Evil Dead Stop Motion Lego Animation

Moderators: Evil James, EvilDeadChainsaws

Post Reply
User avatar
EvilDeadChainsaws
Site Admin
Posts: 104
Joined: Wed Oct 28, 2009 1:23 pm
Location: England, UK
Contact:

Evil Dead Stop Motion Lego Animation

Post by EvilDeadChainsaws »

This is a project I had running a few years back. I saved the thread & the updates, so this is a repost of that information.

The idea was to make a short Lego stop-motion animation version of 'Evil Dead', although this project has been long since abandoned. Firstly I designed complex plans in Microsoft Publisher to allow me to work out the exact layout of the cabin, exactly what parts I would need and how all they would all fit together, along with the locations of things like the trees, workshed, barn and the graves dug outside in respect to the position of the cabin, and their scales in relation to each other.

Then I designed & built a wooden motion control camera rig to allow the camera movements needed for the animation. With this rig the camera could track forward & backward & left & right, track up & down, and rotate 360 degrees in any direction (facing up/down & backward/forwards) With all the movement combined the camera can sit level with the ground, or up to 50cm above it. It can track 4ft forward & back, 3ft side to side. The camera mount itself can rotate horizontally or vertically 360 degrees in a full sphere. The whole lower portion of the rig can slide to either end of the table to allow shooting over the whole length of the 8ft set. You could also use any combination of the above at the same time and all moving in tiny increments via turning the various threaded bars to achieve complex camera moves. Once built the final size of the whole cabin/forest area I was building (to scale) was 8ft by 6ft, but this didn't include the bridge or most of the path to the cabin.

The project was abandoned because the wooden rig just wasn't rigid enough and even the slightest fraction of a wobble could ruin a shot. That said the basic ideas & mechanisms were all sound and I did draw up plans for a scaff-pole version which would have worked. The wood rig in total cost about £60 (+ Lego), The scaff-pole version would have worked out many times that price but I didn't have a pile of money to spend on starting from scratch so it got put on the back burner, and I moved onto other projects.

Here you can see photos covering the building process of the motion control rig, and the plans should you want to build your own Lego cabin. Although the plans are designed using Lego parts, the basic layout, scale and orientation of the real cabin & surrounding area/buildings is identical, so they may be useful for other things too.


I mentioned in the chat room a few days ago that I'm making a Lego stop-motion animation version of evil dead. I thought id start this thread to let you all know how I'm getting on from time to time.

I'm still designing at the moment, getting the layout and the scale right. below are the floor plans I've done so far, I'm still adding bits to them though.)
http://www.mediafire.com/file/gmzej4jq2 ... NoEvil.zip


Sorry, i haven't updated this in a while. I'm nearly finished the plans and now have (a very long!) component parts list, with picture & reference numbers for each piece needed. I still need to go through and list the colour of each piece though. When its finished I'll post that too in case anyone else wants to build one.

I've also finished designing a camera rig, which should allow me to do 99% of the camera moves you see in the film, it should only cost about £30 to built too.


ADDED 18/03/05

Image

This is the main body of the rig, the top bit allows the camera to move up and down by rotating the tube up and down the threaded bar, and the bottom bit (see close up below)


Image

this bit allows the camera (mounted on the bottom plate which you can just see) to rotate 360° in any direction, (i.e. facing up/down & backward/forwards) by winding either of the threaded bars, which turns the each of the gears (cogs)


Image

This is the top portion of the rig (resting on a bin) (the bottom bit in the first picture fits to the threaded bar you can see in the bottom right hand corner) this allows the the camera to track forward/backward 4ft & left/right 3ft and any combination, this whole thing fits to a wooden frame which is fixed to the table which the Lego will be built on.


I'll be putting the whole thing together this weekend, so by Monday I'll just have the Lego to do. the final size of the whole cabin/forest area I'm building (to scale) is around 8ft by 6ft but this will not include the bridge or (most of) the path to the cabin (as you can see in the plans above) these will need to be built separately (or it would get stupidly big!). I'll post the finished photos hopefully tomorrow. also in case anyone wants to know the rig has cost me about £60 for the parts (including the table, not shown), so a bit more than I thought originally but that still gives me a £400 budget for the Lego (if it could ever cost that much?) also I can re-use this rig if I decide to give dawn of the dead a go.


ADDED 19/03/05

Image
This is the finished camera rig, I still need to shore it up, there's a bit of wobble by the time you get down to the camera (which I'm using to take the picture if you hadn't guessed.)


ADDED 24/03/05

Image

I've got rid of most of the wobble from the rig, there is still a little but not enough movement to knock anything over I'm animating (Which was my main concern), and it always settles in the same place so it would just mean waiting a second or so after moving it for it to steady itself.

I went to Legoland, even though its supposed to have the biggest selection of pic-a-brick in the UK, I couldn't get the vast majority of the sizes or colours I wanted (but I know you can get these) so I just bought a pile of Lego bits, and used it to build the sets you can see above and below. I'll use these to give me a more exact figure of each of the bits I need then use http://www.bricklink.com to order the bits (which will be a lot more expensive than pic-a-brick) but basically (with a lot more bits added) this is what the sets will look like

Image

Image

Image


ADDED 29/03/05

Image

This is some of the first instalment if Lego I have; figures left to right you have Ash (with the chainsaw), Scotty (With his hunting knife), Linda (Holding the dagger), Shelly, and Cheryl. down in the bottom right had corner is the tape recorder and the book of the dead (Unfinished)
Post Reply