First up is the 2017 Brickfilmer’s Guild Film Festival. This annual contest doesn’t have a physical prize, but does have pretty good bragging rights as it’s one of the biggest annual brickfilming contests and the past winners are all famously good films.
Second is Brickset’s Thor-related Brickfilming Contest. “The only requirement is that it features Thor in one form or another — it could be custom, brick-built, older minifig, newer minifig or anything — the rest is up to you” The prize pack is “a LEGO Super Heroes prize pack consisting of four LEGO MARVEL Super Hero sets and exclusive San Diego Comic-Con LEGO Thor poster.”
Last, but not least, Rebrick is holding a competition to celebrate the opening of the LEGO House. “Show us your idea of a day at the LEGO House in a fun stop-motion video – and your imagining could become a reality!” The animation must be betweeen 15 and 30 seconds. The grand prize is a trip for 2 to Denmark to visit the LEGO House!
Will you be entering any of these contests? let us know in the comments.
]]>As previously mentioned, this is the first year that we opened it up to entrants from across the globe, and it showed—we received 34 eligible entries; a record number for our festival!
The winners were voted on by an audience of ~100 Brickworld registered attendees. Without further ado, here are the winning entries:
Best Film (by a Brickworld Chicago attendee): “Sale of a Lifetime” by Casey McCoy
Best Film (International): “The Adventures of Kentucky Jackson” by Kris Theorin
“Full Time Job” by Tyler Eyerly placed 2nd and “A Horse’s Tale” by Gregory & Garry Moore came in 3rd in the international voting.
All the eligible festival entries were screened in a continuous loop for the 8000+ attendees of the Brickworld Chicago exposition on Saturday June 17 and Sunday June 18. We also presented a special screening of “Bricks in Motion” (the North American premiere!) to registered attendees.
Congratulations to our winners, and a big thank you to everyone who submitted a film! You can check out all of the submitted films via the following playlist. Enjoy!
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We want this to be the best brickfilm festival ever, so we have very few eligibility requirements (see the official rules below). Your film doesn’t have to be recently made or contain any specific theme. We want your best work of all time. All eligible films will screen continuously in the Brickfilm Theater for the duration of Brickworld Chicago. The attendees of Brickworld Chicago will vote on the films to decide the winners. We’ve also pulled together a pretty awesome prize pack for the winner.
And while attending Brickworld Chicago isn’t required to enter the contest, we highly recommend it. In addition to the film festival, we will be running a LEGO animation workshop, screening a special film, showcasing models from our latest animations and just generally hanging out and talking about LEGO. You can register for Brickworld Chicago on their website.
Official Rules
- Anyone can enter a film in the festival, but you must be a Full Registrant of Brickworld Chicago to be eligible for the “Best Film” Trophy.
- Your film must be longer than 30 seconds and shorter than 5 minutes in length.
- Your film must be uploaded to YouTube.
- Your film should use LEGO elements to tell a story. It can be animated or live action, or a combination of the two.
- Your film must not have been submitted to any previous Brickworld Film Festival.
- By entering your film for consideration, you attest that you hold all rights to exhibit the given work. This includes (but is not limited to) visuals, music, and characters. Unlicensed use of copyrighted material is not allowed.
- Limit one (1) entry per director.
- Films should be enjoyable by all ages. Film content such as (but not limited to) curse words/swearing, excessive violence, sexual content, and drug use will be grounds for disqualification.
- To submit, e-mail [email protected] by June 5, 2017 with the following information:
- A link to your film on YouTube
- A completed entry form
- There will be two winners of the festival
- Best of Brickworld Chicago – a Brickworld “Best Film” trophy will be awarded to the film submitted by a Brickworld Chicago Full Registrant that receives the most votes from the audience at Brickworld Chicago.
- Best of Brickworld International – a Prize Pack (approximate retail value $250 USD) will be awarded to the film that receives the most votes from the audience at Brickworld Chicago.
- By submitting your film, the Brickworld Film Festival is granted the right to use and/or publish clips or the full videos, screenshots, director and crew names, and any other material related to an entry in the event program, the Brickworld Film Festival screening, the Brickworld website, re-screenings at future Brickworld events, and for any and all promotional purposes.
Prize Pack Details
- 8077: Atlantis Exploration HQ
- 60134: Fun in the Park – City People Pack
- 21103: The DeLorean Time Machine
- 71238: Cyberman
- Misc. Collectable Minifigures (x6)
- 40021: Spiders
- 852948: Female Minifigure Magnets
- 6868: Hulk’s Hellicarrier Breakout
- 852690: Designer’s Toolset
- Medieval and WWII BrickStix packs
- Signed copy of Brickjournal Issue #14
- Signed copy of The LEGO Animation Book
If you have any questions, please e-mail [email protected]. We look forward to seeing your films!
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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!
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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
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We’re very excited to announce the third annual Brickworld Film Festival!
The Brickworld Film Festival is part of Brickworld Chicago, one of the largest conventions of LEGO fans in the world. Last year, we invited attendees to submit their brick animations (or live-action brick flicks) and screened the 8 entries (spanning a variety of genres and styles, from a live-action comedy sketch to a pulp-style space adventure) to an enthusiastic audience of over 160 people.
The event theme for Brickworld Chicago 2014 is “Candy, Sweet Escapes,” so we’re asking this year’s entrants to keep this concept in mind when creating/selecting their submissions. We expect to see some films featuring the Ice Cream Machine and Downtown Bakery. However, we’re also hoping to see other creative approaches to the theme; for instance, last year’s winning film, “From Baking to Bad Guys,” could easily fit in this year’s theme.
