31012 Lego Time Lapse/Stop-Motion

It's been over a year since I last did a Time-lapse/Stop-Mo of a Lego set build. These are a labour of love but I am drawn to them as a great medium for animation and self expression. Something I like to do is add a little humour or a flimsy storyline to mix it up a bit. For this one I used workmen. If anything was lacking from my other builds, It was workmen! I do enjoy them overall. But there are problems which exist within this. I need to read the books days before the day of the build. This gives me a chance to pre-build a few things like furniture and trees. I found the first few films easy until I did the modulars. Now I benefit from that knowledge so it's great. If there was any advice I could offer right now - it is don't just open the box and film. Open it - read the instructions, build some of the smaller things that may speed up the filming. Some stuff is worth saving for the time lapse - some is just boring. Go though and assess.

My Tropfest Entry "Three"

So this year I decided to enter Sydney Tropfest. The TSI, or theme was "Change". When I heard it announced at the start of the year an idea instantly popped into my head. I knew what I was going to do and didn't even need a a real script which is how I usually work anyways. I'm not really into storyboarding. I prefer to keep it organic along the way. It can make the process longer and a bit frustrating but compared to wasting time storyboarding it kinda works out. I had the idea of a guy finding a $50 note and the decisions he faced. Should he go crazy, use it for good, or just leave it. I started building the sets in March and continued all the way through until October. The actual filming of the live actor (Jarrod King) was done in September. All editing and animation took place in late October. All the puppet filming was done over a few days. Like the shooting with Jarrod, I just did take after take until I was pretty sure I had enough takes and camera angles to get the film made. I entered with 40 hours to spare. So here is the end product. The editing could've been tighter, which I will do if I enter into another competition. Here is a picture of me with all the puppet sets to give you an idea of the size of the sets....

The JasEn Show

I made 3 short films called "The JasEn Show". All contain different styles of animation. The first of 3 instalments, I didn't use any toys at all. I used a friends awesome drawings, which I animated, and a photo of a bowl of fruit in my kitchen; which I also animated. For the second, I used a brief stop-motion I filmed on my loungeroom floor with random kitchen objects, it worked out well until I decided to light the candles which melted wax and went everywhere haha. I used Adobe Flash andPhotoshop with live shots and pure animation. I took a lot of photos in an old folks home, which I ended up getting kicked out from because apparently you can't take photos in an old folks home. I still took photos on the way out to make sure I got what I need! The last part was stock footage with my own voiceover. For the 3rd I used my distraction as the main attraction, my cat Soda. He always interrupts for his own attention, which is fine. Except when I need him not too. This gave me the idea to use him in this short. For the 4th, I used Lego all the way! I decided to take the kids toys to the next level, but wasn't sure how. Most of the Lego animations used green screens etc. Maybe I should go in another direction with the actual scripts. So I did. I have been watching a lot of "Robot Chicken" and they use kids toys to produce some wonderful adult animation. This was the direction I decided to go. Enjoy....