faq

I've made a list of questions people often ask about Brickfilming and this site. If you're new to brick films, this may be a good place to start.

Who invented brick films? How long ago?

This is an interesting subject of some debate. No one is completely sure who or when people first started making brick animations, but most scholars agree that it most likely began in ancient Egypt, based on recently discovered hieroglyphic murals. These hieroglyphs date back to some 4500 years ago. Surprisingly, the first Star Wars brick film did not appear until a few thousand years later, in Ancient Babylon. (Around 612 BC.)

Who really invented brick films? How long ago?

The oldest known brickfilm was created in 1985, and is called "The Magic Portal." The LEGO Company has been using stop motion in commercials and videos since before this though. So there isn't really any one founder of the idea of animating bricks using stop motion. I lived under the illusion that I was the only person to ever think of such an idea for a number of years, until the LEGO Studios set came out and the idea caught on. Jason Rowaldt started Brickfilms.com in December of 2000, which which quickly became a gathering place for brickfilmers on the internet.

What is the longest brick film?

The longest publically available brick film I know of is Star Wars: The Great Disturbance. However, I have read of others, such as a 4-hour long video made with LEGO Studios that is not currently available online.

How does one get started in making brick films?

There are a number of good resources for this. Brickfilms has an encyclopedia of information. I also have written a beginner's guide that explains what equipment and software you will need. Generally it can be done with free software and a relatively inexpensive webcam. The community at Bricks in Motion has an active forum, and I recommend heading there if you have any questions, or a film you'd like to share.

How do you do lightsabers?

Ok, so this should probably the first question in all brick film FAQs. I've written a tutorial on this, and there is more information in the aformentioned encyclopedia.

How about making something fly?

There are a lot of ways to do this. One technique would be to use fishing line, and light the scene so that it isn't visible. Another is tacking characters to a backdrop. Filming the shot with the camera looking down so the bricks can sit on the backdrop can also work well depending on the effect desired. I recommend avoid bluescreening when possible (It may sound cool and nifty, but it doesn't always work very well with shiny plastic bricks, and it often takes more effort than it's worth.) Another alternative would be to erase the strings in the GIMP, Photoshop, or another image editing program. I used this technique in Attack of the Drones when the shuttle lifted off, as well as in Duel at Kamino when Slave 1 lifted off. The ship was lifted up by dental floss. The encyclopedia might be a good place to start for other ideas. I have written a tutorial on bluescreening, though, if you're curious.

How long does it take to make a brick film?

This depends on a lot of factors. Duel at Kamino took me about four months, because of all the special effects. Attack of the Drones took about three years, on and off. The Brickfilming community has had several 24-Hour animation competitions, in which films had to be made in 24 hours or less, and many of the entries have been of good quality; my films The Pepperonis and Cashman were both produced for these contests. Some people can make a well-animated short film in a day or two. Some people take months. The more you practice, the more streamlined production becomes, and I have definitely gotten faster than I used to be without quality suffering for it - Unrewewable took about a month and a half to film and edit, well under my previous averages.

Do you plan out your brickfilms?

I made up Cretaceous Camp as I went, and it shows. I storyboarded Duel at Kamino, and I wrote a long, detailed script for Attack of the Drones, then wrote several revised versions until I was satisfied with it. I have scripted almost everything since then, though I don't always storyboard. It can be helpful for action sequences, though, or long dialog scenes that require planning of shots to keep the visuals interesting. Much of Unrenewable was storyboarded.

What software do you use in making your films?

Here's the software that comes to mind for me:

Word / OpenOffice Writer - I write an outline of the events, then follow this as a guideline while writing the script.

Canon CameraWindow - The remote capture software that came with my Powershot A620, I use this to control the camera remotely and capture images to my hard drive via USB. I sequence the images afterward in Videomach or Virtualdub.

MLCad, LeoCad - For films involving CG work, I build LDraw models in MLCad, and usually export them to a 3D format in LeoCad. Sometimes I plan out models before trying to build them physically in MLCad as well.

Axogon Composer - I use Axogon for editing, 2D visual effects, and compositing work. It's great for assembling layers of a shot once all the masks have been created elsewhere. I created the animated faces for my films thus far in Axogon.

Carrara 6 Pro - For any CG animation/rendering effects. I also plan on using Carrara for some vector-based mouth animation work in my current project, it allows for specific, predefined mouth shapes which will make it faster than Axogon.

CompositeLab Pro - Another compositing program, I use it mostly for color correcting/grading, and color keying.

VirtualDub - This program is good for resizing and cropping video, but there are also a host of filters included and available on the web from 3rd party websites that are useful for creating various effects and color adjustments.

VideoMach - I use one of the older, free versions, sometimes for sequencing images or resequencing the order of frames, and also for cropping video.

Photoshop Elements - I got this free with a printer, it's a stripped-down version of Photoshop. I use it for matte-painting work and occasionally frame-by-frame adjustments or compositing.

The GIMP - There are a lot of good plugins that I can't get for PS Elements, such as a 'focal/lense blur,' which I used quite a bit in Unrenewable to create realistically out-of-focus CG backdrops.

Sqirlz Water Reflections - I used this in Unrenewable for some of the rain particle effects, and also for the water in a few of the matte paintings. (Anything closer up had more technically correct animated water created in Carrara.)

Audacity - I record dialog with Audacity, I also use it for some adjustments and trimming from time to time.

Goldwave - I use the old, free version for cleaning up and altering sounds, and also for mixing music in the final audio for my films.

MixCraft - A fairly recent addition, I used this to write the music for Unrenewable and plan to use it more in the future. The music for "The Oven" was composed in Finale Notepad, a free program.

VLC - I use VLC for compressing my videos, I've recently taken to MPEG Streamclip as well, and for HD uploads to YouTube, the only freeware I've had success with is Windows Movie Maker.

With Carrara 6 Pro, CompositeLab, and Mixcraft being the non-freeware here, my total software expenses come to about $300. Which is less than the price of Carrara on its own really, but I bought it with a student discount during a sale period so I got a really good deal on it, and I got a student discount on Mixcraft as well.

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