Like last year, David and David will carefully review all the entrants, and select the best one to declare the winner. Additionally, an ‘Audience Favorite’ will be voted on during the festival screening.
For those of you on the fence about attending Brickworld Chicago, keep in mind there’s more to the event than just the film festival. On Thursday, we’ll be teaching a three-hour workshop on brick animation, which covers basic techniques and includes some hands-on animation time. There are also displays, workshops, presentations, contests, games, and a ton of LEGO bric-a-brac to keep your attention.
Official Rules
- You must be a Full Registrant of Brickworld Chicago to enter.
- Your film must be longer than 30 seconds and shorter than 5 minutes in length.
- Your film must be uploaded to YouTube.
- Your film should use LEGO elements to tell a story. It can be animated or live action, or a combination of the two.
- Your film must not contain any copyrighted audio. Bricks in Motion has a great list of places you can find royalty free music and sound effects.
- Your film should incorporate the theme “Candy, Sweet Escapes” in some way.
- Your film must not have been submitted to any previous Brickworld Film Festival.
- Limit one film submission per person.
- Films should be enjoyable by all ages. Curse words, excessive violence, sexual content, and drug use will be grounds for disqualification.
- To submit, e-mail [email protected] by June 1, 2014 with the following information:
- Your Full Name
- Your Age
- A link to your film on YouTube
- A prize will be awarded to the film that best exemplifies the LEGO values of creativity, fun, and technical excellence; as decided by the judges.
- An additional prize will be awarded to the film that receives the most votes from the audience at the festival screening.
If you have any questions, please ask them in the comments. Also, leave a comment if you’re planning to attend Brickworld Chicago. We look forward to seeing your films!
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One can choose between five notable brickfilming contests with deadlines between Christmas morning and the end of year. Two of the competitions do not even require that the brickfilm be made special for that particular contest, just as long as it was made in 2013. All of the contests have prizes. 
BricksInMotion.com will be holding their annual Twenty-four Hour Animation Contest just a few days before the end of the year. THAC11 will start at 12pm GMT on Saturday December 28th, 2013. Brickfilmers that enter a THAC do all the idea-making, writing, recording, animating, editing and submitting in just one twenty-four hour period. It can be quite a grueling process. At the start time of the contest, details about THAC will be announced on BIM that will include the theme and mod elements. Although BIM has a few other official contests, I tend to view THAC as their most prestigious contest. Some notable past winners are Sméagol, Legoander, ForlornCreature, and SpastikChuwawa. The contest does have prizes from its sponsor Brickworld. Hazzat (Zoot Productions) is administering the contest announcement thread on BIM. Let’s hope for an on time start this year as there has been issues with that in the past.
A Repelling Spider is hosting another installment of Christmas in a Minute. The goal of the contest is to make a 20-60 second Christmas themed brickfilm that “can stand out and claim a victory”. There are prizes for the winners which were provided by contest sponsors Firestar Toys and Mighty Wanderer. The deadline is Christmas Eve, Tuesday December 24, 2013 at 11:59pm EST. For more information about this great contest, watch the announcement video here.
Members of the French brickfiming website Brick-à-Brack can enter Brickstars. Brick-à-Brack hosts their big annual brickfilm contest at the end of the year. Any film released in the year 2013 is eligible for this contest. Entries will be judged in several different categories such as Best Soundtrack, Best Production Design, Best Special Effects, Best Screenplay, Best Animation, and Best Brickfilmer. Other awards will also be given out for “Most Promising Video” and “Audience Award” that is voted on by Brick-à-Brack members. Past winners have included great brickfilmers such as France & Alex, Legoander, Aiwha, and Loïc F-B.
I was hoping to report about a sixth brickfilming contest, but it appears that Megabloks Toymation will not have a 2013 edition. That’s too bad as the past winners have had some really great entries.
Happy competing!
]]>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!
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We’re grateful to all the Lego filmmakers who dedicated hours to making these films. We know how much work and courage it takes to make a film and show it to a crowd of strangers. Without them, there wouldn’t have been a festival.
This year we gave out two trophies. The “Most Popular Film” trophy went to Paul Vermeesch (and friends) for “Nottingham Tower.”
“Nottingham Tower” was easily the most technically impressive and ambitious film in the festival. It features smooth animation, fast-paced fight choreography, and impressive camera movements. We were quite pleased to see it win the popular vote; it was richly deserved.
The second trophy went to the film that David and I agreed on as being the most well-rounded. We looked for a film that balanced story-telling, creativity, humor, and technical skill while also fitting into the Brickworld 2013 theme of Heroes and Villains. The winner of “Best Film” was “From Baking to Bad Guys” by Caleb Schilling.
We felt that of all the films submitted, this one did the best job of giving the audience an understanding of the protagonist’s motivations. The protagonist has a clear goal (become a real fire fighter), faces challenges along the way (he is better at cooking than fighting fires), but ultimately triumphs. The film also did an excellent job of setting a mood through the lighting and music, and it featured interesting animation throughout (the opening city shot and the cake baking sequence are my favorites).
After we finished the main festival screening, we showed some of our favorite brick animations that we’ve highlighted on this blog in the past year. You can see the playlist we screened here. Thanks to every one who came out for the festival! We hope to see even more people there next year.
P.S. On Thursday of Brickworld we taught a 3-hour workshop on LEGO Animation. We took that opportunity to publicly unveil the Set Bump Logo for the first time. Here’s a photo of that which is 100% candid and not at all staged:
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!