LEGO Battle Arena and the future of LEGO Justice League

HO HO HO and stuff!

Hey guys and girls,

It's been a really long time since I've written one of these so I'm gonna get straight to the point.

Many of you have been wondering where I've been for the past few months and when's the next episode of LEGO Justice League coming out. Well, I've been dealing with a lot of personal things that have kept me from actually working on the series, which is a total bummer I know. I don't have the free time that I used to have to dedicate to brickfilming. Episode 2 of Justice League is about halfway done. I've animated a good portion of it, but given the length of the episode I don't think I'll finish it for at least another couple of months.

Just to make this clear, I've not given up on the series! I'll finish it even if it's the last thing I do.

Now, with regards to LEGO Battle Arena. This is something that I've been thinking about for a while. I wanted to create more content for you guys, that will also help me improve my animating skills. So why not have 2 heroes/villains fight each other? LEGO Battle Arena will be a series of short fights, with no relation to each other or to anything else that I'm doing. I'm also thinking of holding a poll on my G+ for you to choose which fight you want to see next, so check my profile regularly if you want to have your say.

This is pretty much it for now. Thank you for sticking with me and have a great new year!

Atlas Animationz

LEGO Deadpool's Guide to Pick Up Women

Howdy everyone,

I'm back with another video and probably not the one everybody was expecting. I'm still waiting for a few things to get LEGO Justice League episode 2 done.

In the meantime, I wanted to do another Deadpool video. He is probably the most requested character by my audience and definitely the most fun to write. That's how 'LEGO Deadpool's Guide to Pick Up Women' (trademark pending) came to be. 

The action takes place inside a club. That's the reason for the bluish tint. Reactions have been mixed to this, but trust me, it's better than the alternative. I initially wanted to have the tint change color every few frames to simulate flashing lights, but it was too distracting. Also, the set was built initially for Episode 2, though it will suffer some alterations. Wanna guess who this club/lounge belongs to?

The voice acting in this one is great, but Andrew (the voice of Deadpool) just took it to a whole other level. I couldn't stop laughing when I first heard his lines. This is also the first time Jack, from Jampot Studios, voices for me. He'll be back in Episode 2 as the owner of said club.

I guess that's pretty much it. Hope you guys enjoyed the video.

Take care,

Atlas

LEGO Justice League - IndieGogo Crowdfunding Campaign

Hey everyone,

A few days back, I started my very own crowdfunding campaign over on indiegogo.com. The campaign is for the second season of my LEGO Super Heroes Series, entitled LEGO Justice League. My goal is to raise $1200 to get the necessary things I need to make this season the best it can possibly be.

More details can be found here: http://igg.me/at/legojusticeleague

In order to show my gratitude for your support and donations, some cool perks are included:

• $1 - Personalized 'thank you' picture and a FULL HD digital download of an episode of your choosing from Season 1

• $5 - Full HD digital download of season 2's episodes the same day they are released. All previous perks also included. 

• $10 - Full HD digital download of the entire first season of the LEGO Super Heroes Series. All previous perks also included.

• $20 - Have your name featured in one of the episodes (either in writing or spoken). All previous perks also included.

• $25 - 20 minute chat with me over Skype. All other previous perks included, with the exception of the $20 perk.

As a special thank you for you loyal readers/viewers out there, I will offer the $10 perk FREE, with every $5 donation. So, for just $5 you'll get FULL HD digital downloads of both Season 1 and Season 2 episodes. All you have to do is, after you donate $5, send me an email at atlasanimationz@gmail.com with the link to this blog post and that's it.

Please note that this is a limited time offer, so grab them while they're hot!

Contribute now!

http://igg.me/at/legojusticeleague

Atlas

LEGO Justice League - Superman's Rampage

Season 2 of the LEGO Super Heroes Series has started! Woohoo! I can't say how relieved I am to have finished this episode. It was getting pretty stressful towards the end, but more on that later.

