Lego Movie
Craig Chislett
gonna try and make me a stop motion movie using Lego today after I go to
the mall and get a tape for the camcorder, which, by the way is just a
regular one. I was thinking about one frame a second since its just a
regular movie camera. Has anybody done this before?
Its too tempting to not do it. Give me your thoughts on this.
P.S. Oh yeah, the movie is about a government (sci-fi) attack on the
slums of a town. The death-squads attack about twice a week to keep the
poor population in check and the rich people happy that there are less
of them to take up space.... One last thing. How much do used road
plates usually go for? And I don't care if what the movies about offends
you.
Justin
Steven Barile
I have done several and they take a long time. I shot mine using the PC for
frame capture. I used 15 frames per second. Any thing under 8 would look
like video. 17 secs took me 5 hours. Good luck! BTW it was worth it. There
is no greater thrill then watching minifigs walk around...
SteveB
PNLTC
www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/lab/2234
Craig Chislett <chis...@sympatico.ca> wrote in article
<352F56B9...@sympatico.ca>...
Michael Moon
In article <352F56B9...@sympatico.ca>, chis...@sympatico.ca wrote:
>gonna try and make me a stop motion movie using Lego today after I go to
>the mall and get a tape for the camcorder, which, by the way is just a
>regular one. I was thinking about one frame a second since its just a
>regular movie camera. Has anybody done this before?
>Its too tempting to not do it. Give me your thoughts on this.
I have some OLD step photography movie on my lego web site.
Worth a look...
http://www.durham.net/~mgmoon/lego/
\|/ ____ \|/
@~/ ,. \~@ mi...@durham.net
/_( \__/ )_\ ICQ# 1574469
\____/ http://www.durham.net/~mgmoon
Craig Chislett
Dang, no movie. Spent all my money on books instead of a couple books and a
tape... Oh well, my Lego bums live for another day....
Calum Thomas Tsang
I have been meaning to repost this for a while but here it is...
Lego Animations, Revisited
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Calum Tsang (tsa...@ican.net)
I get a few emails from time to time about an article I wrote about
creating Lego animations a few years ago. After rereading the post, there
are a few things I forgot to mention, which makes sense for me to talk
about now with the new technologies available.
1. Cameras with Animation Features
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Unfortunately, the JVC GF-S550 and GR-S707U, and Canon E640 cameras
mentioned in the original article are no longer available. Most recent
camcorders don't have an animation feature, it's likely a fad in camcorders
of the late eighties / early nineties.
2. Video Capture Boards
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Video capture boards were only briefly noted in the original
article: the VideoSpigot was one, the other, the DigitalBroadcaster. Those
two boards really date the article: The DBC actually never made it very far
as an Amiga product- the vastly more popular NewTek Toaster Flyer,
MacroSystems VLAB Motion and even the successor to the DBC, the Broadcaster
Elite, did much better. The Spigot is regarded as the first popular digital
video board for the Macintosh at a low cost. I correct these because this
is the most embarassing part of the post.
Recently, low end video capture cards and video production cards
have become available on the PC. Almost all of them can snap one frame at a
time, and with appropriate software, string them together into an
animation.
You don't even need a motion capture card or nonlinear editor, a
framegrabber board, now easily available on the PC, is all you need. Some
machines, like certain Apple Mac consumer models, even come with this
feature built in. Some cards include the VLAB for the Amiga, the video tuner
cards for the Mac and some PC graphics boards, and the Snappy
VideoSnapshot.
3. Digital Computer Cameras
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
At the time of writing the original article, there was only one
machine with a built in CCD camera, the Silicon Graphics Indy workstation.
This science / engineering / design machine was very expensive! Nowadays,
you can get a low cost Connectix QuickCam, in greyscale and colour, that
fits on your parallel or serial port, both on PCs and Macs. Some packages
even come with software to make little animations.
4. In Computer Editing
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Doing this in the PC means you can add effects, music and sounds
easily. If you capture single frames, you could use various commercial and
shareware QuickTime and Windows AVI editing products to combine them to an
animation, and add audio.
