Stop Motion Lego App

Lego has a stop motion app, and the last time I used it, it was very average. Minimal features for a stop-motion app. Onion skinning, variable framerates, and I think that was it. Then I had an idea: LEGO heads printed with multiple faces, for the sake of animation! Turns out they already do that. Wait, a better idea! Several LEGO heads, printed with several phonemes so you can make your brickfilms look like they're talking! That... seems like something only a hardcore brickfilmer would bother buying.

And then I got Snapchat, and I had a bunch of ideas all at once. See, Snapchat has something called Lenses. Basically, the app detects your face and then does something weird to it; one Lens will detect the "eye" area and then redraw the face so your eyes appear huge. Another app can swap your face for a face from a photo in your inventory, even going so far as to animate the mouth moving.

So, what if we applied this kind of technology to LEGO? First, you produce a quality stop-motion application. Forward and backwards adjustable onion skinning, variable framerate...

Then you introduce the Snapchat technology. You print a LEGO head with some detectable characteristic. Probably an array of simple machine-readable green-screen dots, which can be easily filled in while maintaining the light/shadow balance of your original film. Whatever it ends up being, we'll call it the d-face, for "detectable face". While you're filming, the app gives you that little square to let you know it's tracking the d-face. Then, once you've completed an animation with the d-face detection on, you can go into the FACE ANIMATION menu.

There would be a couple faces in this app. Basic simple face, face with painted red lips, cocky smirking face, skull face, etcetera. Each face has a gamut of emotions. In a launch, you'd probably want four emotions: happy, sad, angry, surprised. There are ways to automate transitioning between emotions, or even between faces. These faces would get overlaid on the d-face, snapping to them and rotating in space, much like some of the more complicated Lenses do in snapchat.

"But... couldn't that be accomplished with two heads printed with each face? Brickfilms are already natively inflexible, so the audience will grant the animator a bit of leeway with facial expressions. Why would I want this?"

Good question, surprisingly astute imaginary reader. Now, using that earlier Snapchat tech, while you're creating a face, you could record dialog with the front-facing camera active. Snapchat can detect a fair bit of mouth movement, which they would then translate into phonemic animations on your character, creating a smoother, more accurate speaking animation.

Final idea, pretty crazy town: wave-marking. In iMovie, you can pull the audio out of a video clip, which gives you the wave form for the audio. We'd use the same technology to give you a visual "mark" to deliver your animation to. Notate your audio so you can use a set number of frames to get to a particular sound. Helpful for animating to music!

Night Vale Update: Khoshekh

I'm updating my Welcome to Night Vale  LEGO set. Cecil's soundboard has been improved. And I've added something special:  Khoshekh, hovering by the sink in the Men's room. This comes together to form a triptych: Cecil, at his booth. Carlos, listening to the radio while experimenting on a clock. And now Khoshekh.

I've started designing other spaces, although I don't think Station Management has enough popular capital to sustain it has part of this set design. Much like Kevin and Desert Bluffs Community Radio, I like the builds a lot, but I also don't think they're particularly marketable. I think it would look good in pure black, possibly with a light brick low and underneath, casting everything in an eerie glow.

The glass is removed for the sake of clarity in one of the pictures above. All whipping tendrils in the dark office. Pretty cool, right?

Click and support!

LEGO MOC: The Hospital

Number five in my TF2 MOC series, the Medic has long been one of my favorite classes. The Victorian operating theater was originally going to be the Medic's hospital lab, but I'd decided to go for a less branded set that backfired--it was still too violent for Lego. 

I kind of regret the diorama style, here. There's a lot of unused space for a playset and it feels kind of flat. Because... it's pretty flat. But I have a lot of fiddly details that I'm pretty proud of some of them. Outside of the operating room is the waiting room we see in "Meet the Medic" Pretty straightforward, although I like the ticket counter.

The medic's fridge is visible  in the front corner, there. The spy's head is visible on the bottom there, and there's the megababoon heart.

On the other side we have the Medic's locker room. Two medipacks and a medigun next to a bench! There's some bones there. Don't... don't ask about those bones. They're nobody's bones.

Nobody's Shhhhhhhh.

Here's the protoype wall-mounted medigun keeping the Heavy alive while the Medic performs surgery. And here's the heart with the uber meter, sitting on a table near the stretcher

LEGO MOC: Meet the Scout

Number four in my Team Fortress 2 / LEGO MOC set, this time featuring the Scout. This set was designed to hit a much lower price point, in the $10-15 range, so it only contains about 200 pieces. I was striving to build some sets that would add some customizing options to other sets.