So, Superman's Rampage...it's kinda dark if you really think about it. A lot of people die and in pretty gruesome ways. But that was the whole point. It was meant to shock and awe. To start Season 2 off with a bang. Unlike the first season, where I gradually introduced the characters and had them team-up at the end, I wanted to have the Justice League present from the very beginning. You guys already knew that they'll team up at the end because you saw that in Avengers Assemble, so I wanted to mix it up. Now, not all members were in Superman's Rampage so don't worry. New characters will be introduced along the way.

Let's talk a bit about how everything came together in the video. I was hell bent on making this episode bigger than anything I've done before. I wanted destruction and a city background. Since I barely have enough bricks to build a room, let alone a city street, I had to improvise; so I contacted Patryk from +Titan Pictures to see if he would be willing to share some of his building designs with me. Luckily, he was kind enough to do so and I can't thank him enough for this. For those of you unfamiliar with Titan Pictures, you should go check out his channel. He has a great TMNT series going on.

Once I had the buildings that I needed, everything was pretty straightforward. Filming didn't pose any difficulties. With one exception. The desk that I film on isn't that big, so when it came time to shoot the Batmobile racing in the streets I didn't have enough space. Enter the picture below. I had to lay everything on the floor to be able to shoot the scenes. Moving around was almost impossible. I do like how it turned out though, so I'm thinking of doing a longer chase scene in the future.

While pre-production and production went smoothly, the same can't be said for post-production. It was a pain! I don't think I've done this much masking and frame by frame tracking in the whole of season 1. Besides the usual mouth movements, every time someone moved at super speed I had to mask frame by frame, every time a lens flare moved I had to keyframe the position, every time someone moved in front of the fire/flare I had to mask him out frame by frame etc. It was horrible! But no pain no gain right? We all have to do it. I can still whine about it though :P.

In this episode I got to use HitFilm2 Express for the first time. If you don't know, HitFilm2 Express is the lite version of HitFilm2, which is an alternative to After Effects. I used it to create the fire, smoke, embers, debris and explosions since the software has these effects built in. What I did was create the effects I needed on a black background, export the footage and then import it into After Effects. I'll be using this technique from now on since you have more control over the elements rather than just having stock footage.

And finally, the thing that killed my morale...the sound design. More specifically Green Lantern's powers and Superman's laser vision. What on Earth do you call the sounds that those make? Seriously. I've scoured freesound.org for some sounds that would make sense to me and got nothing. Well, not exactly nothing; I did get those humming sounds that I used, but I'm still not 100% satisfied with how they sound and fit. It's a lot better than having no sound at all though.


Anyway, that was it for this episode. I hope you guys enjoy it and share it around for others to enjoy it also.

Thanks and see you next time,
Atlas Animationz

LEGO Super Heroes Season 2 - LEGO Justice League

Hey everyone,

I just wanted to give you a little update regarding the second season of the LEGO Super Heroes Series. 

Season 2 will no longer be called LEGO Super Heroes. Every episode will be released under the banner of LEGO Justice League, along with an individual title. For example, the first episode will be titled 'LEGO Justice League - Superman's Rampage'.

Why this change? There are a couple of reasons. First, I wanted to differentiate the 2 seasons from one another. I couldn't call the episodes from season 2 LEGO Super Heroes because it would be a bit confusing. You could get the episodes all jumbled up. Also, LEGO Super Heroes Season 2 - Superman's Rampage is a bit long. Furthermore, no episode will have an individual title called Justice League (as Avengers Assemble!) so I'm safe in that regard.

The second reason is purely from a marketing standpoint. With the release of the video game and the countless let's play videos, it's very difficult to get your video seen and on the front page of searches. There are many LEGO Justice League videos also, but at least I'm 'competing' against other brickfilms and not game videos.

That's what I wanted to let you guys know.

The script for episode 1 is complete and I'll begin animating next week. I don't have a release date yet but I'll keep you updated.

