Welcome!
LEGO stop motion animation is going to
- make you giggle like a 5-year-old girl
- make you lose track of time
- connect you to a passionate, fun community
As an added bonus, you’ll
- exercise your creativity muscle and
- discover a versatile form of self-expression
ALL ABOUT YOU
You’re here (click for recommendations):
for entertainment!
to learn more about LEGO in general (best places to buy, how to store, more)
to learn about LEGO stop motion animation (how it works, camera placement, lighting, costuming, more)
Entertainment
Adventure
Get a feel for LEGO’s storytelling potential through photos as you step away from reality for a few moments: become a medieval adventurer and make your own destiny, as you make decisions for your character in a short, interactive story.
Watch LEGO Stop Motion Films
- Watch Brickfilms (LEGO stop motion animation videos). These are my reviews of LEGO animations I’ve enjoyed.
- Visit the “Inspiration” page. Remember that it tends to be things to make you smile, like the story of how I pretty much stalked a little girl in a LEGO aftermarket store.
Coming Soon
Zee’s Bio
LEGO in General
Money
- There are several ways to fund your brickfilms (stop motion animation movie made with construction toys, usually LEGO) with LEGO products themselves. One of them is LEGO investment.
- Find and buy individual LEGO pieces if you don’t need an entire, potentially expensive, set.
Storage
See possibilities for storing your LEGO collection as a beginner.
Coming Soon
Zee’s Bio
LEGO Stop Motion
Remember that if you just want to experiment and play, that’s great. But if you’ve also got a message to send out into the world, especially a challenging one, your tiny, infinitely-adorable plastic actors will help you sneak up on your viewer. Your audience will be blinded by the cuteness overload and won’t notice you’re trying to change the world until it’s too late.
Whether you have a single LEGO person (called a “minifigure”) you want to turn into a dancing fool, you want to recreate your favorite live-action movie with plastic, or you have a script you’re ready to turn into reality, before you can create your cinematographic masterpiece, at the very least . . .
Introduction to LEGO Animation
- Learn the basics of LEGO stop motion animation with tutorials and/or
- Learn through my mistakes with this case study: a brickfilm I made for a contest.
LEGO Animation Tips
- Kill two birds with one stone: learn some costuming mistakes specific to LEGO by looking at how to customize a minifig (a little LEGO person) with this introduction to black LEGO minifigures.
- Explore LEGO-specific lighting.
Got LEGO?
Do you have LEGO? Do you know how and where to buy it, sort it, and store it? Learn some LEGO basics.
Coming Soon
- Let me know what you’d like to see next.
- Get tips on how to start your LEGO collection as an adult.
- Make a movie with only two LEGO people.
- See set-building techniques.
- Understand more about costuming your little plastic actors.
- Learn along with me as I explore stop motion animation software. Right now I use my camera, The Force, and basic video-editing software, not animation software.
ABOUT ZEE
I created this blog to share
- what I wish I’d known when I started, and
- what I’m learning as I go
- writing intended for adults
I’m a language professional. I translate foreign-language documents, where subject matter is more important than which language, and I constantly have to research new things. Foot fungus? Sure. What a priest studied in college? Yes. The legal system in Cameroon. Yup. And because everyone asks, I work into English ONLY, mostly out of French and Dutch, seldom out of Papiamento, and out of Spanish under duress.
I’m a filmmaker. Read all about my filmmaking journey, the one that led me to LEGO, here.
My LEGO-related achievements:
- I won a brickfilm (stop motion animation with construction toys, often LEGO) contest in 2020 and . . .
- I gave a talk on making brickfilms to an advanced college-level filmmaking class, also in 2020, and . . .
- I was in the 20 people out of 80 applicants to make it to the Zoom-call interview to be contributors to a blog bearing the prestigious distinction of LEGO Recognized Fan Media. You guessed it: that was in 2020.
The other train layouts were lovely, but they weren’t as vibrant and colorful as the LEGO!
Join me . . .
. . . in my current obsess–ahem–hobby: LEGO® and how to use it for filmmaking. Start by grabbing Zee Top 5 LEGO Secrets Every Adult Should Know.