BLU scout has a bat, RED scout has a pistol. Miss Pauling has a clipboard and pistol. I should probably make a fancier set featuring Scout and Miss Pauling going on a date and fighting a nice monster or some such. I elected to use clasp legs for the Scout to give him a markedly different profile from other LEGO mercs.

These are two shipping containers, which seemed like a rather fitting prop for the Scout. The RED container also contains a small health kit.

To make this kit seem more individualized to the Scout, I included a BONK vending machine. It sells Crit-a-Cola, Bonk! Cherry Fission and Bonk! Blutonium Berry. 

And finally, we have the BLU bomb cart. Given that the Scout pushes the cart at twice the rate twice that of other units, this seemed like a prop well-dedicated to the Scout. 

LEGO MOC: The Demoman's Bomb Lab

The third set in my TF2 Lego Digital Designer series. Much like the Engineer, the Demoman is someone I always felt hinted at having technical expertise that doesn't come out much in the extended universe of TF2, but it must be there! While most people assume the Engineer is responsible for the Bomb Carts, I've always put that squarely on the Demoman, and a bomb artist must have his studio. This set is an expression of that. It's also the place where I decided to explore the more complex mechanical side of LEGO as well: specifically, using TECHNIC blocks to push some more playability. The Demoman seemed the perfect set to do it with, too: his compound is boobytrapped, in case anybody gets any smart ideas about penning him in.

The Demoman set is my first hinged piece. BLU has a great orthogonal building style that's fairly straightforward and industrial. This may be something that deserves a second pass at some point in the future, or perhaps a future BLU building will just be more visually interesting. If you have ideas for sprucing up the appearance, let me know! Don't ask why I decided to go RED soldier/BLU demoman when the War! Update specifically stated the opposite: I don't know man. I'm just an architect.

Here's what it looks like unfolded. The red patches are the removable wall fragments--press the button emerging from the left side and that section of wall will pop out, revealing the dynamite stashed there by our favorite inebriate!

The wall on the lower section, underneath the air conditioner, is held on by two pegs. A simple flick with a finger will remove it with suitable panache for a charging Demoman pounding through. I won't bore you with details of these wall designs. Here, however, is the interior of the compound. Currently there's a table laid over a barrel--perfect for two friendly enemies to play cards by. On the second floor is the Demoman's bomb-making lab. Detonators, some miscellaneous sticky bombs,  and of course, walls with blueprints on them. The one piece that I felt was crucial for the bomb lab that we didn't have? The Scissors, currently available only in 3 sets and not yet added to the LDD; I felt the wiresnips used to cut the various lengths of wires used in the manufacture of explosives would be a nice accessory.

Also visible hanging from the wall is a Charging Targe and Eyelander. The third floor features a target dummy like the one's seen in Degroot's Keep, and of course, a couple bottles. 

Detail of work area

Detail of card table

Another great accessory for the Demoman is not yet available in the LDD, and that is the Super Jumper, a device that allows characters like Superman appear to fly into action. For a class characterized by explosive jumps (like the Soldier and the Scout) this would be a pretty handy device to incorporate.

LEGO MOC: The Sniper Tower

Another LDD design. I guess I'm doing a series now, because I don't think I'm wired correctly! Seriously, I keep me locked in my basement, it would be abduction if I were also someone else. In addition to being me. For the Sniper I was going for a more spartan feel to match his lifestyle, and also because I was looking to make a $30 set.

Pretty straightforward set, for the sniper. He... he doesn't have a lot going on. The tower manages to look funky but I think it could look cooler (leave me comments with suggestions for improvements!) I think there may need to be more embellishments on the roof.

The Sniper himself has a sniper rifle, Razorback, binoculars and the ever popular Jarate. It was too easy to just give the Sniper a prefabbed rifle, so I elected for the (only slightly) more complex 3-part rifle.

I added two small details just to shore up the set. One is the payphone from Meet the Sniper, the other is Saxton Hale fighting a gorilla. I'm pretty fond of those.

The camper van is something else I'm pretty proud of. I wanted to make it on a minifig scale, so I used two 4x6 baseplates in order to ensure that it matches the wheel wells of the intel truck from the Engineer set. However, there wasn't a prefabbed door that fit that size on the truck, so I elected to use a hinge to keep that interior area in play.

LEGO MOC: Engineer's Hideout

Another Lego Digital Designer piece. The Engineer's Hideout is an idea I had way back in 2011 when I started this blog. I've tried to build it in several different pieces of design games, from the very complicated Source Development Kit, which is free level design software from Valve, to the lacking-in-relevant detail Minecraft. The LDD is the first piece of software that has combined the ease of development that allows me to just express my ideas with the design complexity I was looking for to express my designs. I incorporated some LEGO design considerations, with plans to incorporate more on any subsequent redesigns. With 540 bricks it's perfect for the $29-40 price range. Plans for future updates include a hinge that will allow for accessibility to the upstairs work area, and a level 3 sentry with firing rockets.

