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This brickfilm was made for a contest. I had many months to work on it but of course I ended up procrastinating and only started working around a month before the deadline. But during that time procrastinating, I was able to settle on a song, and I also had a mess of feelings and ideas I wanted to convey with it.
I eventually ended up with a super specific setting and atmosphere in my head and I think I did a pretty good job of communicating the core of it within the limitations of the medium.
Anyways, I had to learn a lot more about the software I use. For example I really had to use the x-sheet effectively in DragonFrame, to get things to line up on the beat. I also learned a lot about Davinci Resolve.
Brain storming (sorry for the handwriting):
This is the second to last shot. I suspended a big plastic panel in front of the set and drew on it with dry-erase marker. black paper was used for the monument here:
Editing final touches at a coffee shop:
This was my entry for BRAWL 2023, so it had to be made within one week. Even though it was only a week, it still ended up being one of my longest, most ambitious brickfilms. I spent most of my time awake working on it. I was really just going with the flow for this one, it was really fun to work on.
This was also the first time I really tried to put effort into animating dialogue. I've kind of gone backwards since then, in that regard. I also made and recorded all the music in a frenzy towards the end, which is why it's relatively simple. Anyways I really spent a lot of my energy coming up with gags I was sure only I'd think was funny.
When I made this, it had been a long time since I truly made a brickfilm and I was feeling really inspired, so I decided to start a new project. While working on this, I was also taking some college classes I actually enjoyed. It felt cool to edit my brickfilm while on campus, I guess it was just fun to have multiple things going on in my life at once.
Anyways this one was sort of a spiritual successor to my "stone statue" type brickfilms, as a smaller scale, side-scrolling brickfilm. I tried to focus especially on the lighting and set design, using some forced perspective. I also made the original score first, so the visuals ended up being inspired by it.
My storyboard, which I ended up veering away from anyways:
I started planning this because I was itching to make a brickfilm, but I couldn't since I was away on a trip. So I had a lot of time to come up with a really elaborate story to execute when I got home. I ultimately abandoned most of the story due to time constraints, because I wanted to get started on my BRAWL entry. But the core elements remained.
I made this during a time when I was really trying to push myself and try new things, hense the backgrounds, dolly setup, and "reflector". I was really inspired then and wanted to try some sort of environmental storytelling and world-building. This was also the end of my "closet era" because it was summer and it got way too hot in there.
This is that aforementioned "dolly setup" where I'd stick my phone in that improvised lego phone holder, and slide it against the ruler for a tracking shot.
This was one of the first brickfilms I really tried to plan out meticulously, although it was kinda just an excuse to draw. Besides what you see here, I also doodled a lot of "concept art" in my school notebooks during class.
