Get creative: guides to photograph and animate your LEGO Star Wars sets

Bring your LEGO Star Wars sets to life with some simple animation and photography tips and tricks courtesy of legostarwars.com

You can’t have helped but notice the proliferation of cool LEGO images on social media in the past few years. Gone are days of simply putting a set on the kitchen table and taking a snap. Now minifigures are out exploring different environments, vehicles are driving across tarmac or rough terrain and vignettes of familiar scenes are rendered with near cinematic quality.

Much of this can be accomplished with nothing more than a smartphone, some additional LEGO elements and a little patience. On legostarwars.com, three videos have been posted – each no more than a few minutes long, which will give you the basics of improving your LEGO photography, getting started with LEGO animation, and creating microscale LEGO dioramas.

Each short film is introduced by LEGO social media personality, Emmasaurus. In the first, Wes Hamilton talks through ways to take great photos of your LEGO sets with nothing more than a smartphone. Just taking a few moments to think about what you’re trying to achieve – plus one simple trick that seems so obvious afterwards – can create some dramatic images.

Elsewhere, animator Kamil Janko reveals how to make a minifigure walk. Again you’ll need a smartphone, but this time you’ll need to find yourself some free-to-download animation software, plus make a trip to the hardware store. Above all though, stop-motion animation needs a healthy dose of patience. No doubt about it though, the results can be impressive.

Lastly, Jhae Edwards pulls back the curtain on the world of microbuilding or creating a ‘Brickorama’. In the video he creates two very recognisable scenes from the Star Wars universe on 16×16 baseplates, meaning that you won’t have to empty out every last box and bucket of LEGO pieces before you get building.

So if you find yourself with some spare time over the Christmas period and want to do something different, why not fire up the ‘phone, grab some bricks and see what you can come up with?

If you just have to have a new LEGO set to take some photos of, then may we suggest using our affiliate links to buy it. Any purchases you make help support Brick Fanatics. Thanks.