Jon Rolph is a talented British stop-motion animator and freelance creative. The chances are that many of us will have seen Jon’s work in various LEGO® advertising campaigns. It’s well worth taking a look on his website to see if you recognise any. For those who are just starting out, Jon’s YouTube channel is also worth a look. He has uploaded various animated videos, the oldest of which date back to when he was just 13 years old. They offer a clear illustration of how he has developed and honed his skills over the past 10 years and should offer great encouragement to anyone just starting out in animation.
Rolph’s contribution to Brick by Brick is ‘Paint’, a beautiful animation in which he has used LEGO® brick canvas, paints and paintbrushes to ‘paint’ a recreation of the artwork ‘Composition II in Red, Blue and Yellow’ created by Dutch artist, Piet Mondrian in 1929. Apparently simply shot from above, it features Lego paint and Lego brushstrokes, and is all beautifully animated without the aid of any specialised animation software. In reality it is more complicated than it seems. As it is Jon’s hands you see in the video, and he was animating without help, he was faced with the challenge of smoothly animating his hands and repositioning the LEGO® bricks between shots. He solved this problem by animating his hands separately, then editing the frames together in post production. Jon created the animation in 2015 at age 19, during a gap year before starting his fine art degree course.
Find out more about Jon Rolph, and see more of his work (including those LEGO® Minecraft ads) at https://jon-rolph.co.uk/
