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Last week, I participated in the annual BRAWL Contest (Brickfilm Rapidly All Week Long), hosted by Chris Wynn on Bricks in Motion. This has been running since 2008 and revolves around challenging yourself to make a LEGO stop-motion film over the course of one week, based on a theme that is announced at the start of the contest. I have been entering BRAWL every year since 2018 and have placed in the Top 20 multiple times, even coming 1st place in 2021 with my film The Tracker Tracked (still one of my favourite films I’ve ever made). When I first started entering, the average number of entries would range from between 60-70, but in recent years we usually surpass 100. People from all over the globe take part and range from absolute beginners to veteran animators.
This year, I made Spirited Journey, a short spooky horror film. This is the first time I’ve made something horror-adjacent, although I would say it’s probably more Scooby Doo than The Omen. Regardless, I’m really happy with what I was able to put together and I hope you enjoy watching it.
Due to the deadline of BRAWL, I didn’t really have a lot of time to record much BTS footage. What I can show you, though, is some pretty funny uncropped stills from the film. At the start of each BRAWL contest, the host announces what is referred to as a ‘Mod element’; these are Lego pieces of 2 specific colours that need to be connected to each other in shot for the vast majority of the film and this is announced at the start of the contest, as a physical watermark to prove the film was made during the week. This year’s colours were red and black. I was able to add the colours at the start by making the car red with the black roof, but for the parts of the film that didn’t feature the car, I really struggled to integrate the two colours in the sets in a way that worked. Because of this, I resorted to placing the two colours in parts of the frame that would be cropped in the final film. This resulted in some very funny frames, especially in the close-ups. Below, you can see some of the ways I added the mod elements before cropping them in the final edit.
BRAWL is completely free to enter and takes place every summer, so if you want to make your very own entry to a future BRAWL contest and are over the age of 13, all you need to do is join the discord featured on the Bricks in Motion website and stay tuned for upcoming events. I also host a spinoff called THAC (Twenty-four Hour Animation Contest) every January (we also have a Summer/Autumn contest which will be announced soon): bricksinmotion.com
Thanks for reading. If you would like to keep up to date on when I will be posting these, I will be sharing them to my various social media accounts and on the monthly newsletter.