The classic BIONICLE rock songs will only be showing up in the promotional material, and not the actual show itself, as I do want to keep that classic tribal feel intact. Nathan Furst's score for Mask of Light, Legends of Metru Nui, and Web of Shadows will be the primary source of incidental music, with maybe a small mix of BIONICLE Heroes later on in the series.
"Hero" was specifically chosen for this teaser (and will be reused for the full trailer) for two reasons.
1. The first season is the Toa learning to be heroes as they search for their masks and Ekimu. "Do you have what it takes to be a hero?" is very fitting for this first season.
2. The specific verse of "You'd better make it right" in the song, which will get more attention to it in the full trailer. I'm fixing G2, therefore making it right.
Also, hearkening back to G1 is an easy marketing tactic.
Yeah, I threw this together very quickly to get something out there and to test some VFX shots. Solid criticism. The actual editing in the show will be much better.
I am doing it all on my own. I'm using a mix of different software's. Windows Live Movie Maker is what I use to put the actual stop-motion together, since it's easier to edit frame by frame in that program. I then transfer the footage over to Premier Pro for the sound mixing and green screen work. A good chunk of VFX is done in Photoshop, and some stuff that remains (like burning torches, layering images to create a sense of depth) is done in Premier as well. All of the segments of an episode are then edited together to form a (guesstimating at this point) 10 minute episode, and rendered out using Premier.
For the first season, the frame rate won't be the best (especially in earlier episodes), as filming was a bit of trial-and-error. Constraction figures handle differently to Transformers or minifigures (which I've worked heavily with in the past), and so as I filmed I adjusted how it was filmed, and what shots I created, and etc. Having the ability to go through the individual frames, there are some issues with it (lots of cuts, for example) that will be rectified in Season 2 and 3 for sure. Still, even with a lowish framerate, I think it will still look good, it just may not be as smooth as some people would like.
For the teaser trailer, I think this is a valid criticism, but not so much for what the final product would look like. There were a lot of close-ups in the teaser, and so you had just one color backgrounds (Kulta early in the trailer, Tahu putting on his mask at the end, etc). That's my fault on the editing front. There are a few other shots I could have used instead, but hindsight is 20/20. I think a lot of the backgrounds I've created for the show look good, especially when pared with the animation (the Region of Fire for instance I think will be a favorite of mine).
At the same time though, I'm not the best artist. I've had trouble getting the Region of Jungle down, because trees, and am not entirely happy with the way those backgrounds have turned out. There are surely some people out there (especially here on the boards) that can do a better job, which is kind of my plan. Season 1 I'm doing the majority of the heavy lifting myself, and attempting to put out a good first season that grabs people's attention based on the story telling. This will get people to see potential in the project moving into Season 2 and 3, and if they're an artist that thought some of the backgrounds were bland, then they can volunteer their services, and for the next two seasons going forward I can have a team working just on backgrounds. Which will especially be helpful for things like the Maze of Control, because there's no way I'm going to be able to design that on my own. I want this to be a community wide project more than anything, so as many people as possible can feel like they helped contribute to make a good version of G2. And I do have an artist working on a digital painting flashback sequence for the Season 1 finale, so there will be some good art in there at times.
So who knows, maybe in the future I'll concentrate on writing and filming while I have teams to do art and edit. That would be great. I've got big plans for this in the future, and I think everyone is going to be excited with how it unfolds, but at the same time, I also want as many people as possible to just be an audience like we were supposed to be before we had to take matters into our own hands.
Well, given I've been making stop-motions of varying quality for near of a decade now, I wouldn't say I'm just starting out. I took a Stop-Motion class in High School and am in an animation class here at my college, so I'm always learning. I wouldn't call myself a professional, but I wouldn't call myself an amateur either. I feel like my stop-motions sort of have a unique style to them, as there are times when everything is smooth, but then there are times when thing slow down and movement between frames is noticeable, but I still like the way it looks. There's something about the home-made look to them that I like. Still, to appeal to a mass audience I may have to work on that and get everything as smooth as possible for Season 2. I'm going to pay close attention to comments and critiques when everything starts rolling out.
Glad you think so. Share it where you see fit once more stuff comes out. I want the BIONICLE community at large to see this and go "See, LEGO? Was that so hard?" so everyone will maybe rescind some of their hatred for G2 (although if someone doesn't like CCBS then I may not be able to help there).
