Bricks in Motion
A picture says a thousand words, but a thousand pictures can tell a story. Stop motion animation is a technique of film that breaths life into the inanimate. Within stop motion are a variety of styles that each hold their own degree of difficulty and learning curve. Stop motion is often perceived as quite the daunting task, described as long hours, micro adjustments, and many, many pictures. When considering large film projects such as Isle of Dogs(2018) or Nightmare Before Christmas(1993), the hurdles associated with stop motion shine their greatest. This, however, is not necessarily the case when venturing stop motion for the first time. If you have ever wished to enter into the world of stop animation, taking the rights steps can place your foot in the door while minimizing difficulties. A popular form of stop animation for beginners as well as advanced animators is Lego stop motion. Lego is a near perfect choice for stop motion with its small scale, ability for detail, and limitless possibilities for creation.
If Lego stop motion sounds like an interesting prospect, below you will find my preferred process for creating a stop motion video with Lego. While some may be itching to snap some pictures, we first must lay down our base plates and pile our bricks so to speak. A video, even at a small scale, requires planning and items to successfully make these plastic pieces come alive.
Required Items
Lego bricks and minifigures, Lego base plate(can vary in size), Smart phone camera or DSLR, Lighting, Camera mount(more on that later), Editing software, an most importantly an Idea interesting to you!
Quick tip! If you need more pieces or a specific part, you can find them at Bricklink!
Other optional items that could increase quality your video include: Green screens, a tripod, multiple lights, or dolly. These aren’t necessary to make a great video, but if you have these or the budget/want to have them, go for it!
Some of these items can even be substituted by making them from Lego! When starting out I would use my phone, and needed a way to keep the camera stable. Thanks to the video below by BrickBrosProductions, I was able to create a mount for my Iphone (with some modification on the design) and later the DSLR mount once I acquired one. This option is useful if you already have a larger amount or variety of Lego pieces, and do not yet want to purchase equipment.
Crafting an Idea
Now that you have your equipment and items all gathered, its time for the most important step of creating a stop motion video; Having an Idea! The idea for the story is the top concern in my opinion, because if you are not fully interested in what you are wanting to create, the rest of the process will seem to drag on rather than a fun task. Take your interests and create a simple story that you would find interesting. Planning out your story ahead of time also helps you with the creation of your setting, as you will have a vision of what you need to build.
Design your Scene
Once the idea has been solidified, its time to start creating your scene! Just like building a home, this starts from the base and builds upward. You first want to take your base plate and secure it to your work space. Unwanted movement is catastrophic to a stop motion shoot, and securing the base allows for easier manipulation of the scene. Most often sticky tack is placed on the bottom to secure base plates (Sticky tack can also be used for more advanced minifigure movement within videos). Once the base plate is immobile, build up the decoration and background.
Whether its a scene in a Lego city, forest, or inside a building, setting creates a majority of the story. Lego set themes can alleviate this if you are doing a video with a specific line of Lego sets such as Harry Potter, Jurassic World, LoTR, and Star Wars. Using these sets as background provides an easier way to create a setting for your characters and can even inform the story if you wish.
When the background is ready to go, creating the foreground scene is the next step. This will be the area in focus of your camera, and also where the story you have will play out. Set up your minifigures in their initial spots that you want them, and leave the scene as it is for now.
Lighting & Camera Placement
Once your scene has been set up how you wish, the next step is to light the scene. This does not mean you need professional lighting with diffusion or even multiple lights, if you only have a bendable desk lamp that will work all the same! If your scene is ‘outside’ you can use the lamp to simulate sunlight, or when a scene is inside the lighting can be more even. An even lighting on your scene helps with harsh or elongated shadows, and make sure that your light placement does not give too much light reflection off of the minifigs’ faces as that can detract from your video.
I usually like to set up my camera next once the scene and lighting is taken care of. This lets you position it at an angle that you find interesting for the video, rather than a straight on shot in front of the camera lens. As is in regular film, you want your camera to be at the level of your subject most times. Thus you would set up your camera at minifigure level when doing interactions or actions with the characters. For a first video, I would suggest having a static position for your camera, as introducing movements of the camera for the scene can cause confusion and mistakes with beginner animators.
