Minifiguring it Out
Animation director Rob Coleman explains the tricks used to bring Emmet and friends to life in a stop-motion-inspired digital world
How did Lego Digital Designer fit into your animation pipeline?
The asset team started by creating the models in LDD, and then they were moved over to Softimage for rigging and animation. It was actually quite a sophisticated [ character] rig, with extra things like the ability to rock back on the heel or onto the tips of toes. Of course, most of the minifigs shared the same proportions, so we were able to use the same rig.
Did the uniformity of Lego minifigs help the animation?
For the crowds of Bricksburg, we’d have generic cycles, poses and expressions in a master library that fit in with the story’s idea that they’re generic and all ‘lockstep’. But the master builders needed to look unique. Lucy’s style of movement is very different from Emmet’s, which is different to Bad Cop’s. So we created individual libraries for body and facial animation for each of the hero characters.
How strictly did you follow the limitations of Lego?
Right from day one the directors said they wanted no bending of joints and no squash and stretch. They wanted us to stay true to the nature of the real plastic toy. We also agreed that motion blur wouldn’t be used, but did introduce something called ‘brick blur’. That was especially useful when the characters go into Master Builder mode. If you look at the scenes frame by frame there’s a whole series of extra bricks that trail behind – it actually took many months to develop that effect.
How did Lego lend itself to humour?
A lot of the animators had little Lego pieces on their desks to play around with, so when they were doing the Wild West saloon scene, for example, they were pantomiming that clip-clopping horse [ whose leg remains comically fixed]. Of course as soon as we saw that we all cracked up. Another great one is when the ghost of Vitruvius comes to talk to Emmet. We actually videoed a Lego character attached to a piece of string and then studied [the footage] closely to make sure we got it right.
How did you emulate the look of stop-motion?
We started out with the classic thing of animating on twos, but sometimes found we needed to animate on threes and fours to make [the results] look a little rougher. The curse of CG is that it always makes things look too smooth. With fast action shots, animating on threes or fours made them look exactly like the Lego stop-motion shorts you see online.