The whole movie really is stop motion. Sort of. Okay, Internet, slow down. Technically speaking, a huge majority of the film was made on a computer by the animation team at Animal Logic. But. But. That CG animation was created according to the rules of classic stop motion. McKay explains that in order to achieve motion blur or certain effects, they would crib cheats and camera tricks from the stop-motion playbook. "We set ourselves up with a bunch of rules and limitations with how we animated the thing, because in CG you could do anything. You have 15,000 explosions and their arms can bend and stretch but we said, 'No, we're only going to move these figures in the seven points of articulation that a minifig can move in.'"
Lego created their film using CG animation based on stop-motion. Technology meeting childhood toys meeting film.
This was really interesting to me not only because Lego has suddenly taken over my son, body and soul, but also because I am fascinated with the practice of using new, cutting edge technology to make new stuff look old. Amazing! Thanks for posting, really fun to know how it's done!
