Topic: Animator of the Week: Neal Tovstiga (April 6, 2015)
This featured brickfilmer post is part of a series of articles highlighting animators who supported the Bricks in Motion Documentary project on Kickstarter.
Neal Tovstiga (Mr Vertigo), 18, is an animator currently living in the UK. He first learned about brickfilming some seven years ago when he came across LEGO animations on YouTube. Having had an interest in LEGO since childhood, the medium appealed him, but he didn't decide to take it up for himself until 2012 when he was inspired by the work of Harrison Allen (BiM member Squid); he specifically cites Pirates Rule! and How Not To Rob A Bank.
He joined Bricks in Motion and his first Brickfilm, The Time Machine, was made for a local youth festival contest and screened at a local cinema. He later made Monochrome and Loyalty, for the Contrast and BRAWL competitions on the Bricks in Motion forums.
His current project is a brickfilm called Seven Assassins, for which he recently released a trailer.
"Brickfilming has always been about experimentation and pushing boundaries for me. I've always attempted to try something new in each of the films I've made, whether writing dialogue in "Loyalty" or experimenting with colour and replacement animation in "Monochrome". "Seven Assassins" is especially ground-breaking for me personally: It's the first time I've used a DSLR in Brickfilming, the first time I've gotten people other than myself to voice, and it also has by far the longest script I've ever written (currently around 30 pages or so)."
Neal has also explored live action filmmaking:
"The things I learned there have definitely carried over into my animation. My lighting and cinematography skills in particular have vastly improved. I also find I plan out my films a lot more: previously I didn't storyboard or even write properly formatted scripts for my films, but I now rigorously storyboard, adjust my lighting set-up, and take time to carefully position my camera, instead of just switching on the lights, putting my camera in the next-best position and snapping away. Sometimes I feel like I spend more time planning and framing my shots than I do actually animating. Still, I find this gives me a lot more control over the stories I want to tell, and, I hope, makes my films feel a lot more interesting and immersive."
