" Choose your stars: LEGO ® bricks and Minifigures are very
popular for this, but Mega Bloks, Best-Lock, Stikfas figures and others are
all frequently used. Sets and backgrounds can be made from items in those
toy ranges or with cardboard, wood etc. Foil-covered styrofoam of the type
used in insulating buildings is good for metallic surfaces.
Get your equipment: Most brick-filmers use webcams to capture the
images. The Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000 is popular and can be found for around
$70. Choose one which gives a full screen resolution - some older ones only
produce small pictures. (While it is possible to use digital stills cameras
the processing they do to optimise each image can create strange results
when viewing the pictures rapidly as a movie ... besides you also have the
fuss of removing the memory card and reading it into the computer. A regular
camcorder can be used when connected directly to the computer so that you
can watch it live but only take a screen-capture when each shot is ready.)
A simple microphone is helpful for recording voices and any special sound
effects you produce yourself. For most films this can be a cheap one like
the Jasco Computer Headset at around $14.
If you are reading this, then you already have the necessary computer !
For lighting a couple of 60-watt bulbs works fine in most cases.
Software: Any edit system could be used - including Apple's iMovie
and Microsoft's MovieMaker. [MovieMaker is no longer available on the MicroSoft
website but can be found
here.
] There are commercial programs for the other work too, but staying with
the no/low budget theme some suggestions for free stuff:
Monkey Jam - is a good stop-motion program which allows
you to capture, "onion-skin" (think of it as tracing), and preview short
sections of animation.
Videomach - the
free version includes 2-second banner-ads. Among other things this helps
compress files for download. (To compress files for use on YouTube see our
tutorial starting
here.)
DivX - is a popular format
for brick films.
"Shooting" speed: Normal NTSC video runs at nearly 30 fps
(frames-per-second), but few animators create 30 pictures for each second
of screen time. Around 12 fps is a good starting point but 15 fps looks better.
It is acceptable for almost all motion and, of course, takes half the time
and effort that working at 30fps would do.
Stop-Motion Animation: start with
these
tutorials.
General Information: there are lots of websites devoted to brick films.
A good one is
www.brickfilms.com
which has masses of help and some great films. Try the useful
Brick Films
Wikipedia. Try also
Best Bricks ,
Bricks in Motion "