Who ever said dwarves aren't strong?

Dwarves are strong, right? Surely one boulder wouldn't be a problem? You thought wrong, my friend.

I animated this in July and, after remaking my studio, forgot I'd ever done it. Here it is in it's full, mishmashed glory! Half the editing was done in Premiere Elements, and half in Premiere Pro, and half the effects were done in VisionLab, the other half done in After Effects. Thought I'd edit it and upload since I didn't end up doing THAC this year (that's the Twenty-four Hour Animation Contest, over on BricksInMotion.com).

I know - light flicker. It's not something I can solve very easily right now, so we'll all have to learn to get along with it. If I fuss about it too much, I won't get any videos made, and we don't want that now do we?

At the time, I was just about to move my studio setup from one side of my room to the other, because of space issues (which I still suffer from), and this was the last thing I ever animated in that old setup. Believe it or not, this was right in front of a window; thin blinds and a layer of black [insert name of mysterious fabric here] were all that stood between my animations and sunlight. Probably the worst idea for a studio location ever.

You'll notice the minifigs are all flesh-tone - I hadn't used any of those faces for anything other than the sets they came from (e.g. the wizard's face is from a Pirates of the Carribean set) so I wanted to see how they looked used for my own made-up characters. They work well, although the nostalgic voice in the back of my head says yellow will always be the colour of LEGO. Sorry, Jack Sparrow.

Nerd note: the face for the dwarf is the LEGO General Zod face, hence the heat vision. It's a really nerdy joke. Sometimes I just start drowning in my own geekery.

On January 1st (or thereabouts) I'll be uploading a 2013 Test Compilation, and then in 2014 I'll be uploading videos more regularly (I promise, this time!). I've already started working on a whole bunch of things (some scripted, some partially animated) and I'm still trying to re-edit Istari Halloween so that it's vaguely viewable. This video here, this dwarfy thing, is just to wet your appetite in the meantime.