Brick à Brack, founded in 2008, is a website devoted to the French brickfilming community. With over 1,500 users and 3,400 brickfilms on the site, Brick à Brack is one of the largest brickfilming communities on the web, rivaling Bricks in Motion.

I got an exclusive interview with Brick à Brack administrator Maxou44 in Brick à Brack’s Discord chat discussing the forum changes:

– What is the history of the creation of Brick à Brack?

– Brick à Brack was created in September 2008 by Parod and R-Creator, at the begining it was a simple forum that allowed some brickfilmeurs to share their creations (it was the beginnings of the brickfilm in France), year after year, Brick à Brack grew, member after member a great community ready to share and exchange around their common passion: the brickfilm! For the last few years we have multiplied competitions and exhibitions with the aim of democratizing brickfilm!

– What prompted you to create an English section to your forums instead of keeping your community exclusively French?

For almost 10 years now, our goal has been to promote brickfilm and create an active and welded community around this passion, over the last few years many English members have joined us but were unable to use the site properly or participate in our competitions due to language barriers. We have therefore taken things in hand to make our site accessible to as many people as possible! Our goal is to bring the brickfilmers together, not to divide them

– Do you have any plans to expand Brick a Brack to other languages besides French and English?

For the time being, we would like to maintain and grow the English-speaking community that comes to our site, welcoming anglophones to our site is something that is not necessarily simple for us, we don’t speak perfectly English, we have to organize ourselves differently and spend more time maintaining and moderating the site. When everything will be in place and our English-speaking friends will be well integrated, if we think it could be beneficial for another community to translate our website, we will do the necessary.

So whether you speak French or English, Brick à Brack has something for you! Hop on over to their website and register today!

https://www.brick-a-brack.com

As a brickfilmer, I get asked lots of questions about how I make my brickfilms. There are also people who ask for advice on how they should start. So, I was very happy to see that Kevin Ulrich of Brotherhood Workshop answered those questions (and more) in these two videos.

Kevin has been making brickfilms for 10 years now, which explains why he is so good. It’s been only three years for me, so I still have time to improve. I hope you learn some tricks, and find as much motivation in Kevin’s words as I did. (Pay close attention at the “good enough” part.)

How I Became A Stop Motion Animator | Interview With Kevin Ulrich

Getting Started In Stop Motion Animation

Late night talk show host Conan O’Brien got the LEGO treatment by the folks over at LucasArts as part of a promotion for LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues.

Recently on his show, the actor Simon Pegg showed off his Shaun Of The Dead Action Figures.  On another occasion, the actor Paul Rudd presented Conan with a picture of a custom mini-figure made by is his son during his interview with Conan.  Brick artist Nathan Sawaya has built a couple of life-size sculptures of Conan. (The time lapse video of Nathan working on one of the statues is amazing!)

But…what we are most excited about is the connection Conan has with brickfilmers.

Last year, Conan had a brush with brickfilming fame in a Halloween store in Los Angeles.  Sean Willets, aka filmyguy1, appears with Conan in the sexy outfit section of the costume shop.  (It’s near the 2 minute mark).  Sean’s mom also makes an appearance.

Unfortunately no brickfilming was discussed.

Atticus Shaffer, star of TV show The Middle, discussed his love for making LEGO stop motion films during his interview with Conan.

Donald Faison, star of The Exes and Scrubs, discussed his passion for making LEGO stop motion with Conan.  Donald Faison is the man behind Black Storm Trooper.

The mouth movements are done with stop motion.  Respect, man! Check out his interview on the Team Coco site (part 1, part 2).

Conan played a few brickfilms on his television show.  One brickfilm that aired on Conan was by Grayson MacLean, the childhood inventor.  Grayson MacLean invented BrickStix and was interviewed by Conan a few years ago.

Here’s the extended version of Grayson’s brickfilm:

Conan played yet another brickfilm on his television show called Cheer Up, Legos!  It was apparently produced by Conan’s team in response to news stories about LEGO not having as many smiles as they once did.  It’s quite funny.  Warning: it has some mature content, so view at your own discretion.

So Conan, when are you going to interview another brickfilmer or play another brickfilm on your show? We love it!