Bill Ward's Brickpile » Animation

My Coast Guard helicopter featured in YouTube video

Bill — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:05:44 +0000

A photo of one of my creations was (very) briefly featured in this video:

At the very end, when he does the “you can build anything out of bricks” bit, there’s a brief shot of my Coast Guard helicopter. No, I’m not annoyed that they didn’t give credit, I think it’s cool that it was chosen to represent the helicopter genre.

I guess I need to repost the Coast Guard base pictures on Brickpile — it’s currently only posted on my old site (and occasionally appears on BayLUG‘s layouts).

Seen at Bricley’s Words.

Winners of the Go Miniman Go video contest

Bill — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:31:57 +0000

The technogeek blog Gizmodo has announced the winners of the Go Miniman Go video contest. There are some really incredible videos in the winners list, and I don’t know if I could pick a favorite. They all show a lot of creativity not just with the LEGO but also the filmmaking. Check it out.

Another LEGO Video of the “Numa Numa” song

Bill — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 19:25:48 +0000

Properly titled “Dragostea din Tei,” this song became an Internet fad a couple of years ago when Gary Brolsma posted his “Numa Numa Dance” video on YouTube. A couple of years ago, I posted on Brickpile about a LEGO animation based on Gary’s video that I had seen on The Brothers Brick. I was going over some old posts on Brickpile and saw that video was not available any longer, but did a quick search for “numa numa lego” on YouTube and found that the video had been reposted, so updated that old blog post.

But in the process of doing that search I also found this:

It was made with the English translation of the song, which I’d never heard before. Sounds strange to my ears, having heard the Romanian version so many times…

MeatSpace: LEGO Animation on TV!

Bill — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 21:55:44 +0000

Have you seen MeatSpace yet? If you live in Australia, and watch the TV show “Good Game” (Tuesdays, 8:30pm, ABC2) then chances are you have. But for those of us in the rest of the world we have to wait until it goes up on the Internet.

MeatSpace is the latest innovation from Australian filmmaker Nate “Blunty” Burr, who has been producing Brickfilm videos for years. His video Circle Circle Dot Dot broke out of the Brickfilm community when it appeared on YouTube, and next thing he knew he was a professional animator working with LEGO.

There’s a great interview with Blunty in Volume 8 of Brick Journal. In fact that’s how I found MeatSpace. Here’s the latest episode:

Dragostea din Tei in LEGO??

Bill — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 21:29:12 +0000

The song “Dragostea din Tei” by the Moldovan band O-Zone, more widely known as “the Numa Numa song,” is probably the most widely recognized song in the Romanian language ever written. And now it has finally been done in LEGO! Do you remember Gary Brolsma’s famous “Numa Numa Dance” video? This LEGO animation is a remake of that dance using a LEGO minifig. The minifig’s mouth has been animated and the arms move in ways that LEGO just can’t do, unless you rip them off at the shoulders!! Muahahahahaha!!!! (sorry, lost control there for a moment). Anyway, here’s the video (Update 12/23/2008: The original video has been removed from YouTube, but I found another copy and have replaced the embedded video here):

The original Gary Brolsma version, to refresh your memory (or if you’ve been living under a rock somewhere and never saw it):

For more about the song, check out the Wikipedia entries for “Dragostea din Tei” and “Numa Numa.” And for more about Gary Brolsma, check out his fan site or his latest work, NewNuma.

Via The Brothers Brick.

Great LEGO Video – 1985

Bill — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 21:27:28 +0000

Stephen and Austin Nolen have produced an amazing video for the song “1985″ by Bowling For Soup. Now I don’t know whether they got permission from the band to use the song, but I love what they came up with. It’s a great song, and the LEGO animations fit the music very well. It’ll take a while to download though, so start the download and then make yourself a nice lunch. Depending on your Internet connection you might want to get dinner started while you’re at it.

Technorati Tags: LEGO, Animation, Brickfilm, BowlingForSoup, 1985