Impossible LEGO Animations

I am a LEGO animator and in this video I challenge myself to animate

impossible

LEGO

animations

. From spinning minifigures to flying and doing tricks, these

animations

will definitely be

impossible

. Anyway, let's start animating. Running at the speed of light is impossible. So, it's time to accelerate this figure. When something moves at high speed, the camera looks blurry. Traditional animators have been using something called soft frames to recreate that in animations. To do this with LEGO, we can build fuzzy bricks like this. This technique was actually used in The LEGO Movie to make some characters move quickly while building.

You put the blurry brick behind your character and now it appears to be moving at super speed. I've used this technique several times before to animate super fast characters like Sonic the Hedgehog. You can also use it for Flash. I built a couple different lengths for different speeds. The faster you want the figure to move, the longer the blur will be. I first animated the figure running at normal speed to compare it with the faster one. And here's the one with the blurry brick. The minifigure runs across the baseplate in less than a second. I'd say it's pretty fast.

Another way to animate super speed is to use multiple figures in the same frame. So I got a bunch of identical minifigures. You just replace the brick blur with the figures and they basically do the same job. Now I can make the figure run around this laptop at impossible speeds. But do you know what is not impossible? By clicking the subscribe button. I'm sorry. Let's go. Separating two 2x2 plates glued together this way is practically impossible. I have ruined many nails trying to separate these pieces over the years. But there is a simple solution. Introducing the brick separator.

The perfect tool for separating LEGO pieces from each other. But one of them is not enough for this scenario. You actually need two, unless you want to ruin your pieces. Place the brick spacers on the top and bottom like this, then press them together and voila, done. Now, my plan is to animate this action with stop motion, but you might be wondering, why not just film it? Well, I want to add a twist at the end of the animation, which can't be done by filming. Now both my hands will be visible in the frame, so how can I press the shutter button if I can't use my hands?

Calm, with your feet. So I started animating and quickly discovered that it's very tiring to keep your hands still in the air for so long. So they put these supports under my arms to make my life a little easier. Now the twist on the animation. Once I managed to separate the pieces, they flew through the air, held by these long transparent pieces, which I edit later. And when they fall again, they join back together, causing the animation to repeat. The perfect loop doesn't exist, you say? Well, now it does. This animation was incredibly difficult and exhausting to make.

One could even say that it was almost impossible. But I must say that it was worth the effort it took to make it. Next I want to animate a LEGO figure that teleports. Now, teleportation is a very popular mode of transportation in science fiction movies in which you move from one point to another instantly. And unfortunately it is not possible in real life, believe me, I tried. But I can animate it with LEGO and this is how it's done. You start with the figure in its first location, take a photo, and then move the figure to its second location, take a photo, and wait.

That was it? Well, that was easy. Too easy. And a little boring. So let's do another version with a little more movement. I'll add some movement to the animation and that will be better. But I can still improve it. Teleportation in movies often has a spiral effect and I want to recreate it with LEGO. But I can't just add the spiral filter when editing, because that would be cheating. So I'll try to create the spiral effect with real LEGO pieces. To do this, I will take the figure apart and move the body parts in a way that makes the figure rotate and get smaller by swapping the figure with smaller and smaller LEGO pieces until it disappears.

And then do the opposite where I want the shape to reappear. Now we have a teleportation animation that looks pretty good. But one thing is missing. The teleporter. So I built this simple teleportation machine and animated the figure that was teleported by it. I think that will be enough for the teleportation animations. Forward. One of my favorite things about LEGO movies and games is how quickly the characters can build things. Unfortunately, it's impossible for a minifigure to do that, since she can't actually move in real life. Next, I want to animate a minifigure that builds something like a real master builder.

And since I want a minifigure to build something really fast, I'll use the super speed techniques from before to animate this minifigure by building the YouTube logo with LEGO. I drew some bricks on the baseplate and started animating them using multiple minifigures and the blurred bricks I built earlier to give the figure the illusion of speed while building, and I think it turned out really nice. The average person can't jump very high. Meanwhile, the average LEGO figure can't jump at all. I then animated the minifigure jumping. That's not very high. Another superpower I want to encourage is super jumps.

