Cast your votes in the Timberdoodle Video Contest! There’s not a few stopmotion entries from your fellow animators. Check these out!

• Pirates steal Blockus with help from giant hand.
• Family receives Timberdoodle catalog and places order. Moving lips.
• Block tower is built with paperclip crane.
• Animated writing (very cool) and animated origami sculpture (extremely cool).
• Stikfas battle over a motorcycle until it morphs into a giant robot.
• Well-animated Stikfa host introduces the Stikfa lineup.
• Personable stikfas introduce Timeberdoodle product lineup, do math, re-score “Jack Spelt” (with epic results) and have way too much fun with the animation kit sound effects.
• Hannibal seeks Timberdoodle, “the source of all things fun and educational”. Great example of papercraft animation with pivot points.

This contest made our day. Vote before Tuesday for a $5 Timberdoodle coupon.

While we were at the Arlington Book Fair, we met Blake Roberson. Blake gave us a CD of movies of he’s made, including this re-creation of troops invading Normandy on D-Day. He gave us an inside scoop on the making of this film. Check it out!

Q: Why did you decide to make a D-Day movie?
Blake: Well, I’ve always loved WWII. The history, the stories, the valor of the men. So I wanted to show my thanks by making a video to give an example of what they did, even if it wasn’t very scary in Lego.

Q: Tell me about your LEGO collection. What themes do you like?
Blake: I enjoy making movies that tell of war and courage on the battlefield.

Q: Some of the LEGO parts are pretty cool. Where did the helmets come from? The guns? What sets were used?
Blake: The sets and the ship were all made from scratch, and my imagination. The helmets are from brickarms.com I love the weapons that they make. They bring sets to life.

Q: How long did it take you to make this movie?
Blake: Relatively, not that long. I’d say about maybe an hour to get all set up.

Q: We’re often asked how to make water and explosions. You did both in your movie. How did you do this?
Blake: The water explosions were easy, simply take a 2×4 blue brick and two 1×2 blue bricks and make a semi-circle by placing the 1×2s against the long end of the 2×4. Keep adding on to that after every frame. The waves were made by taking like many 4×8 plates and laying them out on the base board. Then just move them up a little at a time.

Q: Do you have any favorite video editing or animation software?
Blake: My favorite animation software would have to be SMA =). As for editing software, Windows Movie Maker is fine, but I also enjoy using Video Works 6 because it has certain features that WMM doesn’t.

Q: Do you have any favorite Brickfilms?
Blake: Well, I love some of the stuff that Nathan Wells does, like Flashbacks, and I love watching the stuff that ZachMG does, they are my inspiration.

Q: What advice would you give to a beginning animator?
Blake: Keep practicing and don’t lose your edge. If you lose your edge, then you lose your urge to animate!

Q: Looking ahead, what will your next movie be?
Blake: Well I have a lot of ideas, I eventually plan on making another Lego WWII movie, but this time about paratroopers. My current project is hopefully going to be a series based off of the game Half-Life 2, but I’ll be adding a spin to the story such as a protagonist who isn’t silent, a plot with a Christian theme, and a tale of redemption. For all you Half-Life lovers out there, you will see things that don’t appear in the game, but it’s my interpretation of the story. I’ll keep you posted.

Thanks Blake! We love fan movies. If you have a film to share with the world, send it in! We’d like to see it.

I noticed this today among my YouTube subscriptions. This is a fast way to make something “fly” through the air. Take your character or object, stick it to to your background, and grab some frames of the character moving, either up or down. Some camera shake helps too.

And thanks calebrockinout123 for noticing the UP poster kinda looks like DOWN…