All the best,

Atlas

LEGO Super Heroes - Episode 6

Finally, we've reached this point. With the release of 'Avengers Assemble', the first season of the LEGO Super Heroes Series has ended; and it took one year to do it. That's an episode once every 2 months. To quote a famous line: 'I love it when a plan comes together'. Because, yes, that was the plan all along.

When I first came up with the idea of doing a series based on super heroes (not that original, I know :P), I knew I wanted to include all characters, Marvel and DC. I didn't want to just put them together for no real reason; I wanted a storyline that dealt with how they come together, so I started planning away. When writing the storyline and the episodes, it was important that they could be seen as stand alone videos too and I wanted to include most characters. That's why some characters only appear once or twice. With the exception of the Hulk, who should have had a bigger role but given his restrictive movement, I had to cut him down to one episode. Another 'rule' was that the series shouldn't drag on. That's why I didn't want to pass the one year mark for Season 1. So glad that turned out ok. I'm going to be keeping the same idea for Season 2 as well.

Season 2 is not what you guys are probably expecting. It will not be a direct continuation of Season 1. It's more of a prequel, if you will. It will show the chain of events that leads the Justice League in that same room where the Avengers end up in. Just like the first season is strictly Marvel, the second season will be strictly DC. This probably won't be such a popular decision, because I know many of you want to see the Avengers and the Justice League together. But again, this was always the plan. I actually played with the notion of doing both seasons at the same time. One Marvel episode and one DC, but I don't think it would have had the same effect.

So the second season will only have DC characters in it. Where does that leave the whole storyline? Simple. After Season 2 ends, there will be one grand finale. A 20 to 30 minutes extravaganza that will end the whole series. The BIG FINALE. 

As of this point, I can't really say when Season 2 will start because even I don't know. Probably in 2-3 months. Until then I have a couple of shorter videos lined up and I'm gonna continue doing LEGO custom figures reviews. Also, there's the question of whether I should focus all my attention on Season 2, or do some stand alone spin-off videos of Season 1. I literally have so many ideas that I'm losing track of them. I know for a fact that at least 4 of them will come to fruition and become videos.

Now, to actually talk about the 6th episode. It was pretty straight forward to do. It took a really long time in post-production due to all the effects, which were done with After Effects' built-in plugins. Masking was horrible. In almost every shot that Iron Man is in, I had to add glow to his chest piece and eyes frame by frame. Same can be said with the mouth animation. It's not rocket science but it's tedious as hell.  That's all I can think of right now.

In closing, I just want to thank you guys, the viewers, and my subscribers for sticking with me on this journey. It's been an awesome ride thus far and I hope it'll be even better in the future.

Also, a HUGE thank you goes out to my amazing cast ( +Andrew Clark +Alejandro Saab +Coulter Rail +Emily Lewis-Berry +Ell Shmell +Mickwhitefire28 +Trevor Palczynski +midgettoe2000 +Daniel Grokowsky +Aussieroth7 +John LaPiana +Paragon Interrupt). You're unbelievable at what you do and, without you, the series would not have been as successful as it is. I truly hope you'll be a part of any future videos and you'll have fun doing it.

Have an awesome day,

Atlas

LEGO Super Heroes Episode 5

How's it going everyone?

Episode 5, entitled 'Spider-Man & Hawkeye to the Rescue', has been released 2 days ago and, so far, the feedback has been great. Thank you guys for that.

I'm going to tackle some of the questions I've been getting and also share some behind the scenes stuff.

The number 1 question/comment has been regarding the length of the video. Indeed, this one was shorter than what you're used to. There are 2 good reasons for that. First, I had to cut down some scenes due to time constraints. Some unexpected personal things happened and I didn't have the necessary time, unfortunately. The second reason is that, unlike the other episodes which could be seen as standalone videos, this one was made strictly to move the story along and reveal key plot points. What you guys need to take away from this episode is:

• Black Widow escaped and the heroes know that Loki has been impersonating her (since the very first episode)
• the villains have moved up their schedule
• the heroes know that the Raft will be attacked

Everything will make sense once episode 6 will be done. Speaking of episode 6, it will be the last episode of the first season. Hopefully, I'll have it done by May, which will bring everything full circle since episode 1 was released in May of last year.

