMDb: “An ordinary Lego mini-figure, mistakenly thought to be the extraordinary MasterBuilder, is recruited to join a quest to stop an evil Lego tyrant from gluing the universe together.”
• Some alternate plot info from Gizmodo.
• A twitter account for the film.

Zach Macias (Mindgame Studios) has created this mildly spoilerish TDKR parody. When it is done, and Gotham is in ashes, then you have my permission to chuckle to yourself.

R I S E  [YouTube]

LEGO Animation mainstay Jonathan Vaughan (aka Nick Durron) has released a sequel to his 2010 film “Zombie: Genesis“. Check it out!

Zombie: Exodus – YouTube

I think most LEGO fans are familiar with the story of Ole Kirk Christiansen, and how The LEGO Group originally developed from his small woodworking company in the early-mid 20th century. It’s been well-documented in a number of official books, like this one, this one, and this one.

But now this history is available in a new format — last Friday marked the 80th anniversary of The LEGO Group, and to honor the occasion, they released a short film detailing the company’s evolution. While it is an animated film, it’s neither stop-motion nor LEGO animation, so I won’t be approaching it with all of the review aspects we’d normally cover on this site. But I did want to talk about it, because… it’s a long, drawn-out mess.

From the get-go, there’s something oddly disorienting about the way “The LEGO® Story” is told. We start by fading from a (CGI) LEGO-brick-built edifice to a real (CGI) building, as we move back in time to Billund, Denmark in 1932. The pleasant voice-over narration tells us that we are following Ole Kirk Christiansen’s story; and, as a man exits the building on-screen, we assume this must be Ole himself.

Except… it isn’t. It’s one of his workers, and about 15 seconds pass before we realize this and meet the real Ole. Huh?

The story continues, and there’s a match cut between the worker exiting and Ole sitting down with his wife, further confusing the two characters (and the audience). Ole laments his work situation, and his wife tries to cheer him up with some dialogue that adds absolutely nothing to the story:

“I know. It’s hard to understand. But at least now… it can’t get much worse.”

Time passes with another dissolve, and the lighthearted narrator informs us “it did get worse!” — Ole’s wife, a character who had a total screen time of 15 seconds, is now dead. The above quote is her only dialogue in the film. So much for Chekhov’s Gun.

(Admittedly, I can’t really summarize it better than YouTube commenter Evan Buchholz: “Jesus, that was the most cheery ‘but it did get worse’ I ever heard.”)

Thus, in the first one-and-a-half minutes, we’re already introduced to the three major issues with the entire film:

1. Narration that doesn’t match the tone of the story
2. Confusing shot composition and blocking
3. Dialogue that restates information we’ve already gotten from the picture and narration

And we still have around 14 minutes left to sit through.

For a moment, I thought maybe this film had been translated into English from another language. LEGO is a Danish company, after all, and a multinational brand. But the lip sync here seems to match the dialogue, and the credits list the “Original Voice Cast”; so I’ll assume “The LEGO® Story” was created in English first.

The majority of TLG’s animated releases — save for the direct-to-DVD films — are either silent or have voice-over, which I believe serves to make them more universal. (Out of all the work we’ve done for TLG at Paganomation, not one film has been dialogue-based.) Strangely enough, the next minute or so of the film follows this approach pretty well. There’s some nice animation motion capture of Ole interacting with his sons, and the development of the classic LEGO duck.

But as soon as the “Wholesaler” character arrives, we’re back to clunky dialogue. “Now there’s finally someone who can see the opportunities in what we’re doing!” Thank you, we know; we just saw that.

These bizarre inconsistencies continue throughout the film; again, most prominently in the voice-over. Even though we see the company’s ups and downs as the years pass, the narrator never wavers from his chipper delivery of exposition. I attribute this to what’s sometimes known as “LEGO humor” — the sense given through TLG’s cinematic releases that everything is whimsical and fun, even when the information being presented clearly contradicts this idea.