The Lego DSLR slider created in the video above has a lock on the dolly track for the slider, that can be a viable option for static shots as well! Tripods are also useful for this, but I feel with the slider you are able to get a more up close shot of the scene, such as when you are doing an interior. You may also wish to look into a remote for taking pictures on your camera or phone because the more touching your camera has once shooting starts the higher the chance of a noticeable bump or shift in the pictures occuring.
*Click* Adjustment *Click*!
Now that everything is setup and ready to go, its time to start shooting! This is where the long haul of your endeavor begins, as you must go through the process of *click* small adjustment, *click* small adjustment, *click* small adjustment. The important factor in this part of the process is the frames per second(Each frame being one picture) . You will have a set amount of pictures for each second of your video, and the amount of pictures per second determines the smoothness and speed of your animation. Normal Lego stop motion videos can range from 12–24( 24 being the same rate as traditional films) fps and provides a pretty smooth transition between each picture and the actions as a whole.
This video also by BrickBrosProductions shows a comparison of different fps rates, and also suggests for beginners to shoot at a cool 8 fps! I agree with this as although you may have a more clunky end product, you will have a much easier time learning the basics of stop motion and less overall pictures to take. That is another area to understand, which is the overall amount of pictures that you will have to take for your video. For example if you were wanting to make a video one minute long at 8fps, you would have to multiply 60 seconds by 8fps which would give you 480 pictures total for your video. This number will only increase with length of your video and higher fps, so its better to start small and work up to multiple minute videos and such.
The other side of the coin when discussing shooting is the adjustments. With each new picture you must make a small change in the scene in relation to what is occurring. If your character is taking a drink of coffee, the cup might rise closer to their face with each picture until they take a sip, and then with each consecutive picture be placed back down onto a table. Each action can take an indeterminate amount of pictures to complete, this is more preference to the person shooting the scene as well as how fast they want the character completing said action. One of the hardest techniques to grasp as a beginning animator is the motion of Lego walking. I think that this video by JurassicBrickProductions provides a simple explanation of the movement and is an excellent introduction into movement for beginners.
The shooting section of the process can indeed take some time to complete, so don’t go into it without some self preparations. I have always found turning on music or a television helps with my focus on my projects as I believe this helps relieve the monotony of the repeating actions you are doing. Having a drink or snack nearby just in case doesn’t hurt either. Being comfortable during the shooting will help prevent frustration and boredom as you continue.
Note: Do not be afraid to make a mistake! More than likely it is something that will happen, you may push an arm too far as an adjustment or accidentally bump or shift something. That’s totally okay though! With your first video you want to more so nail down the process and the foundations of stop motion, rather than focus on perfection for each micro adjustment. As is with most things, the longer you learn these techniques the better sense you will have overall and can work up to perfecting those micro adjustments.
Editing
And that’s a wrap, time to send the footage off to the editors! This stage is after you have all of your pictures for you animation, and are ready to compile them into a video format as well as add sound effects, dialogue, chroma-keying, etc.. There are numerous free editing software that you can download, or if it is in the budget a software (such as Adobe After Effects) can be purchased as well. I personally use Vegas Pro for my video editing, as its timeline and general format are simple to understand. I won’t get into the nitty gritty surrounding editing a video in this post, but for a stop motion video the pictures need to be placed in order from the first taken. This is also the step of the process in which you can add a far background if you have a green screen and key in the background. Once you feel you have done all that you want in editing, its time to render the video and watch your final product!
Watch the video and revel in your accomplishment, you have just completed your first stop motion video with Lego! Show the video to your friends and family, hopefully they can offer up some constructive criticism for your video. To help improve your skill with creation of these videos, watch through your video and note areas that can be improved on in the next video that you create. With each new creation you want to improve, however you don’t have to improve everything at the same time. Work on areas that you believe need the most attention in the creation process, and once you have a handle on those go back and improve on the others. This will help keep you from overloading yourself with things to learn at once and let you focus on more time on tougher aspects like movement.
Here’s a bit of random fun I made to show how easy this can be!
Let your creativity flow forward, Master Builders!