Don't worry, season 2 is already planned out and you'll see what it's going to be about at the end of the next episode. 

Now for some behind the scenes. Don't know if any of you noticed but Loki had a slightly different voice. The voice actor (Andrew) who usually plays him had some mic problems so I had to ask Paragon Interrupt (Hayden) to help out. Hayden is a new addition to the cast, having previously played Superman, in the 'Batman vs Superman' short. He did a great job in my opinion, keeping the same calm and menacing tone.

There wasn't anything new with regards to special effects, with the exception of color correction. I wanted to have different tones for the different locations. On the Helicarrier the colors are more vivid, with a bluish tone to give a sense of life. In Castle Doom, however, the colors are washed out, with a more greyish tone. It symbolizes the battle between good and evil.

The part that I'm not particularly proud of is the last scene, on top of the Quinjet. I would have liked to green screen everything and add more fight scenes but I just didn't have the time. You can see below what I had to work with.

 

I guess that's it for this one. Thank you for all the support and feedback and please share the video so others may enjoy it.

Catch you later,

Atlas Animationz 

LEGO Batman vs Superman + Logitech C920

Hello world,

I just wanted to share some thoughts on my latest vid 'LEGO Batman vs Superman' and my new Logitech C920 webcam.

Since the video was pretty straight forward and didn’t include any special effects there isn't much to say. I did run into some trouble with the black suit Batman minifig; I needed to place the light source lower than usual to shine directly at him. Even with that, it was still pretty dark and the details were kinda faded, so what I did was to play around with the shadow/highlights in After Effects to bring back some of the details in his suit. All in all, it turned out pretty good.

As I've mentioned, I bought a used Logitech C920 webcam and this was the first time I've used it. Having owned the PRO9000, I can honestly say that the newer C920 blows it out of the water. The image is crisper, I find it easier to use and it has a tripod mount, which is awesome. On the other hand though, it has sort of the same limitations. You need to light your set really well and you need to set the exposure and gain just right, because if you don’t, you get some annoying horizontal lines going up and down the screen.

Obviously, I’m not going to use the C920 as my main camera; that’s still gonna be the Canon 1100D, but for shorter videos and a future project I’m working on, it’s perfect.

Now, I’d like to talk about and explain why I was forced to re-upload and rename this video. As some of you may know, I’m currently a Youtube partner so my videos need to go through a review phase in which they’re either approved or rejected for monetization. This particular video was approved in a couple of hours after upload so that was good news. Trouble started after about 10 days when I received an email from Youtube stating that I needed to provide further info about the commercial licenses for the video/audio I used. There are a few things worth mentioning here:       

• This is the first time I've been asked to provide proof after the video was already accepted for monetization.
• I use only royalty free files in my videos (machinimasound, incompetech, freesound.org etc) and reference them accordingly
• After I provided the licenses, the monetization status of the video changed into ‘monitoring for possible review’

Not sure if everyone knows but, once you reach this phase (monitoring for possible review) it takes forever to get out of it. I’ve read about people who had videos stuck here for months. Imagine my frustration when it dawned on me that there are going to be thousands of views for which I’m not going to receive a penny. Don’t get the wrong idea here, I’m not making a fortune from Youtube, but every little bit helps. Everything I earn goes into my hobby anyway. So I decided to re-upload the video, rename it and take down the other one. Just like the first one, it was monetized in an hour or so without any problems.  Hopefully I won’t have any issues with this one.

That’s pretty much it for now. Next up: LEGO Super Heroes Episode 5!

Catch you later,

Atlas Animationz