5. Output from Computer
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Once you've editted the clip together, outputting can be
accomplished in many ways: the easiest being to videotape the screen.
Setting your monitor to VGA refresh at 60 Hz makes the output clearer with
less scanlines running up and down.
Of course, the elegant way is to use an NTSC (or PAL) encoder.
Many of these devices are very cheap to buy, and have many more uses,
including business and school presentations. They attach to your VGA video
card, and output a composite video signal suitable for recording from to
your VCR. Again, some computers even have this built it! The audio can be
easily plugged into the VCR.
You just set the clip to play full screen without the window border
and it's controls, and press record on your VCR.
The professional approach is to either use a motion video board, to
output your animation and audio track, or record to a single frame device
like a DPS PAR/Perception or a single frame VTR. Of course, this is rather
overkill for most of us fun loving Lego fans!
6. Online Distribution
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Don't forget using the Internet to distribute your movies!
Efficient video compression formats like AVI and QuickTime make files much
smaller and quicker to download, albeit somewhat still slow. There are
also new products to serve the video in realtime. And modems keep getting
faster, so don't forget attaching some AVI files to your home pages. Pages
can be set to auto download and play video files.
7. Good Old Film
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I tried animation on 8mm and 16mm film when I was younger, and it
was slow. But still, some will say that's the way to go: it is certainly
fun, and the outcome has a certain look and kitschy feel to it.
Development is expensive, at nearly $20 per roll of 8mm film.
These new technologies make creating little Lego animation films
much easier and easily allow the average consumer to add lots of fun to
their movies.
--
Calum Tsang tsa...@ecf.utoronto.ca / tsa...@kiwi.com / cts...@ngco.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
A4000/44/1260/Warp/Spectrum/ioExtender http://www.ecf.utoronto.ca/~tsangc
"I'm not going to change my ways to please you or appease you..."-DMB
lego...@brigadoon.com
In article <6god4m$elj$1...@news.durham.net>,
Have you got a gif assembler, for an animated gif? That's what I just did to
show motion with my A.T.A.T. just this evening. you should go have a look,
http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Castle/1334/indexb.html but I'd
encourage you to see the whole site....(take off everything after 1334) Have
Fun! C-Ya!
Legoman34
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Mike Stanley
lego...@brigadoon.com wrote:
: Have you got a gif assembler, for an animated gif? That's what I just did to
: show motion with my A.T.A.T. just this evening. you should go have a look,
: http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Castle/1334/indexb.html but I'd
: encourage you to see the whole site....(take off everything after 1334) Have
: Fun! C-Ya!
Your AT-AT is cool - really neat. The "music" though, is maddening. I
almost shot myself in the head waiting for the whole thing to load.
Just a small pet peeve of mine. I keep my speakers and sub turned way up
for when I play Quake2. Then I forget to turn them down and hear all this
horrible web midi-psuedo music. Kills me. :)
--
Unofficial listing of weekly Lego Shop at Home phone specials
http://frontpage.cdc.net/cjc/info.htm
800-835-4386 (S@H USA) / 800-267-5346 ext 222 (S@H Canada)
www.auczilla.com - World's Largest Online Selection of LEGO Pieces
Marcus Canon
Yeah, somone did this, and they had clouds, walking people, shooting people,
jumping people, swinging people, running people, moving bycycles, that kind
of stuff. I made a space animation once. I also used a computer to edit part
of it. It had the big space ship of the aliens, you know, not the saucer but
the REALLY REALLY big one, it had that shoot a Explorien starship with a
leech cannon that sucks the power out of the ship, then it charged the Phase
Transmit Cannon and it showed pulses of deadly radiation going through the
ships, and it looked like it was cracking up, then the ship blew up in a
huge firball, then the aliens ship cuts the power to the Phase Transmit
Cannon, and redirects the power to the warp engine, and while its doing
that, it shows a pilot working the controls, and then I put in a really loud
warp sound as it showed a bunch of particles go into the intake valves as
the ship charged. Then, the nearly blown up explorien ship blows up creating
a huge shove wave, and when its about 10 yards away, the alien ship finally
initiates the jump sequence, and the ship quickly aims, and activates the
hyperdrive. There is a huge flash of light then the ship opens the warp
tunnel and warps off. Then the scene goes to a front view of the ship as it
goes through the plasma radioactive warp tunnel, then the tunnel cuts off
too soon! The ship jumped right into the middle of a Explorien fleet!!! I
havn't finished part 2 but I plan that it shows the alien ship attack the
fleet with little success when a fleet of 12 warp wing fighters, 20 v wings,
and 25 cyber saucers jumps through and starts attacking the helpless
explorien shipyards and ships. The baddly damaged ship off towards friendly
space when several explorien fighters break off and attack it! Then it
actually launches its escape pod at the 2 following fighters and they
collide! Then the now crippled ship is drifting helplessly with 12 explorien
ships breaking and attacking the ship with no means of escape! Heres a
drawing of the warp procedure. Each arrow is the position of the ship each
second. The first ) is the face in the tunnel, and the other ) is the body
of the tunnel, which the ship goes through at the same speed:
> > > > > > >)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))> > > > > > > > > >
The attacking ships open fire and the ship is starting to heat up from the
radiation. Then the crew bails out. Which objects in space are too small for
radar to pick up, and thats how the v-wings see, so they were in no danger.
