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

LEGO Super Heroes Series Cast

Given the messages and comments I've received over the past months, I've come to the conclusion that people are under the false belief that I voice some, if not all, of the characters in my series. That could not be further from the truth. I actually don't voice any and haven't done so since 'LEGO Monster Intervention'.

Below you can find the full cast, with links to their respective channel, and the characters they are playing. The cast list is also available on my channel (just fyi). In no particular order, I give you:

Season 1

Coulter Rail - Doc Ock, Wolverine, the General (ep 4)

Andrew Clark - Venom, Loki, Deadpool

Midgettoe2000 - Hawkeye

Aussieroth7 - Magneto

Grokowsky2 - Beetle, Dr Doom

Mickwhitefire28 - Fury, Thor, Bartender (ep 3)

Emily Lewis-Berry - Black Widow

Jalopy Productions (John LaPiana) - Bruce Banner, Ryder Emerson (ep 3)

Elliott Crossley - Spider-Man, the Mandarin

TrevorPalVA - Iron Man

Alejandro Saab - Captain America
Paragon Interrupt - Loki (ep 5) 

Season 2
Paragon Interrupt - Superman
Elliot Crossley - Batman
Mickwhitefire28 - Flash
Andrew Clark - Green Lantern (Hal Jordan)
TheCartoonGamer8000 - Robin
Paul Hollingsworth - Shazam
Vanessa Zang - Oracle
Mary Charles - Cat Grant
Isaac Lawson - Green Arrow
Dillon Taylor - Nightwing
Jordan Haro - Two Face

Atlas Animationz

LEGO Super Heroes Episode 4

Hey guys,

My latest episode (LEGO Super Heroes – Iron Man’s New Toy /Thor’s Old Rival) has been out for a couple of weeks now and it has been getting some great feedback. As a thank you, I thought I’d share some behind the scenes stuff with you, like some tips and tricks and what problems I’ve encountered along the way.

First, I want to talk about the script. I usually write the script for the next episode after I finish the episode that’s in production. This way I can see what worked and what got good feedback, but this one I wrote before episode 3 was out. Initially, I thought it was a solid script, but once I started animating things kept popping up. There are a few plot holes in the video, which I’m not going to discuss for obvious reasons :P (don’t want to bash my own work). This should be a learning point for you guys: always read your script over and over again to see if you missed anything. If you have friends that can read it for you and help out, even better.

With this in mind, I was off to a pretty rocky start. Things got worse when I started animating the car scene. I wanted to film the car on a green screen and then add the moving background in post-production. Needless to say, things didn’t go as planned. Chroma keying didn’t work. Given that lego pieces are so shiny and reflective, they took on some of the green from the green screen. I’ve tried moving the background further back, but that didn’t work either, so I gave up on that idea. Another option was to actually film without the green screen but I didn’t have a good enough background and enough road plates. So, I cheated. I only used a close up shot in which you can’t actually see the background. That, with an added camera shake and sound effects made for a pretty decent and convincing car ride.

Note: If anyone knows how to do a good chroma key with lego, please let me know. I would really appreciate it.

Since I’ve mentioned the sound effects for this particular scene, those were another issue. I couldn’t find a decent sound effect of a car driving at the same speed. All of them, including the one I used, are of a car accelerating. Fortunately for me, the scene didn’t last long so I got away with it. I just lowered the volume a bit so the focus would be on the dialogue.

Someone suggested in the comments that I should change the background I used for the shoot-out scene because the color was off. I somewhat agree here. Not because of the color, since that was my decision; as you can see below the background is actually blue, I changed the color when I color corrected the video. I agree because I’m currently using a plain old wrapping paper and I think I could get something better. Not sure what though. Maybe you guys can come up with something here.

One thing that I’m particularly proud of in this video is the aerial chase. I knew from the very beginning that I was going to do something like that; it was just a matter of fitting it in. Of course, it could have been a lot better, but I think it turned out pretty good. I’m not going to explain how it was done because it’s pretty obvious I think. Just a few still images animated to move around.

I’m not sure if anyone noticed, but Tony doesn’t sound the same as he did in episode 2. This is because I had to change voice actors. The first actor dropped out so I had to bring in a replacement. I found Trevor’s channel and I thought he was perfect for the role. He’s really talented and I’m very grateful he agreed to help out. +Trevor Palczynski , if you’re reading this, thanks a lot!

That’s pretty much it for episode 4. If I’ve missed anything or if you have other questions just shoot me a message or comment below. I’ve finished the script for the next episode and I’m going to start animating after the New Year. Hopefully, it will be out sometime in February.

