LEGO recently released a series of short video-tutorials on their YouTube channel with helpful tips for making stop-motion films. The tutorials address pretty much all of the important aspects of brickfilming in a simple way that is easy to follow. They are narrated by Aven Woodard, a young brickfilmer and founder of Kid Film Fest. The tutorials include both live-action and stop-motion footage to demonstrate each lesson. Below I have included all four episodes. 🙂
Here is the synopsis of the four episodes: In Brick Tips – Episode 1: Basic Tips to Improve Your LEGO Brickfilms, Aven breaks down the basics of improving your brickfilms by sharing helpful tips around lighting and animation. In Brick Tips Episode 2: Building Trick for Your LEGO Brickfims, you will learn some advanced building techniques that will allow you to construct walls, create inverted structures, build sideways, form lettering, and add unique decorations. In Brick Tips – Episode 3: How to Add Special Effects to Your LEGO Brickfilms, Aven shares his tips on how to add objects that fly or fall, create smoke effects and add motion blur. And in Brick Tips – Episode 4: LEGO Brickfilm Secrets Revealed you will learn even more advanced brickfilm tips and techniques like simulating water, creating backgrounds, and calculating framerates.
If you are new to LEGO animation, this series of tutorials can help you get started in brickfilming, and archive some very impressive effects right from the beginning. Once you are more proficient, you can learn even more advanced techniques, and you will likely also develop your own tricks. For more lessons you can also check out The LEGO Animation Book by David Pagano and David Pickett, which is an excellent guide to start making your own LEGO movies. It is available on Amazon (just follow the link above).
Even if you don’t plan on making stop-motion videos, the tutorials include some excellent tips for photographing your LEGO creations (after all, brickfilming is nothing more but taking lots and lots of photos), and also building tips that you can use in your own designs. I particularly like the section about all the different ways you can invert the direction studs.
What do you think? How did you like these brickfilming lessons? Would you like LEGO to release similar tutorials in the future? What kind of techniques (building, photographing, filming, etc.) would you like to learn? Feel free to share and discuss in the comment section below! 😉
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This is so cool Admin! I will definitely watch these!
It’s worth it, and they are short, so won’t take up much time. But they are packed with good tips.
I could give it a look, I guess. I guess most techniques should be applicable whether you do Lego or some other kind of stop-motion.
Yeah, the tips could definitely be used for other kind of stop-motion, or even still photography. There are also some neat building techniques mentioned, which was one of my favorite parts. 🙂
The Lego Movie Maker is suddenly not available in the UK iOS store, do you know why? I seem to have read online it wasn’t in the US either but i could have seen wrong
Alexanda, I heard that LEGO is discontinuing Movie Maker, which is really sad as it was a great platform that a lot of brickfilmers used. The hope is that LEGO is planning to replace it with something even better.
I’d assume there should be other options available…
For Stop-Motion, I’d guess all you really need is a steady camera in a fixed position, and a lot of patience…
It is very nicely done. Basic info like the video says but it is good solid info.