That was great Leo and a collaborative effort as well. I was very impressed with the quality and the CG additions. I even watched you're making of film which really helps people appreciate the amount of work you put into your movies.
I didn't find the plants to be all bad. It would have been a major effort to have them animated in Lego bricks.
Your films always keep me wanting more, so make some more please.

Last edited by brick4brains (February 19, 2009 (02:23am))

I promised to do a review, so here it is:

Most of it was good, I really liked the bright environment and your CGI was impressive like always. I think it could've used a bit more variation in the shots, since you only see the scenery where the man is walking. I would've liked to see some more shots of the surroundings, like workers making buildings etc. But I understand that you didn't have much time.
Also, the plant could use some better textures since it wasn't totally clear that it actually was plant which burst out of the ground.
Though the rest was well-made, I liked the narration, the color choice, the animation and kudos to Schlockading for a nice soundtrack.

I am going to bump this. If you feel the need to, spam up the thread to punish me for being self-centered enough to bump my own film topic.   

Anyway, this film was actually made for a specific contest - filmaka.com's "Fresh Start" competition. Many of the imperfections in the film were due to VN, Schlock and I cramming to get the film done in time - we only had a month to make it, which was pretty intense given the amount of VFX work.

Here's how the contest works: People submit films (about 100 of them in this competition), and then each filmmaker votes for five other films. At the end, filmaka tallies up the votes and the top ten films win around $1500 and the chance to make another film in the next level of the competition. It's pretty cool actually to be judged by other entrants - much better in my opinion than the general public.

So...   we won. We were one of the top ten. Unfortunately, filmaka ended up having no provisions for awarding prize money to entrants under eighteen. I read through the pages and pages of fine print in their rules and even talked through email to someone there, but in the end they said that we all (Smeagol, VN, Schlock, and I) needed to be over 18.

I ended up having a phone conversation with them, and it's pretty much final that we won't get the $1500. Still, we get the glory of having beat out all the other adults in the competition. The filmaka people were pretty impressed that a fourteen-year-old won their competition. (Or perhaps they were offended - it's always hard to tell over the phone. )

So I bumped this thread to tell you all that having won another film contest, we brickfilmers are one step closer to taking over the earth. Next I think that VN and I are going to attempt to launch a space station and gather top-secret information about the US from space. After that comes the droid army...

- Leo

I talked to them, but they don't really have a solution for kids who worked on the film. They said they'd talk to their lawyer about altering the rules to have provisions for younger crew members to have their parents sign the talent release forms that I need, but for this contest, it's definitely a no-go.

- Leo

Man, that stinks.