'A big part of my childhood': Regina student brings Lego to life through stop-motion animation
'A big part of my childhood': Regina student brings Lego to life through stop-motion animation
Jayson Reddekopp has been a Lego collector since he was a kid. Now in his second year of university, he’s bringing his passion to life using just his Lego pieces and an iPhone.
“I got to a point where I just wanted to give it a go myself,” Reddekopp told CTV News. “I have a lot of Lego and I wanted to do a lot of creative stuff.”
The University of Regina education student has been creating stop-motion videos involving Lego (usually referred to as “brickfilms”) for the last nine years on his YouTube channel.
In that time, he’s amassed almost 700 subscribers.
Most of his content has been focused on the titular DC superhero, Batman.
“I was uploading some Batman videos and some superhero stuff that a lot of people were interested in,” Reddekopp said. “They've been nice enough to reach out and I've been able to get involved in the community.”
Seeing what other brick-filmmakers are doing acts as inspiration and encouragement for his own work, according to Reddekopp.
“It's really great to see sort of the versatility of all these all these people around the world trying to make stories with Lego,” he said. “It's really cool to see.”
With the brickfilm community behind him, Reddekop has been driven to keep creating content.
“It’s been good because it has helped me want to do crazier stuff and kind of one up myself in a sense,” he explained.
Reddekopp’s videos usually run between 20 to 30 minutes and take about nine months to complete from start to finish.
“I want to say 8,000 to 9,000 pictures that I take for those and then I try to make a couple shorter films which take about, like 3,000 to 4,000 pictures,” he explained.
Setting the stage for production is also a long process and can be made more difficult due to the size of the Lego blocks.
“You got to figure out where the character is going to go,” he explained. “What are the props that might be in the facility, and if they're going to move around a table.”
As for the availability of props and characters, Reddekopp said there is no shortage of either, as his dad is a long-time collector of Lego as well.
“We have been able to share and sometimes steal some of our own stuff,” he said. “But it’s been a long time we have been collecting.”
For the future, Reddekopp hopes to not only continue his hobby, but elevate it.
Better sound effects, voicing, music, and masking his characters are all priorities as Reddekopp continually improves his craft.
Once his Batman series is finished, Reddekopp is eager to tackle other genres.
“I have ideas for maybe a film noir or a horror or a medieval stop-motion,” he said.
“I really like to just try new things and see what I can do and kind of go from there.”
Having the ability to create videos with just a phone and some Legos, offers a creative outlet for so many, according to Reddekopp.
“Lego and YouTube have been a big part of my childhood … A lot of kids collect a lot of Lego and if they want to turn it into something creative and cool, they want to do themselves,” he said.
“YouTube's been a good platform to kind of showcase that creativity.”
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