Take care and a happy new year,

Atlas Animationz

Brickfilming Tools

I’ve been getting a lot of questions lately regarding the gear and software I use in making my videos. So I thought this would be a good opportunity for a new blog post. I’ve split this post into 2 parts so it would be easier to follow.

Hardware

Camera

- Currently a Canon 1100D (Rebel T3) DSLR (from LEGO Super Heroes Episode 1 onwards); before that, a Logitech Pro 9000 webcam

I’m also thinking of getting a Logitech C920 webcam, whenever I’ll have the necessary funds. The reason for this is, I want something more practical and easier to use for some short videos I’m going to release, unrelated to the super heroes series. 

Lighting

- 2 regular desk lamps with 65W bulbs

Software

Script writing – Good old Microsoft Word

Video compositing – Adobe Premiere

Video effects – Adobe After Effects and sometimes Photoshop

Audio editing – Adobe Audition and Audacity

So that’s pretty much what I use on a daily basis when working on my videos. Most of these are pretty expensive, but there are some good free alternatives like GIMP for photo editing, Wax for special effects and Audacity for sound editing that I would recommend. As for the camera, if you’re just starting out, any webcam will do. Seriously, there’s no need to invest a lot in a DSLR or a camcorder at the beginning because image quality won’t be your, or better yet, SHOULDN’T be your main focus. Focus on the animation! If you do have some spare cash and can afford it, you can opt for the Logitech C920. This way you’ll have crisp 1080p videos. 

Well, I hope this helps!

Catch you later!

Atlas Animationz

Voice Acting

Hello everyone,

Wow! First blog post. Exciting!

I wanted to start this whole blogging thing with a topic that hasn’t been that discussed, or at least I haven’t found it on many websites. And that topic is voice acting.

Voice acting is an integral part of any brickfilm, with the ability to make or break your creations. If you’ve watched my last 2 videos (the Lego Super Heroes series), you’ve probably noticed a huge increase in quality when it comes to voice acting, and that’s due to the awesome people I collaborate with. In the following paragraphs I will guide you through my process of finding and securing the services of great voice actors (VAs) that will help you bring your videos to the next level.

The first thing you need to do is make a list of all your characters and the type of voices you want for each of them. Once you’ve done this, try and pair them together in such a way that they could be played by one VA. Don’t ask one voice actor to provide his voice for all characters. It won’t sound good and I don’t think there are that many VAs that would agree to something like that.

Now, once you’ve done that, you can start the actual search. The first place where you should look for a VA should be your group of friends. It’s always more fun when you do something like this with people you know and get along with. If you don’t have friends that are willing to help or your audio recording equipment isn’t up to par then your next best bet would be Youtube. Try searching with keywords like ‘voice actor’, ‘voice demo reel’, ‘impersonations’ and ‘*your character* voice’. The one that I had the most success with is ‘voice demo reel 2013’; I added the year because I wanted to be sure the person is still active on Youtube and still voice acts. Once your search results come up, just start listening to the videos. This is going to take some time, especially if you need a lot of voice actors, but it will be worth it in the end.

The next step would be getting in contact with the VAs that you’ve chosen. I found that a standard Youtube message works best. When writing your message to them try and give as many details about what you’re trying to do as possible; maybe even add an excerpt of your script or attach some of your work for them to get an idea of what you’re about and you’re skills. The most important thing here is ALWAYS BE POLITE!!! Think about it this way: if someone agrees to help you out, they’re doing you a favor without receiving anything in return. You don’t pay them to voice act for you and there isn’t any other form of reward. They’re just nice people that are willing to help, so treat them with the respect that they deserve.

Also, there may be cases in which a voice actor agrees to help out and then doesn’t return your emails. This happens, and it has happened to me. When you’ll be confronted with a similar situation, always remember that there are other fish in the sea. And again, be polite and gracious about it. Don’t send them an angry message asking them why they won’t respond or that they suck. That’s not going to help, at all! What you can do however is look for someone else to fill the role.

Some other tips I can share with you are: don’t change the script every other day, because if you do it will become very stressful for your actors, and work on a schedule. Having a schedule will not only help you when working with VAs but also will help you mobilize, get to work and not slack off.

Well, that was pretty much it. I hope this sheds some light on this whole voice acting thing and helps you in your future projects. As a final note, I just want to thank all the voice actors that work with me! I am very appreciative of their help and for being awesome at what they do!

Catch you later!

Atlas Animationz