But how do you animate a LEGO figure that jumps higher than a stud? You can't just leave it up in the air and expect it to stay there. Thanks to gravity, it will simply fall. You need to support it with something. I like to use some LEGO bricks. And then I glue the figure on with some sticky tack and between each frame, I'll just add some bricks to make the tower taller. Once I finish animating the jump, I edit the ugly tower. I'll do a tutorial on this someday, so make sure you're subscribed. I also made an animation of the figure jumping onto a platform, and used this very satisfying build made of these hinge pieces to hold the figure in the air.

Here is the animation. Jumping forward and backward seems impossible. I know they are not impossible. There are many who can do it, but for me they are definitely impossible. But what I can do instead is animate a LEGO minifigure into an awesome twist. It is done the same as jump animations, but the figure rotates in the air. That turned out pretty well. Let's see if he can also do a front jump. Nothing bad. Next, I want to fly a LEGO figure. And of course, flying is really possible. If you have a plane. But this figure is not like that.

So I'm going to animate the LEGO figure by defying the laws of physics by making it fly on its own. Like Superman. And we can use the same technique I used to animate the jump animations to make a LEGO figure fly. Here is the equipment I used to keep the figure flying. It is made up of these ball joint pieces for maximum flexibility in animation. Anyway, here's the animation. It turned out surprisingly good and I'm still not done animating the flight. If I take the arms off a minifigure and then place them like this, I can make the minifigure wave its arms like a bird.

So, I made this silly little animation of the figure flying like a bird. Now, my favorite animations from this video, trick shots. Trick shots may seem impossible as they require incredible precision and luck. So I chose some tricks that I want to recreate with LEGO. First, the classic bottle spin. I got this LEGO bottle piece and then built a small table and then animated the spin. Then I wanted to animate one of those ping pong ball tricks. So I got this 1x1 stud to represent the ball and then built this little field for it. I then animated the ball bouncing through it and into the goal.

Next, I animated a backwards basketball shot. And since I didn't have a LEGO basketball hoop piece, I ended up using the plastic ring under the bottle cap as a replacement. And I must say it fits perfectly. This release took a lot of time to animate and edit. Here it is. I've seen some cool archery tricks on YouTube. So I wanted to do that too. I found this LEGO bow and arrow piece and then used these round pieces as balloons for the targets. I then animated the arrow flying through all the balloons in one shot. By the way, I used LEGO flower pieces to create the balloon popping effect.

Here is the animation. Moving on from the tricks. LEGO minifigures can do something that humans can't do at all: separate body parts. So LEGO minifigures can simply appear and do a complete 180 degree turn with their torso. And it looks very fun animated. Also, if I turn my legs 180 degrees and then encourage them to walk, I end up with a question. Does this minifigure walk forward or backward? Let me know in the comments. One of my favorite animations I've done is the stretching minifigure animation. So I wanted to take it a step further by stretching a figure and then rotating it.

And LEGO figures are solid and can't be rotated, so that's impossible. But you can use bridge plates like this to create this spiral construction, so I'll use this technique on the minifigure. I got a bunch of 1x2 bridge plates in the same colors as the minifigure and then built them. Now I have this figure that is 4 regular minifigures tall and I can twist it like this to give it that spiral look. So I animated the animation itself and this one turned out really good. Enjoy! Cutting LEGO in half with a butter knife is impossible, but I can do it, and have done it, with animation of course.

By swapping one LEGO piece for two half-length pieces, I can make cutting LEGO look as easy as cutting butter. And I actually made a ton of LEGO cutting animations in my satisfying videos, which you should definitely check out by clicking here. Anyway, those are all the impossible animations I have for now. Feel free to comment on ideas for future animations. Thanks for watching!