I wanted to make this announcement back on X, because almost half the people there followed me because of my occasional LEGO animations, but I thought I'd share it here as well: I decided to finally finish my Time Cruisers series, with part 2 coming on the 24th.
For context: Time Cruisers was an original LEGO theme in 1997 and I started developing short fanfilm based on it back in 2015. I finished its part 1 two years ago.
I've been working on this film for so long and I've changed so much since I started (it has been 9 years) that I kinda lost my motivation along the way. However, I decided I didn't want to just abandon it: part 2's coming on the 24th, and part 3 & 4 will conclude in 2025.
A couple years ago I discovered an interest in digital art and drawing in general. That interest has grown into love. I usually juggle many different kinds of hobbies (music, filmmaking, vfx, writing etc.) but I feel art may be something special for me. It hasn't been my longest running "hobby", sure, but I don't remember being this excited and this commited about other things before. I usually create digital art with my graphics tablet but when my stylus broke two months ago I was forced to do more traditional sketches...
...and I also dabbled in a bit of pixel art (which I've been wanting to try for a long time). This period has been very educational for me: I tried new things, of course, but I also realized how important drawing is for me.
But: my replacement pen finally arrived last week so I'm BACK! Here's a sneak peek of what I'm working on for May 4th.
I started writing the music for this film very early in the production. I really enjoy creating the soundtrack for my own brickfilms, and this was probably the most fun part of making this film.
I wrote the first version of the main theme some time in 2016, and I created an instrumental demo version of it in 2017. Instrumental, because I actually wrote lyrics for the song, because back then I imagined a 2D animated intro for the film.
This was that first instrumental demo:
And here are the lyrics:
Looking back in time
everything seemed to be fine.
'Cos there are Time Cruisers
But there are Time Twisters
who mess with time
every chance they get.
It's a cruise in time!
It's a cruise in time!
So it's cruisin' time.
This first demo was very half-baked and amateur, but later in 2017 I re-arranged it and it became a more refined version, part of which was used in the Winter Sock Productions intro:
This version had a lot of electronics too, but I added the sounds of ticking clocks and reversed audio, which served as a sort of "style template" for the entire music production, as you can hear it in the finished film. I haven't released the full version of this yet, because I'm planning on using it in later chapters of Time Cruisers: Origins.
The next step, after composing the Time Cruisers theme, was composing a theme for the villains, the Time Twisters, who're represented by Tony Twister in this first chapter. His theme stems from the main theme, but it's in a different key and rhythm, and it has some dark and sinister instruments. I composed this theme back in 2017 as well, and it made its debut in 2020's Let's Start from the Beginning.
For the final video I composed some new music for Tony Twister (still based on this original, 2017 theme) to fit the mood of the scene better and to have a cohesive soundtrack.
For the final music I composed 4 brand new tracks, all of them based on the previously created themes. I used many synthesizer sounds and electric guitars, because I feel that this electronic style suits LEGO in general and the quirkiness of the Time Cruisers theme really well. I also used some of Spitfire Audio's great orchestral samples to make the music warmer and some delay effects, ticking watches, bells and cuckoo clocks to integrate the time travel theme into the soundtrack as well.
And here you can listen to every track of the finished soundtrack album of Chapter 1:
I've been working on Time Cruisers: Origins for years and now I'm proud to announce that Chapter 1: The Time Traveling Banana is finished! This first installment is scheduled to release on Brickfilm Day, April 2nd, so stay tuned!
Plot:
Quirky scientist Dr. Cyber and young assisstant Tim test the professor's time machine, while the sinister Tony Twister tries to put an end to the experiments.
Behind the scenes:
With this film I'm trying to create a universe of LEGO animations, so keep an eye out for possible easter eggs! Alongside the usual stop-motion animation I created a lot of visual effects and also some 3D animated sequences. I also did mouth animations to make the characters more realistic. I once again composed original music for the animation which I will also share here on NewGrounds!
New LEGO Harry Potter animation coming tomorrow! You can join the YouTube Premiere here.
The story is a kind of "What If" story. What if the person who opened the Chamber of Secrets in year two never got caught? What if Hogwarts had to close because of this? The animation starts with Lucius Malfoy declaring in a press conference that all staff and students are forced to stay at home, in a kind of quarantine, while the culprit is apprehended. The rest of the film focuses on certain staff members, showing how they spend their free time, away from Hogwarts.
I wrote the story with my fiancée. We're both huge potterheads, so we were discussing the Wizarding World while we were in COVID-19 quarantine. The base of the story was Dumbledore's chocolate frog card, which states:
"Enjoys chamber music and ten pin bowling."
So we thought if forced into quarantine, Dumbledore would definitely be practicing on his instrument. We started brainstorming ideas about what the other professors might be doing at home, what their hobbies are, and these ideas developed into a short film. The animation focuses on Dumbledore, McGonagall, Lockhart, Hagrid and Mr. Weasley, each of whom have different ideas on how to occupy themselves during lockdown.
This film marks a milestone for me. This is the first animation I'm making on the new PC I custom-built. The PC is strong enough for CG animation and more complex VFX, so I tried some things in this I've never tried before. There are 3D animated elements rendered with Blender, bluescreen compositions created with DaVinci Resolve and a short little 2D animation made with Krita. The production on this film was very slow, because I had to learn a few things from scratch: using Resolve, the fundamentals of 3D animation and a new DAW for music production, but in the end I think it was worth it.
Stay tuned for the premiere tomorrow! I worked a lot on this film, so I really hope you'll like it!
I'm proud to announce that I finished my Harley Quinn LEGO stop-motion animation and it will be uploaded today! I created it to celebrate the Birds of Prey movie and I based it on the Valentine's Day Harley Quinn comic by Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti. It stars Ncgracecharms as Harley and *STAR* as Ivy. This video will be my most FX heavy stop-motion yet, and it will be my first time doing mouth animations. I put a lot of work into it and it features some amazing voice actors, so stay tuned!
