filmography

THAC 6 - the new recruit

Sun, 4 Jan 2009 15:12:17 -0800

THAC 6 - the twenty four hour animation contest. This time Stevie Collins was hosting this competition, and the theme was new, and the mod element, that has to show up in every frame was the letter A or a red brick attached to a yellow brick.
I actually always wanted to do a movie which depicts war or at least a conflict with weapons.
Talking to Chris in advanced, he prepared the beautiful soundtrack, which was refined and partially rewritten on the same day. And I am so happy that Taylor synched all characters. He truly deserves the title: „one take Taylor“
And without Leonie taking care of the boys the whole day and catering the whole crew, this would not have been possible- thank you all!

I have to admit, the concept was way too much for a 24h job, therefor the fight scenes and some of the extra scenes suffered animation wise. But still - for the time it took I am very satisfied with the result!

enjoy the 2 min 50 sec:

small version 14.2MB
highres version 37.4MB

in the highres version I included the soundtrack in a much better audio quality

animated gif

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:59:19 -0700

I know, I know, this is not a real film. But after doing no film project for so long I had to animate something. So 24 frames and a little photoshop later I present:
Excalibur!

amalgamation

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 20:14:52 -0800

This film is a contribution to the dictionary series from Nathan Wells. Films for the dictionary series should visually explain a rare word without using text. Only music is allowed. As a special feature the film must be widescreen and a white expanse. This was challenging me for quite some time now, but I never found a nice word - until now, when I read „amalgamation“ in a book. Being forced to use a white expanse I wanted to try a more surrealistic film. So the white expanse is essentially a totally white background and the rest is greenscreen action, like in the mac/pc advertisements from apple.

enjoy amalgamation

highres version 9.8 MB 1.40 min
lowres version 6.3 MB 1.40 min

MoB divine interventions II

Sun, 30 Dec 2007 15:48:06 -0800

Even when this one was released hours after the last, this was a long project. This is my contribution to the MoB (Masterpiece of Brickfilming) contest. The idea was to produce a movie with real content and character development in a high quality. Already 2006 this contest was announced and the deadline was today. When I read it the first time I was fascinated and in the same moment thought that I can impossibly enter. This was January 2007, and my experiences were insufficient, either in scriptwriting but especially in animation and special- and visual-effects. But all the films during 2006/2007 contributed to my attempt. When I met Jory, who also worked together with me on THAC 3, I found someone who can actually compose and arrange music, and since this film is a continuation of THAC 3 divine interventions, I asked him to help me with the music, which he did. I can not say it enough, he did a wonderful job, the music has its very own character and I like how well everything is integrated. And remember without music a film is dead, and bad music ruins it.
So after reading the scriptwriting book „save the cat“ and writing several drafts I had the script, but only five month left. Actually only three, because the twins were coming in October. So I spent my free time with filming, essentially every evening and every weekend - Leonie was pretty pregnant and still voice acting and building sets and spending many hours on the couch talking to me while I was moving minifigs, thank you!
And I also got Jonathan Moss as a voice actor for the dark skeleton I simply sent him the lines and he did the rest. I am so amazed by his performance! And seriously I finished filming and editing a day before the twins came ... and the music was added hours before the deadline end, I wanted to give Jory as much time as possible, when I saw/heard him work the first time, he had the music ready after half of the time, but he kept adding and tweaking all the details, always improving it further.

Sorry for the length but I promise every MB is worth it, enjoy:

Download highres version 99MB 12.15 min

And I also released a trailer a while ago.

THAC 4 Sinner Claus

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 15:35:33 -0800

Wow, again we had the THAC (twenty four hour animation contest). This time the mod element was a red brick connected to a green brick and/or the letter „P“, the topic was „giving“. To complicate matters, I wasn´t feeling perfectly fine and we also under no circumstances wanted to miss Julia´s birthday party. So less time, and sleep deprivation, and twins in the house. Fortunately the theme was somewhat guessable so I made my script and lots of sets beforehand. If the topic would have been too far of my anticipation well the whole thing would have looked much different.

