Zilcho

Any tips for stop motion?

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I really want to do a brickflick. I did a couple years ago but they were really not too good. I want some help regarding movement between shots. A lot of the time, i would move the head of a minifigure but the rest of the body would move and look out of place. Also I am thinking of doing a starwars brickflick, does anyone have any tricks when it comes to jumping jedi and space ship battles?

Any other advice you have would be great!

Thanks :classic:

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Haha - the first tip would be take really great care making movements! Where possible I try and anchor parts of a minifig when I have to move their head/arms etc. A great help can be using capture software that supports 'onion skinning', which allows you to overlay the last frame captured with your current frame so you can realign the stuff in your scene to match the previous shot (I'd recommend some but I currently do not use any stop animation capture software, I do it slowly and painfully comparing images...bleh). If moving a head, I usually use Blu-tack to hold the headwear in place, and I try to hold the body if possible and make the movement of the head. With the headwear held solidly in place, you should be able to grip the hair/hat and turn the head. Demo your minifig heads before shooting - make sure they aren't too tight or too loose on the torso.

Jumping is easy if you can use photoshop. I'm sure there are tutorials around - I have seen a few on Youtube - that show how to make people and objects fly through the air. I'd assume spaceship battles could be done very much the same way - though depending on the scale and the desired effect I'm not sure exactly how difficult that would be. Watch behind the scenes footage of the original Star Wars - they had to use 'low tech' special effects to achieve what they needed to, which is basically how you would achieve them today. Either that or greensceen it!

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Start slowly. Nothing turns someone off of brickfiliming by attempting a huge project as thier first.

Beyond that, just take the time needed to pull it off. There is no worse feeling than to finish filming and realize your footage is bad.

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Thanks both for your advice. One more little question. How would I go about moving figures like droids where both of their feet are connected?

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Thanks for that link! A very helpful channel.

One more thing, similar to droids, how would you make it look like children are walking.

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Thanks both for your advice. One more little question. How would I go about moving figures like droids where both of their feet are connected?

Perhaps you could try something like covering one leg with green bricks, and moving the whole unit forward. Then do the same thing again, only on the other side. Layer them together, and it looks like the droid is walking. The same could be done for child legs

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Another question: I am pretty confident I could create a rain effect on my software BUT do you think I should use blue studs on the set to make it look more realistic?

Also: Not really related to stop motion but... how does one go around infringing copyright and using starwars music and getting away with it?

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With infringing copyright you always run the risk of videos being removed. However probably the vast majority of videos on Youtube feature copyrighted music and barely any of them will have any rights to use it. About 99% of LEGO Star Wars brickflicks I've watched certainly use the music and dont seem to have had any problems.

I think (and I am in no way qualified as a lawyer) that as long as your not making money out of the video and its purely as a hobby you shouldnt have too many problems.

Also, I noticed with one video that I uploaded which included a tune by Taio Cruz in the background - Youtube automatically recognised the tune and put a link to where you can legally pay for and download the tune - so its possibly seen as a good source of advertising by some artists.

Someone else slightly more knowledgable on the subject might well disagree but with Star Wars music you should generally be okay :thumbup: !

Duck

Duck and Quackingproductionco accepts no responsibility if anyone follows this advice and gets sued! :wink:

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Someone else slightly more knowledgable on the subject might well disagree but with Star Wars music you should generally be okay :thumbup: !

Funny, I was wondering about that earlier this evening. How about music from the Batman movies?

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Funny, I was wondering about that earlier this evening. How about music from the Batman movies?

I think (and again stress that I am no expert!) that it would generally follow the same principle as Star Wars music - where if its not for profit you might get away with it.

I did try and read up about copyright during my lunch hour. Generally the law seems pretty clear - if something is copyrighted you have to have permission from the copyright holder to use it.

Some (but not all) countries have a "fair use" policy, where you are allowed to use a clip of music for example - but it seems that it has to make up the minority of what you are producing (i.e. your whole video couldn't just be a clip from actual star wars!), not be for profit, and not be damaging to the copyright holder (going to reduce sales). However, its best to check your own countries law regarding this.

Unless you could argue fair use, you do run the risk of being sued if the copyright holder felt it necessary to press charges. In my own view, a brickflick is probably not going to be particularly damaging to Star Wars and so this would be very unlikely, but its not impossible. Most likely, if there was a complaint your video would be removed or muted.

That is my own understanding - basically it is at your own risk you upload something with a copyrighted tune in it to youtube.

Again, it is probably best to generally ignore my advice as its probably wrong, but just sharing some thoughts on it!)

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