The most bewildering moment of narration comes at around the 10 minute mark; when, out of nowhere, the narrator says:

“Everyone thought that was a good idea, and we were placed on the sofa, with all the presents and flowers around us!”

Wait… “we”?! Who’s “we”? Up until this point, the narrative style has been third-person omniscient; with the voice-over recounting the story, in retrospect, from outside the world the film takes place in. Now, all of a sudden, we’re hearing a first-person account? Who is talking? I literally rewound to the beginning of the film, just to make sure I hadn’t missed some important introduction. I hadn’t.

And then, once again, this left-field change is immediately disregarded, and it’s another minute of run-time before we hear the narrator refer to himself as “I” again. Eventually, the ending of the film suggests the narrator is Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen — I say “suggests” because we never hear his name, and he never introduces himself to the audience.

This is the overall problem with “The LEGO® Story” — it pays no attention to the language of film; the rules that have developed over time so that audiences can clearly follow a story. You can twist and bend these rules to do some interesting things, but when you blatantly ignore them, your film starts to get weird.

If you’re going to tell a story from a first-person perspective, introduce the storyteller from the beginning, so that we know who’s talking to us. If you’re going to have dialogue, make sure that it serves a purpose; otherwise, cut it out entirely. Make sure you’re clear on the tone of your film — tone, as Plinkett reminds us, is how a film feels. Either make a film that’s entirely upbeat, and excise the depressing historical bits; or, tell a story that flows naturally from happy to sad, and have the rest of the film’s elements match and support that.

Finally, have an idea of who your audience is — who you’re making your film for. The “LEGO humor” concept I mentioned above is a way to have films appeal directly to KFOLs; the target LEGO demographic. The confusing, slipshod way this film is made negates that idea; culminating with the narrator discussing “children” at the film’s finale, as if no children were watching.

Which, after 15+ minutes, I can’t say I really blame them. This film could have been half the running time and told the same story more effectively. “Only the Best is Good Enough”? Eh, maybe next time.

The LEGO® Story – YouTube

Though they’ve had a presence there for several years now, TLG has finally created a central hub on YouTube for all of their video content. I’ve found myself puzzled about the bizarre fracturing of LEGO YouTube channels in the past (I don’t know about you, but when I think of LEGO, the first thing I think to search for is “Dzine123”).

But yes, this is a great step in the right direction, even though right now there are a lot of duplicate videos from elsewhere, and comments seem to be universally closed. I’m sure as new shorts are produced, we can expect to see their releases on the official LEGO channel first. Good luck with it, guys!

The Official LEGO® Channel – YouTube

When it comes to LEGO stop-motion sets, keeping them firmly attached to your table or desktop is a must. Some folks use tape or blue tack, but I like the versatility that clamps provide. I started with regular spring clamps (like these) from a hardware store, before Sean Kenney introduced me to the Mini Quick Grip clamps made by Irwin.

Despite being the 6″ size, the clamps I have here actually open up to about 6 3/4″. This extra space can useful if the floor of your set is more than a few bricks high, or if you need to support a large backdrop. The trigger-looking handle allows you to adjust the amount of pressure you’re applying, and the rubber pads prevent damage to your precious LEGO baseplates (in fact, I usually end up with stud impressions in the pads after removing them).

If you’re looking for a way to solidify your set and tabletop without harming your LEGO, I highly recommend giving these clamps a try. They’re a bit on the pricier side ($13 at Home Depot, or $20 for a 2-pack), but well worth it.

Quick-Grip 6 in. Mini Bar Clamp-1826442 at The Home Depot

I’ve been experimenting with animation and film making for a long time now. As a kid, I was first inspired by things like The Muppets, Wallace and Gromit, Star Wars, and anything from Will Vinton Studios. These classic creations piqued my interest in stop-motion, sculpture, character animation, and general weirdness. I started pursuing these interests using the medium I knew best — LEGO bricks.