The entire playset consists of the 2-story hideout, 2 sentry guns, a truck (loaded with stolen intel) and one Engineer minifigure. I tried to stay true to TF2's visual aesthetic while also creating a LEGO set that would be fun to build and play with. The exterior has a vaguely industrial-punk chimney with gears and transformers to give it that special "Engineer" flair. 

Detail of gas tank/dispenser

The first level is a 2-car garage containing a Dispenser, a gas can, an extension cord and a key. Redesigns will include a narrower separator between the two levels in order to allow the intel truck to fit more comfortably into the garage.

		The second level contains a workshop for the engineer, with a worktable with a lathe, toolchest, and a tank of gas underneath. There are tools on the wall and a shelf with some more oil cans, spare parts, and (of course) a Saxxy trophy.

I included an intel truck (like the one seen in Meet the Engineer) that contains 6 blue intel briefcases. There are 2 level 1 sentries, each capable of rotating 180 degress. Currently the roof contains a hook to allow a sentry to be placed there. A redesign may be used to reduce the piececount (the roof uses a LOT of of it) and to allow for more viable sentry locations on the roof.

Lego Design: The Operating Theater

I started playing with the Lego Digital Designer recently. As I come up with new builds and MOCs, these will join the list of things I'm sharing. Screwdle has always been a way for me to document the creative projects I'm working on, and this is just another fun extension of that! 

The Operating Theater

The main level of operating theater features an octagonal backdrop, with recessed alcoves for a bust of Hippocrates and a model skeleton. Green walls and medium-brown wainscoting give the design a distinctively Victorian flavor; although the tone isn't quite right, it seemed appropriate that this facility be painted with Scheele's Green paint. If I had to redo it, however, I'd probably try to go for a slightly more medical flavor; white walls with blue or sand green accenting where the wainscoting is. I may still do it; I rely too much on browns and grays. The octagonal walls were perhaps the most difficult part to do right in a digital medium. Getting the walls to line up so that the N/S and E/W facing walls would click onto the pegs and support the hinged wall segment required (if you're curious) one to be at 29.45' and the other to be at 60': using a 30' angle left many of the floor pegs inaccessible


 I'm particularly proud of the bust of Hippocrates, which I'd originally felt should be situated on a shelf in the Dr. Merriwether's office but I had an extra alcove already. Right now a doctor's private office is a low priority, too. I have lots of laboratories I think I'd prefer to build first.

A detail of the medicine cabinet, lamp, and cuckoo-clock on the wall. The lamp is a socket wrench with an ice-skate forming the decorative flourish on top.

The cuckoo clock uses feathers to represent the weights that drive the pendulum mechanism.

A detail of Dr. Merriwether with her patient. In retrospect, a screwdriver makes for a more convincing scalpel than the diving knife I used here, but I don't think there's any piece that makes for a more convincing minifig heart than an upside-down apple.

And last but not least, a detail of the sink, track lighting, and work table.  A scale allows the doctor to measure organs collected during her work.

Stop Motion Sunday: Father's Day

Weekend projects with Dad were always fun, even though us boys (Hawkeye in stripes, Hans in the white zip-up, and Doc with the hat) were never actually so cooperative. Dad, I'm lucky that you're my dad. Hope you have a great Father's Day.

Stop Motion Sunday: The Ghost's Machine

My longest stop motion film to date: the. As always, it was created at the Stop Motion Sunday open lab event at the Madison Public Library. Comments? Questions? Hurtful insults? Pointers for a fledgling filmmaker? Drop me a line in the comments section, or over on my Youtube Channel.

Sunday Stop Motion: The Thief is Here

Sunday Stop Motion: The Toolchest

Yes, I know I didn't post a Sunday Stop Motion last week. And this week it's posting on a Wednesday. What kind of a ship am I running, here? That's a good question, but one to be answered later. Meanwhile, here's a new cartoon! Enjoy.

Sunday Stop Motion: The Unfinished Mechanic

It's time for another Stop Motion Sunday short! The lab got really busy today so the Mechanic went unfinished, but that is what they in the business call "the exact right amount of a good thing". I love doing Stop Motion Sunday but I love doing it even more when my lab is full of eager new animators, creating these tremendous and brilliant little cartoons.

So I'm posting an unfinished cartoon, because I like how what I have looks, just the way it is.

LEGO Artillery Cannon

More stop motion. Trying to time out the animation cycle on a sentry build. I should probably actually take some notes on that build time.