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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Looks really epic. Love that set and that lighting. I think I agree with Smeagal about the lights though. Also on a side note not sure if you saw this but in the top left corner it looks like theres a piece of wood showing.
Thanks everyone for the comments! It's really encouraging, especially after spending way too many months working on this single shot.
That looks so good, what kits did you get and about how many? I really would love to work with some LifeLites in the future
Oh man, so many different kits and individual lights. Once the shot is complete I'll do an inventory. But I know I spent around $300 on LifeLites.
That looks really nice, Nathan. The idea of practical lighting in LEGO is something that I've never really felt like I could do before (other than a few tiny things, always attached to walls, like Jack's air purifier in Unrenewable) because of the scale issue. But lifelites seem to work well, if you can hide the wiring. Are you planning to succeed in hiding all the wiring when you're done, or will you have to mask some things out?
Yeah, my goal is to hide all of the wiring with careful camera angles and lots of tape, zip-ties and sticky tack. I haven't carefully hidden everything yet because I still need to build the interior of the Super Burger, and I still need to wire some lights up. I'm really liking the look of practical lights and I want to explore them further in the future.
You might be aware of this, and/or it's sort of an artistic decision, but I think the lights look very bluish and I think it would look better if they were yellowy, the old-school diner and light poles look like the kind that would use orangeish, incandescent lights. You can fake this in-camera by warming up the color temperature of the camera. It would give you a little more accurate colors on the objects in the scene, too (notice how the tan part of the bun is essentially blue in your picture). I did a quick test warming up the color temperature in post if you want a look, but it'd look better done in-camera.
Yeah, this image is completely unprocessed, in addition to being a work in progress. The LEDs definitely produce a very blue light. I do like what you've done with the warming up test.
I haven't quite decided what direction I want the colors to be in this film. I've been quite inspired by the look of the film Drive, and I'm not sure how "realistic" I want the colors to be. However, I do want do several color tests when everything else in the shot (wiring, set, blocking) has been finalized, and I'll post some pictures for feedback.
And while it's true there are less yellowish lights nowadays, this film is set in 2008 which MIGHT effect the accuracy.
I'll also take into consideration shooting in RAW.
Thanks again everyone! Hopefully over the next week or so I'll post more updates.
While shooting in raw might have some advantages (better preserving the shadows and highlights of a contrasty scene comes to mind), it isn't necessary for color temperature reasons. You could just dial your camera in to the desired color temperature on a manual white balance.
While shooting in raw might have some advantages (better preserving the shadows and highlights of a contrasty scene comes to mind), it isn't necessary for color temperature reasons. You could just dial your camera in to the desired color temperature on a manual white balance.
That's true but in Dragonframe it's a bit harder to dial that in than when using the camera normally.
Huh. You can't set white balance where you want it to be in Dragonframe? I haven't used it, but I find that a little hard to believe.
I have had dragon frame for quite awhile and you can adjust the white balance, it just depends on your cameras capabilities.
Not a frame as such, but a lighting test I did recently:
It's certainly not finalized (and will probably look ten times better once I get my new camera), but I'm remarkably pleased with how it turned out.
The framing/blocking isn't great but the colors are fantastic! From what I can see I like the set design too.
Thanks! Coming from you, that is a very high compliment indeed! 
Yeah, I was pretty rushed when I shot this. As I said before, it's a lighting test, so I wasn't overly concerned with blocking and suchlike--I just wanted to see how the lighting looked so I grabbed a random minifig and stuck him in to see how the light would look on him. I haven't storyboarded, planned out, or even finalised the set design for this scene (for the record, it's meant to be a kind of creepy laboratory/operating room). Also, my camera isn't very good and the aspect ratio is way off (I intend to get Magic Lantern so I can shoot in 2.35:1 when I get my camera, which is hopefully this weekend).
Though, I do think the shots correspond quite well to the Rule of Thirds--but I'm always seeking to improve so I'm curious to know how I could make the shot better, if you have any suggestions.
This lighting is really nice. Might need one or two more cabinets though perhaps from other angles. The might look really cool in the background with a narrow depth if you could get enough light on the figure's face.
I've continued to make progress on my opening shot. Added more lights and tweaked the blocking. There are about 70 separate LEDs in this shot. I still need to play with the color temperature (I warmed up the shot a bit but not much) and build the interior for the Super Burger. I'm not show how I feel about all of the colors in the skyline. Please let me know your thoughts!
Previous shot for comparison:
I'd say ditch the colors in the skyline behind. It looks like there are two Christmas trees behind the restaurant. 
I absolutely love the lights shining on the sign, I think it's my favorite part of the setup.
Less lights in the background is better. I'm not sure why they're there so they look outta place. It looks like a fleet of UFO's are descending on the set. If this is an alien invasion move then you nailed it! 
Even if the lights were smaller and dimmer, there is still no context to indicate what they are for.
I liked the blue and cyan lights, but what appear to be green and lime green lights don't work as well, and I think the lower quantity was better, if only because it wasn't so bright. I sort of feel like the whole backdrop would look better if you kept the larger number of lights you have now, but dimmed the entire thing down with a sheet of ND gel, or perhaps a black veil of some kind (not shiny like ND, which could be an issue with a gel in that situation)
I really liked the look of what I thought was the sky in the original picture. It had that orange glow to it like the night sky in a city, and you could see the outlines of the building and roof of Super Burger better. With the completely black backdrop it's just unnaturally dark.
Yeah I agree the shot got a bit too dark in this version. I'll work on bringing back the orange glow and I'll continue to experiment with the skyscrapers.
Thanks for the comments!
Yea I agree the background lights look kind of out of place. But the rest of the shot looks much better. Really like it.
http://www.brothers-brick.com/2014/09/2 … tite-lost/
And yet they won't share the doc he is helping with.
It is very cool they shared this no matter what else they did or didn't share.
Yes, it will creep any totally purist animator out,
How so? What do you mean by purist?
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