Bricks in Motion
We are a friendly filmmaking community devoted to the art of stop-motion animation using LEGO® and similar construction toys. Here, you can share your work, join our community of other brickfilmers, and participate in periodic animation contests!
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Mariana
Join Mariana on a 7 minute journey of fantasy and denial.
Written by our very own HoldingOurOwn and even includes music composed by him as well.
This is my longest stop motion ever and took over 5 months to make. I enjoyed making it and I'm hoping you enjoy watching it.
Interesting story; I like it. A project of this length is hard work complete, and I congratulate you for doing it.
The animation was smooth and the use of different minifigure faces really added to the finished product.
At first I was confused about why you named the main character Mariana ,
but then I googled it and figured out you based the short off of a poem of the same name.
I only noticed a few things that could be improved. Early on, Mariana is watching TV, but the TV is blank. Next time, you might want to edit the footage so there is something playing. Another thing is the light flicker.
Also, what happened to Robot? She didn't delete him.
Otherwise, it was great.
Nice work togfox, keep it up!
It was such a joy to watch this! I know you'll get comments on the light variance, but the presentation is the important thing. I know how meticulous you were to shoot and reshoot everything to your liking. You remained organized through the entire process.
At first I was confused about why you named the main character Mariana ,
but then I googled it and figured out you based the short off of a poem of the same name.Spoiler (click to read)
Also, what happened to Robot? She didn't delete him.
Though I can't speak for TogFox, who may have known about the Mariana poem, I had no knowledge of this Mariana poem when I wrote this. The screenplay for the brickfilm is a rendition of a short story from over half a century ago, written by Fritz Leiber. In classic sci-fi circles, he's a well-established writer. After reading your post, I found the original Mariana poem from the 1880s, and a reference on it. Mariana in the poem seems to have been an inspiration for the story, as there is such a close resemblence. I just learned something new!
ANSWER to question in spoiler:
Robot was part of the house, like an appliance.
TogFox, your animation really brought Lego bricks to life. The characters were lucid and vivid, which is what we all strive for. You also did a great job realizing the script.
I had an idea how the script would look visually. Your video wasn't too far off from my imagination, except that there would be millions of pines, but those Lego elements are expensive. Robot was awesome looking. I never saw those Lego pieces before.
Johnathan's voice was really awesome! All the voice acting was great. Mariana had a great voice. I hope the voice of Mariana is open to other Lego projects. We here in BiM could use someone like her.
Thank you also for asking me to compose the song, "Mariana's Theme". For the viewers, that's the song that appeared in the middle part when Mariana was out at night. All the music was great; I loved the lively music during Mariana's fun time. That whole scene was great! Robot getting chased by Mariana! The script only offered a few ideas for the montage. This was a great ad-libbing job.
For a story dealing with existential themes, you gave it plenty of liveliness throughout, which kept it from becoming too heavy. And I'm so thankful to you for bringing Fritz Leiber's story to life. Recently, a new thread began on abandoned stories; if anyone in BiM got an abandoned story through the screenplay stage, a writer working with someone who likes to animate more than writing is just as rewarding as voice actors collaborating with animators to bring life to your animation.
I can't wait to see more work from you!
Very nice, Togfox! I really enjoyed this. The story was excellent, and the animation was very good. A bit of the conversation dialogue seemed unrealistic and un-dynamic, however, Mariana talking to herself and the robot was perfect. The voice actors were great too. Also, the music was very nice, it fit the film perfectly.
Keep up the fantastic work!
Thanks for those comments Undershadow. There are many more technical imperfections than that but I'll keep those to myself. 
You are right in there is a continuity problem with the robot. It may have been baked into the script but I should have picked that up. It would have been easy to have robot on frame and have it disappear with the house. Problem solved.
The characters were lucid and vivid ...
This was really a major goal for me - so thanks for those comments!! The head replacement thing was an experiment and I'm totally going to keep using that method. I was lucky to get professional voice actors/actresses. They were both a dream to work with.
Thanks Rioforce: comments noted about the dialogue. I'll give that more attention next time. I'm glad you enjoyed this. It pushed my boundaries in so many directions at once - I'm glad I "pulled it off". 
I wanted to share with you a bit about how this came to be.
About a decade ago, I wanted to draw comic renditions of some classic sci-fi stories. I started with "Autofac", which was being drawn on 11x17 bristol board. After sketching a few pages, my beautiful splash page inking of an AI vehicle central to the first part of the story was somehow sliced in half and I never knew how. I didn't take it well and abandoned the project completely. Mariana was the second story in line and I recently found several of the sketches, which I posted on tumblr. Here are a few of them. Keep in mind these are very sketchy and I was more interested in getting ideas down than the quality of the art.
Here's a picture showing what I imagined Mariana looked like. She's about 14 in the picture.
Here's a picture of the remote. In the original screenplay, there were six switches instead of one, but TogFox changed it to make it easier to animate.
And here's a very rough idea for a cover. I colored it recently, and gave it one of those over dramatic 1950s slogans.
You can see larger versions of these images and a few more sketches on my Tumblr page.
Also, I found the original story online. Here's the link if you want to read it. It's only a few pages long!
http://www.archive.org/stream/Fantastic … 9/mode/2up
Thanks for watching. Thanks, TogFox, for making.
Last edited by HoldingOurOwn (May 14, 2015 (07:39am))
Well done guys.
Really liked everything about this film.
Great to see when collaborations turn out this good.
Thanks AF. Glad you liked it. HOO, i read the original and i prefer your version better. 
Hey everyone! I hope you loved TogFox's Mariana as much as I loved writing it! The reason I bumped this thread was because I just now discovered a live action version of Mariana, and I think it's wild that it's also produced in Australia! It's about the same length as TogFox's film. Why not refresh your memories with TogFox's rendition, and then compare and contrast the two. NOTE: there's brief but moderate profane language in the live action version.
IT's showcased here, if you prefer to watch it here:
https://www.tracktvlinks.com/watch-mariana-2011
If you watch both versions, I'd love to hear your comparisons of the two!
Heavy stuff. Well done. Nice use of head swapping too.
Thanks for posting that HOO. I prefer my version better! 
So do I, TogFox. And I didn't notice this until I thought about it when I woke up, but robot was completely absent in the live action version!!!!!! I'd like to read others' comparisons of both versions.
Both tell the story very well. The main benefit a micro budget brickfilm has over a micro budget live action film is that you can hide it more in Lego. You can build sets and make a film look very cinematic for free. Of course, you can't do that in live action film. The absence of the robot in the live action film just shows you what you can do in Lego, which you couldn't do as easily otherwise.
As far as acting goes, I actually found the brickfilm had better, more believable performances.
So, overall I'd say I like the brickfilm over the live action version quite a lot more, but I'd recommend watch both. I would say that they at least convey the story well, and make it easy to understand what is going on.
Last edited by William Osborne (July 10, 2017 (01:26pm))
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