Ask a student what types of toys they always found themselves playing with as a child, and one is sure to find a student who will answer with Legos.  The little interconnected pieces brought ideas to reality, as they could be used to construct cars and castles, develop characters and cosmoses.  But no matter how robust their imaginations were, or how realistic their constructions, the plastic pieces never sprung to life.

But senior Eric Wen has the power to do that.  And no, he is not a magician.

Wen brings Legos to life through the medium of stop-motion animation, and creates videos that he shares on YouTube.

“I’d make movies with my cousin every time we visited, and that was a lot of fun,” Wen said.  “Lego once did a contest that asked for stop-motion animation videos and I tried doing it.”

This was all Wen needed to propel his interest in stop-motion, and has, since then, self-directed and produced Lego animation videos, some of which have garnered over two-hundred thousand views on YouTube.

“The video was really bad,” Wen said about his first Lego contest, “But I realized it was something I was really interested in and something that I could do and improve at.”

Wen said he first started posting Star Wars stop-motion animation videos on his account about seven years ago.  Since then, he has made renditions of Indiana Jones, Batman, and James Bond as well.

Wen said the first Star Wars video he posted online gathered around one-hundred views in a couple of weeks.

“I don’t really know why people watched it,” Wen said. “It was pretty bad, but it encouraged me to keep trying and do better.”

Wen’s success as an animator has not gone unnoticed, and Wen said a group of stop-motion animators on YouTube complimented his works.

Wen said that the usual planning process includes imagining what the story will look like in his head and how it will be played out.  However, the actual filming takes longer.

“A man running used to take about ten minutes, but now it will take way longer,” Wen said.  “Some shots take me up to thirty minutes, but it doesn’t feel like that long.”

Wen also has no deficiency of materials and inspiration.  He said he watches movies for soundtrack inspiration and relies on his three younger siblings for Lego pieces.

Now, with the stress and workload of high school, Wen said he has been unable to continue his plans for a new Star Wars video that he started at the beginning of high school.

“It was originally going to be a test video, but I liked it, and told myself I would make a little story,” Wen said.  “It then turned into a really long project that has been on and off, sometimes sitting there for months at a time.”

Wen said he has no timetable for its completion.  For now, he is still putting the pieces together.