--- title: 'The Lego Movie' Animators Show How the Film Was Made | TIME description: With an interesting mix of CG animation and actual LEGO sets, the final look of The LEGO Movie has a surprising touch of realness and appears almost as if someone had actually painstakingly animated each and every movement through stop-motion. canonical: https://time.com/video/3qWrWyhr/ og:title: 'The Lego Movie' Animators Show How the Film Was Made og:description: With an interesting mix of CG animation and actual LEGO sets, the final look of The LEGO Movie has a surprising touch of realness and appears almost as if someone had actually painstakingly animated each and every movement through stop-motion. og:url: https://time.com/video/3qWrWyhr/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/3qWrWyhr/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 'The Lego Movie' Animators Show How the Film Was Made twitter:description: With an interesting mix of CG animation and actual LEGO sets, the final look of The LEGO Movie has a surprising touch of realness and appears almost as if someone had actually painstakingly animated each and every movement through stop-motion. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/3qWrWyhr/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # 'The Lego Movie' Animators Show How the Film Was Made > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: 'The Lego Movie' Animators Show How the Film Was Made [Watch (HLS stream): 'The Lego Movie' Animators Show How the Film Was Made](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/3qWrWyhr.m3u8) (3:29)  _Published 2014-02-19. With an interesting mix of CG animation and actual LEGO sets, the final look of The LEGO Movie has a surprising touch of realness and appears almost as if someone had actually painstakingly animated each and every movement through stop-motion._ --- Jul 27, 2023 4:14 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Lego Shortage: Everything Is NOT Awesome](/video/oWPPqKbY/) ### Lego Shortage: Everything Is NOT Awesome [The 10 All-TIME Best Animated Movies](/video/2cDpG9PM/) ### The 10 All-TIME Best Animated Movies [Exclusive: Sneak Peek a LEGO's Upcoming Star Wars Mini-Movie](/video/S9ZSsUp0/) ### Exclusive: Sneak Peek a LEGO's Upcoming Star Wars Mini-Movie --- ## Transcript >> What is happening? >> You're the special, and the prophecy states that you're the most important person in the universe. That's you, right? >> Uh, yes! That's me. >> So, this is Emmet. We spent a long time working on Emmet being the lead character in this film. We went through quite a-- quite a few different iterations on this hair, but we finally settled on this one. As you can see, we try to be quite authentic with the actual Lego product itself. So, there's a little detail put into the sticker work, the detail work, the mold lines, chips, chunks, scratches. We try to incorporate a lot of that. In fact, we put a lot of the mini figs underneath the microscope and have a good look at those details so that we could actually get a lot of the fidelity into our models. This represents the storyboard phase of the film. Basically, you do rough pass of drawing the script by hand and it's the first that we do when we're testing out an idea. And after that, once it gets approved, it goes through a process, which is called layout, where you kind of roughly put the characters and the cameras into the scene. That's pretty neat. And then after layout, once you've locked your cameras in your sets and your characters in, you get to animate it. And then at last after you're done with the animation, the lighting and grading team comes in and they make it look really pretty and this is what that looks like. >> Essentially what you're doing is encoding the bricks and snapping them together just like real Lego. And also just like real Lego, the bricks will refuse connections that can't be made in real life. >> Metal Beard is an interesting character for a number of reasons. Firstly, he's so much bigger than all the other characters. He's got a lot of cool accessories, which I have a lot of fun with. It's got a shock on his arm. He's got a cannon on his other arm and it kinda plays into the fact that is slightly kind of unintentionally intimidating character. >> Good morning, apartment! Good morning, doorway. Good morning, wall. Good morning, ceiling. Good morning, floor. >> This is kind of the animation review format so obviously it doesn't have any lighting or anything like that, but it does show kind of the face and it shows various [ unk ] pieces. >> Here it is, Instructions to Fit In, Have Everybody Like You, and Always be Happy. Here it is, Instructions to Fit In, Have Everybody Like You, and Always be Happy. Step 1: Breathe. >> Does the basketball ever come off of the shelf? >> So far no. >> No, but it could. >> It has the ability-- >> Do you want-- Do you want that to happen? >> If things get crazy enough, it could happen. >> Yeah. >> No. No. Nah- uh. No. Not that. Wrong. And that's it. 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