So now they were feeling around for em. The end.
P.S.
This film is not yet rated. Film was made with 100% real lego ships
and was real expensive, and took a long time and a lot of work. No Lego
figures were hurt during the film.
Craig Chislett wrote in message <352F56B9...@sympatico.ca>...
>gonna try and make me a stop motion movie using Lego today after I go to
>the mall and get a tape for the camcorder, which, by the way is just a
>regular one. I was thinking about one frame a second since its just a
>regular movie camera. Has anybody done this before?
>Its too tempting to not do it. Give me your thoughts on this.
>
D-Day
Craig Chislett wrote:
>
> gonna try and make me a stop motion movie using Lego today after I go to
> the mall and get a tape for the camcorder, which, by the way is just a
> regular one. I was thinking about one frame a second since its just a
> regular movie camera. Has anybody done this before?
> Its too tempting to not do it. Give me your thoughts on this.
>
> P.S. Oh yeah, the movie is about a government (sci-fi) attack on the
> slums of a town. The death-squads attack about twice a week to keep the
> poor population in check and the rich people happy that there are less
> of them to take up space.... One last thing. How much do used road
> plates usually go for? And I don't care if what the movies about offends
> you.
> Justin
motion movie myself. I am also lining up my more extrovert friends to
do voice overs.
My movie is about a spaceship being boarded by either space police or
aliens. In either case, a bloody broohaha (sp?) should occur.
Tore Eriksson
Craig Chislett wrote:
> gonna try and make me a stop motion movie using Lego today after I go
> to
> the mall and get a tape for the camcorder, which, by the way is just a
>
> regular one. I was thinking about one frame a second since its just a
> regular movie camera. Has anybody done this before?
> Its too tempting to not do it. Give me your thoughts on this.
>
I have wild plans to make a 2 minutes LDraw animation,
640x480/16, .VOC sounds, free DOS program required to
view. I think it's easier to do it that way than stop motion.
Unfortunately, I've run out of time.
You can have a sneak preview at:
http://home2.swipnet.se/~w-20413/movie/
/Tore
Geoffrey V. Bronner
In article <Er9Iq...@ecf.toronto.edu>, tsa...@ecf.toronto.edu (Calum
Thomas Tsang) wrote:
[snip]
>
>3. Digital Computer Cameras
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> At the time of writing the original article, there was only one
>machine with a built in CCD camera, the Silicon Graphics Indy workstation.
>This science / engineering / design machine was very expensive! Nowadays,
>you can get a low cost Connectix QuickCam, in greyscale and colour, that
>fits on your parallel or serial port, both on PCs and Macs. Some packages
>even come with software to make little animations.
>
At trade shows the folks from Connectix have a demo movie made with a
QuickCam and the free software it comes with of a group of 'Village People'
minifigs dancing to "YMCA".
Really fantastic stuff. We begged them to put it on the web but they said
it was too big.
-Geoff
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