I doubt you'll find it. It was a short clip of the subway fight from The Matrix made by a friend for a high school Art/Film class around 2002, before broadband connection and YouTube.  It certainly introduced me to the concept of stop motion animation, even though I've seen stop-motion films prior to that, I just never knew about the process until I learned from this clip that it could be done with LEGO.

I really loved Lego Clan Uncut because I was really into Quentin Tarantino's movies back in 2007 so I was really fascinated that some guy made a Tarantino'esque movie with Lego! It was mind-blowing that one could be so creative with what essentially is toys.

Also there was this Lego Batman movie (done with no dialogue) with great cinematography and it was very Tim Burton'esque. I'm pretty sure it was done way before the Batman sets were made (so like in 2003 or 2004). I think it was in Black & White but I'm not exactly sure. But I remember it was an incredible experience watching it because it was just so atmospheric and lovely.

Last but not least is Doug Vandegrift. He made America Outlawed and Pirates and at that time he was my hero. His stories were amazing, the sets were great, his animation was awesome. He put so much effort into those projects and I loved his movies for it. They are very artistic and entertaining.

My story doesn't go very far back, but I still want to share it. Since around 2010, I've known about brickfilms. I hadn't heard of any of the greats, and only saw a handful of brickfilms. I took a bit of an interest, but I forgot about it for a few years. Just like Willow Tree, I started off by making videos with my camcorder, using various action figures moving them with my hand.

In 2014, I started to take an interest in stop motion again. I began animating Mega Bloks toys, by taking several photots, putting my photos on my computer, and then using my camcorder to film my computer screen, as I skipped through the photos in the gallery. I had absolutely no knowledge about doing professional stop motion animation. Then, one day I stumbled upon Doug Vandergrift's Pirates. Vandergrift was the first brickfilmer that really inspired me to brickfilm.

Later that year, my camera died, so my parents gave me an early Christmas present, an animation software with a webcam. I then started to to experiment with animation, and my first proper brickfilm was Lego The Haunted House: Chronicles of Pandrudica in early 2015. I continued to animate, not really honing my skills, until I discovered Bricks in motion in July last year, and the rest is history!

This

Also all those Star Wars shorts from that contest they had in 2007 (I think it was 2007).

I was showed eanimation's "Lego Star Wars An Average Death Star Day" by a friend back in 2007. It was also my first time watching a YouTube video, so that was pretty cool. That video still holds its own even in today's standards for brickfilms. I started experimenting with lego stop-motion on my parent's 5 megapixel camera, the Kodak EasyShare Z740. It fascinated my brother and I, so we continued to create mini brickfilms. We never seemed to finish them, and started a bunch of projects without ever completing them. I also seemed to have a habit for losing all of our files on our computer, so we have lost all of our old projects. My brother and I stopped making brickfilms, and moved into live action movies. About 4 years ago, our interest in brickfilms was sparked again, after watching FancyPants' video "Lego - The Force Unleashed". We made a couple more brickfilms and lost interest again, because we had no motivation to finish them. So, we decided to make a YouTube channel and bought a Nikon DSLR, and we have been slowly improving since then!

Thanks for all the responses. It's interesting to see how different everyone's story is, and to see entry points I never would have expected.

I remember that the very first animation I ever watched was on a skiing holiday back in 2008 (it was actually someone else in the chalet I was staying in who showed it to me) and it was called the Death Star Cantine, which had a voiceover of one of Eddie Izzards' pieces of comedy (warning, there is swearing in it, so probably not suitable for young kids).

After seeing that, I was very intrigued by the concept of inanimate objects moving and talking without the presence of a human being in view. So, I began searching for other animations on YouTube and came across pizzamovies and spugesdu at roughly the same time, who made star wars animations. These were the only animations I watched for ages until 2011, when I found legoboy12345678 (now know as Solid Brix Studios) and watched some of his stuff. In June/July of 2011, I made my first ever Lego animation, and I have been making them ever since!

EDIT: The trigger point for starting lego animations was a lego magazine called BrickJournal (which I found out about from Solid Brix Studios), which LEGO used to sell in stores. In the summer of 2011, the main topic was animation, and they did an interview with the creators of 'Jericho'. After reading that, I made my first animation

Mod edit: Please use the Edit button when you need to add something to your post instead of double posting. Thanks!

Last edited by rioforce (January 5, 2017 (04:35pm))

Special Deliverance and Aladibababad by Leftfield Studios have always been classic inspiration for me.

I think it may have been the pizza deliveries.