i mentioned in the chat room a few days ago that i am making a lego stop-motion
animation version of evil dead. i thought id start this thread to let you all know how
i'm getting on from time to time.

im still designing at the moment, getting the layout and the scale right. below are
the floor plans ive done so far, I'm still adding bits to them though.)

http://www.angelfire.com/tv2/see_no_evi ... bridge.jpg (Updated 27/02/05)
http://www.angelfire.com/tv2/see_no_evi ... layout.jpg (NEW)
http://www.angelfire.com/tv2/see_no_evi ... layout.jpg (Updated 27/02/05)
http://www.angelfire.com/tv2/see_no_evi ... layout.jpg (NEW)
http://www.angelfire.com/tv2/see_no_evi ... layout.jpg (Updated 27/02/05)
http://www.angelfire.com/tv2/see_no_evi ... layout.jpg (Updated 27/02/05)
http://www.angelfire.com/tv2/see_no_evi ... afters.jpg (NEW)

Sorry, i haven't updated this in a while. im nearly finished the plans and now have
(a very long!) componant parts list, with picture & reference numbers for
each piece needed. i still need to go through and list the colour of each piece though.
When its finished i'll post that too in case anyone else wants to build one.

Ive also finished designing a camera rig, which should allow me to do 99% of the
camera moves you see in the film, it should only cost about ?30 to built too.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ADDED 18/03/05


This is the main body of the rig, the top bit allows the camera to move up and
down by rotaing the tube up and down the threaded bar, and the bottom bit
(see close up below)


this bit allows the camera (mounted on the bottom plate which you can just see)
to rotate 360? in any direction, (ie facing up/down & backward/forwards)
by winding either of the threaded bars, which turns the each of the gears (cogs)


This is the top portion of the rig (resting on a bin) (the bottom bit in the first picture
fits to the threaded bar you can see in the bottom right hand corner) this
allows the the camera to track forward/backward 4ft & left/right 3ft and any
combination, this whole thing fits to a wooden frame which is fixed to the table
which the lego will be built on.


i'll be putting the whole thing together this weekend, so by monday i'll just
have the lego to do. the final size of the whole cabin/forest area i'm building
(to scale) is around 8ft by 6ft but this will not include the bridge or (most of) the
path to the cabin (as you can see in the plans above) these will need to be
built seperately (or it would get stupidly big!). i'll post the finished photos hopefully
tommorow. also in case anyone wants to know the rig has cost me about ?60 for
the parts (including the table, not shown), so abit more than i thought
originally but that still gives me a ?400 budget for the lego (if it could ever
cost that much?) also i can re-use this rig if i decide to give dawn of the dead a go.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ADDED 19/03/05


This is the finished camera rig, i still need to shore it up, theres a bit of wobble
by the time you get down ot the camera (which im using to take the picture
if you hadn't guessed.)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ADDED 24/03/05



I've got rid of most of the wobble from the rig, there is still a little but not enough
movement to knock anything over i'm animating (Which was my main concern),
and it always settles in the same place so it would just mean waiting a
second or so after moving it for it to steady itself.



I went to legoland, even though its supposed to have the biggest selection of pic-a-brick
in the UK, i couldnt get the vast majority of the sizes or colours i wanted (but i know
you can get these) so i just bought a pile of lego bits, and used it to build the sets
you can see above and below. i'll use these to give me a more exact figure
of each of the bits i need then use http://www.bricklink.com to order the bits (which
will be alot more expensive than pic-a-brick) but basically (with alot more bits
added) this is what the sets will look like



------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ADDED 29/03/05



This is some of the first installment if lego i have; figures left to right you have
Ash (with the chainsaw), Scotty (With his hunting knife), Linda (Holding the
dagger), Shelly, and Cheryl. down in the bottom right had corner is the tape
recorder and the book of the dead (Unfinished)

Cool !

Can't wait to see how this one comes along.

I second that, should be cool

you want to dub over actual sound samples, I've seen some of those lego things before which are cool, but the voice acting is normally weak.

Don't skimp on the audio and it will be cool

added and updated plans 05/01/05

looks interesting indeed

Updated 27/02/2005, nearly there!

Updated 18/03/2005, photos added

Looking mightily impressive it is too

yup, looking forward to it

yeah that rig got my applaud as well! =)

Evil dead in lego ,a genius made that idea , Cheers to the lego company .

Updated 24/03/2005, photos added

hehe, so small they look. I thought they'd be much bigger. =) Can you take a photo with a hand as reference?

John, this is it compaired to a VHS box.

The scale is dictated by the lego men, everything is built up from that, so this
is the same scale as any set you'd buy from lego, ie a castle or star wars stuff,
etc... it would be difficult to do anything bigger or smaller, with most items
like doors, windows, etc at the same scale. plus im building a set big enough
to cover an 8' x 6' (2.5 metres x 1.8 metres) sheet (this inclues the surrounding
forest back as far as the starting point for the final shot of the film, and around
1/4 of the driveway at the front), any bigger and i would find it hard to reach
over to anymate anything.

lego star wars you say? Finally we can have an unrated version of Return of the Jedi, with the lego ewok orgie....

Naku... naku... tak! tak!

oh yes, before i forget, how are you planning on adding sound?

I said earlier about using proper sound clips, its a real downer that other lego movies have these really terrible chipmunk voice acting.

Would be great to see it with proper sound (redone or from the movie) with little lego mouth animation (means more head swapping, but i think it would be much cooler to see little south park mouths )

my plan was to use the original soundtrack from the movie, theres not really
any way i could make one up from scratch, which would be any better than
that.



not sure about this, if you've seen the monty python lego animation that
uses the 3 methods i can use; no movements at all (its hard to tell whose talking
though), changing heads for each different sound or expression (will make life
10x more difficult, and its hard to get it to sync properly), or film them blank
and CGI the mouth on later in post production (which looks fake, although im
assuming that i can't do a better job than the monty python thing, which does look
fake). im not sure about any of the above. i think i need to play about with it.

Adobe After Effects will probably be your best bet then, I think you'll probably need some indication of who is speaking, given they are plastic midgets and they all looks the same apart from body colour

how long will it be btw? you got a script ready? I'm asuming you're not meaning to do the whole full-leangth feature...