Breaking Down a Brand Deal

This summer, I had the pleasure of working with LEGO Bluey to produce a 1-minute piece of stop-motion animation.

(Sidenote: when I graduated art school in 2010, it wasn't even a remote possibility that you could make a living producing animated ads in the comfort of your own basement with full creative freedom. I'm incredibly grateful for having stumbled onto this path.)

I'll keep this one simple! Here are the two stages of me communicating my ideas before I committed to the actual animation.

The pitch

Step 1 is typically sending a one-sheet with the general direction and concept:

The block

Step 2 is blocking the animation. This is where I capture key images and then pacing them to what I'm picturing in my head.

It's an essential step for stop-motion because it gives the client an opportunity to provide feedback before actual animation, where it's nearly impossible to reshoot or make changes.

I'd say I half-knew what was going to happen when I started this block. With stop-motion, you're dealing with physical objects on a set, so you don't really know what's possible until you have the camera running. There's a lot of exploration and improvised judgment about what should/shouldn't happen.

This block is fairly accurate! All we changed was the starting activity - from bouncing Bluey (kind of strange) to Bluey and Bingo playfully chasing each other.

Just for fun

Here's a timelapse of me animating (600 frames over 3 weeks):