On July 18th, an annual week-long LEGO animation contest started on BricksInMotion.com. It is called BRAWL 2015 (Brickfilm Rapidly All Week Long), and contestants are to, like it’s name implies, make a brickfilm in one week. I entered said contest, and produced the following video:
The Surveillance Situation
This film is based on a series of films I began in BRAWL 2014. This series follows Captain D. Rom, a very goofy cop with a sidekick named Laura (who seems to end up being the unnoticed real hero). You can watch the other two Captain D. Rom films here:
- The Felony at the Fruit Stand (made in one week)
- New Recruits (made in 24 hours)
The Surveillance Situation was actually made in less than a week, because I was finishing the filming of another film (to be released in September) on Saturday night and Sunday. So I started BRAWLing on late Sunday night (it was almost Monday by that time) and wrote the script for my film (I already had the main concept working in my mind since Saturday night, I just hadn’t written it all together yet). On Monday, however, I had to help a family friend clean an entire field of corn and prepare it for freezing, so I was gone all day. On Tuesday afternoon, I began filming, and kept it up, day time and night, until Friday. I edited my film Friday night and most of the day Saturday, and successfully submitted my entry a few hours before the deadline.
Now, enough boring talking, let’s get to the pictures:
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- This is the Super Inconspicuous Police Surveillance Van
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- This is the night time lighting setup for my film (see the completed shot below)
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- This is the BRAWL “motto” that sort of formed while everyone was working. I made a weird meme.
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- This is LEGO Taylor Swift. Don’t ask, it’s part of a weird BiM avatar fad.
And here is a final frame for you to enjoy:
And that concludes my BRAWL behind-the-scenes look! Thanks for reading (if you did read all that, if not, thanks for at least reading this thanks, but if you’re not reading this, then you will never see it so whatever).
-rioforce
P.S. As you can see, I’ve been updating my blog, and I plan to post a lot more here now. Expect real articles in the future! I have things to say about filmmaking, design, and stuff-n-junk. Stay tuned (if you can even tune into a blog)!
Rioforce's Secret Lair 
Rioforce how do you make the logos such as the Luke Action Films logo or the coffee mug and radio at the start of the video? They both are unshaded, single color things and they look really cool.
For the one-color graphics, I took a photo of the mug, binoculars, radio, and minifigure (or whatever I want to make into a graphic) in real life with my camera, then I take the photo and open it up in a program called Inkscape (it’s a free vector-graphics program, kind of like Adobe Illustrator). Once the picture is there, I use a tool and trace over the outlines of each object until I make the shape I want, then I color it. And that’s how it’s done.