Here are the two links:
download highres version 25MB 2.45 min
download lowres version 7.8MB 2.45 min

In case you are unable to identify all films:
Titanic
2001 a space odyssey
Lord of the Rings, the fellowship of the ring
24 TV series
Star Wars, the empire strikes back
The Matrix
Pulp fiction
any SM porn movie... working title Catwomen

JANITHOR remastered

Mon, 3 Dec 2007 17:13:21 -0800

I tried to publish JANITHOR on brickfilms, but it was rejected. The reasons were too low animation and image quality. So I decided to remaster this film. I increased the image quality of all existing frames, used the 8 fps images to make 10 fps, replaced lots of the backgrounds, shot a couple of more scenes (12 fps), added visual effects, wrote my own music as a soundtrack, and added my voice to the first scene. That was quite a bit of work for this little film. I actually shrank the 2.43 to 2.11 in the process. But I think it is worth it.
Enjoy:

download as quicktime:
highres JANITHOR remastered 25.5 MB 2.11 min
lowres JANITHOR remastered 7.5 MB 2.11 min

MoB divine intervention II - trailer

Sat, 13 Oct 2007 09:56:54 -0700

MoB means Masterpiece of Brickfilming, and is a competition with a deadline at the end of 2007. The goal is to make a high quality film which focuses on story and character development. One of the main hurdles is the „no copyright violation“ rule. Many films contain music that is isn´t licensed and copyright protected as well as sound FX. In this contest no copyright violation is allowed. So for the first time I spent lots of time on getting sound FX (sounddogs.com) or free sound and also designing my own sounds.
This film will also contain scenes that are a homage to „the gauntlet“ from Jay Silver. Who kindly allowed this citation.

Again I got Jory Schossau as composer, and Jonathan Moss as a voice actor.

Because of the contest rules, the movie can not be released earlier than December 25. 2007 so here is „only“ a trailer:

download as Quicktime: Trailer DI2 3.3 MB 1.07 min

THAC 3 - divine intervention

Mon, 8 Oct 2007 18:06:40 -0700

The annual THAC competition from brickfilms.com works as follows:
You have to make a stop motion animation film fitting a given title, containing not less than 30 seconds of animation, and each frame must contain a mod element, and everything within 24 hours. THAC = Twenty four Hour Animation Contest. And this was the third one ever made. The title was „what really happened“ and the mod element was the letter „K“ and/or a green brick next to a black brick.

Fortunately Jory Schossau (REU student from our lab) was able to join the production team. He composed and arranged all the cool music - also within 24h! Thank you!

download as Quicktime: THAC 3 - divine intervention 5.7 MB 1.54 min

and you know what, we made 9th place among 32 competitors! And we had an appearance in Wall Street Journal!

vader´s revenge

Fri, 1 Sep 2006 17:12:38 -0700

One month after the despicable act of the LEGO company, I decided to free myself from the anger and disappointment and just make another movie about it. Fortunately I got help from Smeagol. He was actually the one inspiring me to make a Star Wars film, and he gave me the voices for Vader and the officer. Thank you for that!

download as Quicktime: vaders revenge highres 30 MB 3.54 min

download as Quicktime: vaders revenge lowres 16.6 MB 3.54 min

individuality

Tue, 1 Aug 2006 17:12:07 -0700

I was so amazed when I read that LEGO (r) is making a Star Wars Movie Making Competition. I spent hours on making this entry ... But when it came to judging I was stunned. Like many movies from my friends at brickfilms.com my movie was simply ignored. After many mails and calls it was obvious LEGO simply deceived the entrants. No one from brickfilms.com was mentioned or honored, and the movies from them were stunning high quality productions compared to the winners.
You can read the complete story here and here.

Anyway here is my entry:

download as Quicktime: individuality 8.3 MB 2.30 min

And the behavior of LEGO is embarrassing ...

Amandas Welt

Sun, 9 Jul 2006 16:51:26 -0700

After we did the film with Arschmade, our other teddy Amanda was so envious that we had to make a film for and with her as well ...

download as Quicktime: Amandas Welt 19.8 MB 4.13 min

sunday morning

Sun, 2 Jul 2006 16:40:08 -0700

After Leonie and I moved to Claremont LA we wanted to show our relatives and friends how our new apartment complex looks. So what better to do than to take a bike ride ... featuring our teddy Arschmade

download as Quicktime: Sunday morning 19.1 MB 4.06 min

JANITHOR

Wed, 7 Dec 2005 16:16:13 -0800

No this is not misspelled! I deliberately chose the mix of janitor and Thor (scandinavian god) as the title of my film. One week before the release of Peter Jackson´s „King Kong“ I wanted to see my own interpretation of this theme. Together with Leonie we built the city in one weekend and filming took another two. The city was also used in a CSI spoof, but that one is unfinished...
This is my first experience with green screen, which explains the obvious technical flaws. Anyway it was a big fun!

download as Quicktime: JANITHOR 25.7 MB 2.43 min