Brickfilm: Jukolan Humppa

It's time to go back into basic LEGO business after my super-popular (at least on my standards) Big Daddy MOC that pretty much gave this blog six times more visitors that I had had on it whole history. Big thanks to everyone who blogged and commented.

But on a second thought, this isn't basic business neither. It's LEGO animation debut of Vuhvelituotanto, the very indie video production that consists of me and my friend (Known as Humppakeksi in LEGO community). We have done several short life action films, but this is our first video released online. Without further ado, be ready to some serious humppa!

So, that was it, Humppa of Jukola, song by Finnish humppa cover group Eläkeläiset, which has had some appearances in this blog before.As you probably noticed, the name of the game is alcohol. No, wait. I was saying that you probably noticed that we used my Humppa-Pub as a fake scene prop on the playing scenes. The adventurous orienteering prop was built in couple of hours using BURPs, baseplates and some plates and plant pieces to add detail.

 As I said, this is our animation debut. And I really mean it. Doing a LEGO animation is often said to be hard and time-consuming work, and we wanted to test the veracity of that rumor. We didn't do any test shots. Pretty much every pic taken is on this films. I had built the outdoor prop the previous evening, and Humppakeksi came here on the morning and we made the animating in two hours. When it comes to filming, we were ready for dinner before midday.

 Later on the same day we squeezed the pics into Monkeyjam and made the stop-motion clips. Neither of us had used that software before, but luckily it was rather easy to use despite the lags and bugs in it. Humppakeksi took the clips and made the editing on the next day on his computer. I guess he's lot better than me in that (and he always does that on our films). The video was done in two days. It was not especially hard or time-consuming.

Of course the quality of the animation is not the best possible, there is some fluctuation and lot of loop. The quality of the image isn't perfect eihter, but we don't have any expensive editing software and we do not download those illegally. The pics are taken on my Canon EOS 450D. A System camera isn't the most common tool on stop-motion videos, but it was the best one available. Just in case you wanted to know.

 This video was done for Finnish LUG Palikkatakomo's annual video contest. The subject was Voyage to Uncharted. We did it as a music video of Eläkeläiset's song for several reasons. Firstly, humppa is the best music genre ever. Secondly, we had got some requests for stop-motion humppa animations after our MOCs and we had the props ready. Thirdly there was a humppa song which lyrics were perfect for the contest's subject. You likely have no idea what they are singing, but it's about orienteering trip of demented old man who forgot the map, have no idea what the compass is, has a fragment in his skull and who broke his glasses. It's a cover of Finnish metal group Nightwish's Nemo. You can listen the full song here.

-Pate-keetongu, Vuhvelituotanto