When it came out in 2001, it was the first real computer-animated Lego movie.

… but it hasn't aged that well.

"Incredible!"

"Fantastic."

Thirteen years later, The Lego Movie looked like this:

Let's watch that again.

This is 2001.

"There you have it."

And this is 2014.

"Yes, that's me."

That is a huge difference.

Here's how they made it happen.

“My name is Grant Freckelton, I'm a production designer at Animal Logic.”

He's overseen the animation style of movies like Legend of the Guardians, 300, and more

recently, The Lego Movie, with co-directors Chris Miller and Phil Lord.

“Chris and Phil were determined to sort of make sure the audience was confused about

what they were seeing.

You know is it actually stop motion, or is it CG film?”

And that became a big debate.

Before the movie came out, there was a lot of conversation about whether the movie was

stop motion or computer animation.

"It is, I would say 99% CG animation, but it respects the rules of stop motion animation,

and is designed to emulate that style.”

To understand what made that style so unique, you have to look back at what Lego movies

used to look like.

Early productions for themes like Bionicle, Star Wars, and Batman helped establish the

whimsical feel of Lego movies — but the animation didn't fit the physics of the

toy itself.

“There was this tendency to sort of treat the plastic like it was flexible rubber, which

meant that the characters could flex and move a lot more than they might be able to in real

life.”

That style is typical of more traditional computer animation, like what you'd expect

to see in a Pixar movie.

Take a shot like this, for example.

The background isn't made of actual blocks, plastic limbs are bending in ways they couldn't,

and the faces are a bizarre blend of skin-like texture and Lego geometry.

It doesn't look like a scene you could make at home with your own Legos.

Compare that to scenes from The Lego Movie, where everything — gunshots, smoke, water,

fire, explosions, clouds, even mud on the camera lens — are all made up of Lego pieces as

they look in real life.

“We respected the hardness of the plastic by not necessarily bending on the elbow, which

you can't do on a real Lego minifig.”

That means that any movement you see onscreen simulates the adjustment or replacement of

an individual Lego piece.

A joint or facial expression will never actually bend or stretch — it'll either move slightly

or be replaced by another piece.

Early Lego movies lacked that level of discipline.

They struggled because they fought back against the limitations of the medium instead of embracing them.

But the creators of the Lego Movie saw things differently.

“Characters that have limitations force you to find solutions and charming ways of doing things

in different ways.

I mean, look at R2-D2: he's like, the ultimate limited character, he's basically a bin

with wheels that makes beeping noises, and that's all he's got to work with.

And yet he's a really charming character and everybody loves him. Same with BB-8.

And other characters. Same with the Muppets, they're essentially sock puppets with googly eyes

that you don't really have much control over.

But it's from those limitations that you actually get a lot of charm.”

Every now and then, the Lego movie animators would let some joints overextend slightly

to make room for a nod or a shrug of the shoulders...

But overall, sticking to the plastic rule made for a believable movie.

You can freeze frame any part of the Lego Movie and look at a scene that you could practically

make at home.

“We were always trying to echo and hark back to how a child might make a film.

So we would alternate between thinking like responsible filmmakers working on a large-budget

Warner Brothers animated film, and then we would suddenly approach a scene as if we were

like a kid animating in their basement.”

But the history of Lego movies actually does start with kids animating in their basements.

In 1973, two Danish cousins, aged 10 and 12, shot a short film called Journey to the Moon

on Super 8 film.

They made it for their grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary — and it's widely

considered to be the first time anyone made a motion picture with Lego blocks.

Note that the “people” in this film are just little cylinder blocks — this was before

any version of the minifigure design came out.

Movies like this came to be known as “Brickfilms.”

When fans were making these at home, they shot them in traditional stop motion.

Footage was usually shot “on twos,” which meant that they would take 12 pictures — adjusting

the characters every other frame — to make one second of film.

Shooting “on ones” meant taking 24 pictures per second — this was usually reserved for

making faster movements like running look smoother.

When the Danish cousins sent their movie to the managing director of the Lego Group, they

were rewarded with a tour of the Lego factory and sent home with large Lego sets.

But Lego hasn't always had the most positive reaction to homemade fan films like this one.

Between 1985 and 1989, a teenage animator named Lindsay Fleay worked on a 16-minute

short called The Magic Portal.

He used borrowed equipment to shoot it in his parents' basement.

Before entering festivals and competitions, Fleay sent the film to Lego to see if they

were interested in doing something with it.

At first, Lego responded with a letter of approval.

But soon, the company started expressing legal concerns and issued a letter demanding Fleay

surrender all copies of the film within seven days.

Lego ultimately backed down, but Fleay had already missed out on most major film festivals

by then.

Fleay actually went on to work at Animal Logic.

He left before production on Lego projects began, but his movie had a huge influence

on the world of Brickfilms.

“If you look at the live action portion of The Lego Movie, you'll see

Finn, the little kid, holds up a sort of cardboard tube and across the side is written Magic Portal."

The Lego Movie, of course, was a huge technical feat.

There are 15,080,330 animated Lego pieces and 182 unique minifigures in the movie.

Early mockups of buildings and vehicles were drafted on a free software called Lego Digital Designer

Later on, in the animation software Maya, each brick was given profiles for fingerprints,

dents, seam lines, scratches, and dust.

It's hard to imagine what The Lego Movie would be if it weren't for the legacy of

these early home experiments.

Where most animated films use soft lighting modeled after paintings, The Lego Movie's

lighting was harsh, replicating the actual lamps that animators like Fleay used.

Playful non-stop motion interludes — like levitation via fishing line — were part

of Journey to the Moon long before they appeared in The Lego Movie.

Even the final break from the Lego world into the real world to meet a human creator parallels

The Magic Portal really closely.

Ah, my film!

It's easy to miss on-screen, but The Lego Movie pays tribute to fan films in the background

of this scene — these four clips are shorts submitted by fans.

“Look at all these things that people built!”

The homage was a nod to the fans.

By doing that, the movie embraced the idea that amateur creators matter — and sometimes,

the way they handle source material is far better than the way major studios are used to doing it.

If you want to try any of this at home, you can actually use the same software that the

animators of The Lego Movie used.

It's called Lego Digital Designer, it's totally free off the internet.

When I talked to Grant Freckelton, he challenged me to make this sort of pig-drawn carriage.

I tried.

I got the pigs, I got the wheels, but not much else.

It's very, very difficult.