The LEGO Animation Book: Make Your Own LEGO Movies!
CONCLUSION 197 Giving and Receiving Feedback 198 What Next 199 Have Fun 199 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 200 INDEX 201 Light Em Up 166 Let There Be Light Safety 166 Mood Lighting 168 Hard and Soft Light 169 Light Flicker 170 Motivated Lighting 171 Get into Focus 172 Set the Exposure 173 And Action 174 9 POST-PRODUCTION 175 Sound 176 Types of Sound 177 Recording Sound 177 Using Other People’s Sounds 179 Editing 180 Step 1 Get Familiar with Your Software 180 Step 2 Import Your Footage 181 Step 3 Sequence Your Shots 182 Step 4 Trim and Delete Unnecessary Shots 183 Step 5 Add Transitions 184 Step 6 Add Digital Effects 186 Step 7 Add Titles and Credits 187 Step 8 Add Music and Sound 188 Advanced Post-production 189 Compositing 190 Lip-Sync Prep Work 192 Digital Facial Animation 193 Sharing Your Film 195 vi CONTENTS
Introduction You’re about to dive deep into the heart of LEGO animation animation and filmmaking It only gets stranger and more fun from here Our goal was to create a definitive reference for folks of all ages and skill levels from the 8-year-old YouTuber to the 45-year-old AFOL adult fan of LEGO and beyond We’ve structured things so that you don’t need to read the book from cover to cover all at once though we’d love it if you did If you’re brand-new to LEGO animation start with Chapter 1 which introduces some key concepts to get your feet wet If you’re already knee deep in the LEGO animation hobby you might be looking to sharpen a specific skill That’s cool Feel free to skip around skim or read upside down You won’t hurt our feelings If at any point you feel compelled to stop reading and start animating please do so No amount of prose can take the place of practice We’ll be here waiting when you need us again But wait who exactly are we Allow us to introduce introduce ourselves You can use The LEGO Animation Book any way you want but we don’t recommend eating it
Born 1985 Middle name Michael Wears glasses Yes Has facial hair Often First LEGO animation 1995 Prefers brick-built special effects to CGI Always Place in the 2008 Nicktoons Built by Me LEGO animation contest 2nd tie Hi there I’m David Pagano one half of The LEGO Animation Book duo I run a studio called Paganomation where my team and I create stop-motion shorts ads and music videos Since 2007 we’ve made dozens of LEGO animations that have appeared on LEGO com YouTube Disney XD and Nickelodeon and for approximately two seconds in the climax of The LEGO Movie You might also be familiar with some of my original films like Little Guys or Playback where I introduced the large-scale characters seen in Chapter 5 Born 1985 Middle name Michael Wears glasses Yes Has facial hair Rarely First LEGO animation 1998 Prefers brick-built special effects to CGI Always Place in the 2008 Nicktoons Built by Me LEGO animation contest 2nd tie Hello I’m David Pickett and I’m excited to teach you about animation I’m a self taught animator with no formal training but that hasn’t stopped me from making award-winning LEGO animations like Nightly News at Nine Metamorphosis and Choose Your Own Storyline The Fight for Paradise Hills I’m best known for my YouTube channel BRICK 101 where I share my animations custom creations and LEGO set reviews DaviD Pagano DaviD Pickett viii INTRODUCTION
Meet the stars of The Magic Picnic Anna Matt and Shaun the picnic basket About the Companion Film There’s another important duo you need to meet Anna and Matt They’re here to illustrate LEGO animation techniques But they’re more than just pretty faces they’re also the main characters of a short film we’ve produced as a companion to this book The Magic Picnic Nearly every shot in The Magic Picnic showcases an important LEGO animation concept or idea though some are there simply because we thought they looked cool You might want to watch the film before reading the book just to enjoy the story and to see what’s possible possible with LEGO animation Later you can come back to the movie with newfound knowledge and see how the approaches we discuss in the book look onscreen You can find The Magic Picnic on the book’s web site https www nostarch com legoanimation INTRODUCTION ix