As my study of these things continued into college, I struggled with whether or not to make my thesis film a LEGO film. Was it practical? Would audiences see it as a gimmick? Could it even be done? Fortunately, I was able to find a few prior examples of fantastic, minifig-free brick animation, which solidified my decision and helped inspire me further. One of these films was “ROBOTA” by Marc Beurteaux.

Story

(Spoilers to follow.)

ROBOTA tells the story of, well, Robota; a wheelchair-bound automaton wandering through a futuristic, grey-scale city. Robota dreams of having her legs repaired, but can’t afford to; so she bets her panhandled cash on a robot cockfight. Eventually, Robota makes her way to a somewhat eccentric robot hospital, where her dream of getting new legs comes true… sort of.

Design

The world of ROBOTA is well-defined from the get-go, starting with some great establishing shots of the bleak, mechanical city. The lighting is stark and moody, adding to the atmosphere, and a few of the vehicles and sets have some neat built-in lighting.

The character designs in ROBOTA are really clever. Even though 95% of the ‘bots are built completely in grey, they each have a uniqueness, and feature plenty of NPU. Look for the guy with a boxing bell for a head, the one-legged droid on crutches, and the bartender’s SNOT noggin. (Also, who knew robots could have nipples?)

In fact, the grey color scheme of the robot characters is used to great advantage at many points in the film, particularly when color comes into play at the cockfight. Each of the robot birds has a distinct color scheme, and since there is no dialogue in the film, the betting on the fights is conveyed through the use of colored tickets used by the characters. A fight between blue and yellow robot birds stands out all the more when contrasted with a grey robot audience.

Animation

The animation in ROBOTA is impressive. There’s lots of great subtlety from each of the characters, especially Robota herself. Her arms are Classic Space arm pieces, giving her gestures flexibility and variety.

The secondary robot characters are well-animated, too. What’s nice is that, for the most part, these background ‘bots are rigged only to be able to accomplish what’s needed for the shot — whether it’s reacting, fighting, or just subtle head turns. On the film’s commentary track, director Marc Beurteaux talks about how the characters were rigged with the intent of solving every animation problem in the simplest way possible, and it shows.

The robot birds are pretty sweet, and despite having click-jointed legs, they seem to move with a great fluidity and style. The flying shots of them are well done, with supports being hidden as opposed to masked out in post-production (impressive!).

There are a couple of post-production visual effects in the film, but none of them really stand out or feel poorly integrated (except maybe for one breaking bottle). The film is primarily a stop-motion piece, and there are some great in-camera panning and trucking shots, which are simple but well-executed.

Sound

The sound design for ROBOTA works in much the same way — it’s simple, effective, and serves the film well. There’s enough of a variety of robot droning, buzzing, and beeping to make Ben Burtt proud.

For the most part, the music is also electronic sounding, save for the finale song “Hooray, Hooray!” by Pat Bowman. It’s a more melodic, almost musical theater sounding piece (apparently, at one point, this film was supposed to end with a dance number). While tonally different, it still somehow fits the mood of the overall film, and ends things on a lighthearted note.

Overall

ROBOTA has one of the traits that I believe any LEGO animated film should have — that it would have been a great film whether it was made using LEGO bricks or not. ROBOTA creates an immersive world, tells an engaging story, and is totally worth repeated viewings to catch all the creative details.

Plus, it’s got robots. I can’t recommend it enough.

Where to watch this film

ROBOTA made the festival rounds in the mid-2000s, winning a few awards in the process:

• Best Canadian Film, Resfest 2005
• Outstanding Achievement Award, New Haven Underground Film Festival, 2006
• Best Art Direction, Chicago Short Film Festival, 2006

ROBOTA used to be available on DVD via robotafilm.com, but it appears that website is no longer in existence. It is available to view on YouTube.

Marc Beurteaux’s website also seems to have disappeared, though you can still view a few of his blog entries on the WILDsound Film Festival website.

Robota: An award winning Lego animation [YouTube]