Have you ever wondered how they animate those show-stealing sections of the hit TV series LEGO Masters, when the contestants' creations come to life on screen?
Well, Tongal Creator Kevin Ulrich has the answers — and the process is just as adorably sweet and playful as you would expect from this wonderful show and brand.
Kevin has animated these stop-motion sequences for the hit FOX show this current season — work secured via the Tongal platform — in a career highlight for the renowned LEGO artist.
And he's unpacked the process for us, revealing the actual contestants' builds are driven 2,000 miles from the show's studio in Atlanta, Georgia, to his apartment in Irvine, California, for him to work his hands-on magic.
"They bubble wrapped the finished sets, covered them in styrofoam, and had a courier drive them across the country in giant wooden crates," Kevin reveals.
"They then sat in the garage of my apartment until we were finished with them. We moved the car out of the garage and park on the street to give me a bigger space to work with — it was a 10-minute walk to get to the car! This went on for several months — I really appreciate my wife for being willing to go along with it!
"One of the crates was 4ft wide. People would come to my place and ask, 'What do you got there?' I was like, 'That's Dracula. Don't wake him up!'"
As one of the LEGO community's leading stop-motion artists, it was a proud moment for Kevin to land this dream gig on season 5 of the LEGO Masters show.
"I was a little intimidated at first," Kevin recalls. "One of the biggest stop-motion houses in California has done the previous seasons, and this year it was just little old me, working out of my condo.
"I flew to Atlanta, where they were shooting, to get a feel for how the production worked, and see the builds in person on the set. It was a really cool experience — a giant studio, with LEGO stuff for yards and yards. It was then I realized the scale of what I was stepping into."
LEGO Master host Will Arnett and judges Amy Corbett and Jamie Berard
After the season had been filmed, Kevin was sent clips of the contestants talking about their builds, and created animatics to show LEGO Masters execs how he envisaged the scenes coming to life. Then after collaborating with the show's creative team on any notes, it was time to unwrap the build and bring the story to life frame-by-frame.
"It's been the highlight of my career," Kevin says. "A lot of the stuff I do is for individual Instagram posts, which are super fun but more contained. It's been exciting to be a small cog in a much larger production."
Kevin's personal stop-motion story began when LEGO released the Steven Spielberg MovieMaker Set when he was about 11 years old. He later started a YouTube channel — called Brotherhood Workshop — where his talents earned a bigger audience (now at 281k subscribers). And he eventually quit his video editing job in 2015 to become a full-time freelance stop-motion artist.
Around the same time, Kevin found Tongal, where his first big break on the platform was working on the Star Wars: Go Rogue project, a series of stop-motion shorts to celebrate the launch of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story in 2016, which won PRWeek's Global Campaign of the Year.
Now he's a father-of-one, with another baby on the way, and is excited about introducing his own kids to the toy that has brought him so much joy — and a successful creative career.
"I don't remember a time that LEGO hasn't been a part of my life," he says. "Every time you get a new set, it increases your possibilities. There's no toy like it.
"And the great thing about stop-motion filmmaking is that it's so accessible — you don't need a bunch of actors, you don't need fancy equipment.
"When I look at something that's computer animated, I don't understand what is going on. But when I see stop-motion animation, I can break it down and figure out how they did it.
"I want to inspire kids and young filmmakers who look at my YouTube channel, and for them think, 'I could do that.'"
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