Hey there friends-uh — Country Buildin’ is playing this weekend at BAMcinématek as part of Animation Block Party 2012 Summerfest! It’ll be part of the Animation for Kids Program at noon on both Saturday, July 28th and Sunday, July 29th.

You can purchase tickets and check out the rest of the lineup on the Animation Block website. I’ll definitely be at at least one of the screenings, so if you see me, be sure to say hello!

It was great to hang out and chat with them about the work we do here and within the fan community, as well as the work they both do within the LEGO company to promote the animation side of the hobby.

Also, it turns out Kevin is a stop-motion animator himself, and a big fan of “Little Guys!” Who knew?

Thanks again for visiting, guys! Let me know when you start on some collaborative LEGO animation projects!

We reached our goal yesterday, and then surpassed it, ending at 106% funding. Not too shabby!

A gigantic thank-you to all of our backers, supporters, and everyone who helped in the development of the animatic and campaign business! You can, of course, follow further updates on our Kickstarter project page.

More info to come soon! Woo!

Kickstarter Project Update 4: Why did I set this project to end so early in the morning here?

Jason and the crew over at The Brick Show were nice enough to give our “Little Guys… In Space!” Kickstarter campaign a shout-out! Thanks guys!

Paganomation Little Guys Sequel Campaign – YouTube

Lots of great films, good to catch up with former co-workers… and, of course, the elephant in the room…

We took home two awards! Second Place for Country Buildin’ (shout-out to Jeff Wallenhorst) in the “Commissioned under 2 minutes” category, and “Excellence In Animation” for Red Brick: Pirates of the Caribbean!

Even though we get excellent feedback from our online viewers and YouTube subscribers, it’s always great to have your work acknowledged outside of the computerbox. Thanks to all the folks who worked on these two projects with me, and also to ASIFA and everyone who voted!

And The Winners Are…. | ASIFA-East aNYmator

Our “Red Brick Saga” project got a great write-up over on the Down & Dirty DV blog! Check it out!

Down & Dirty DV | SPOTLIGHT: Animator, David Pagano, Drops Some LEGO Bricks On Ya!

I mentioned before that we’re planning a new sequel to our “Little Guys!” film, and the Kickstarter campaign for the film has just gone live! We’ve put together some pretty cool rewards for the project, including a newly designed Combat Armor “Little Guys!” figure…

It’s great to be back in the “Little Guys!” universe, and we’re very excited to be moving forward a brand-new independent animation project! Even if you can’t support the film monetarily, we could definitely use help spreading the word about it as well.

You can find more information on the “Little Guys… In Space!” Kickstarter page, and we’ve also added tracking widget to our blog sidebar.

Little Guys… In Space! A LEGO® Fan Film From Paganomation | Kickstarter.com

As announced somewhat subtly on our Facebook page, the next film in the “Little Guys!” series is in the works!

And what’s the most logical place to take a franchise in its second installment? Why, outer space, of course!

More information coming soon!

LEGO ReBrick – YouTube

A friend forwarded me this email from Change.org, which urges readers to take action by signing a petition that asks LEGO to advertise all product lines to both boys and girls. This is pretty reasonable — after all, there are girls who love LEGO Star Wars, Harry Potter, City, etc. But man, there is no better way to totally discredit yourself and your position than to base your call-to-arms on totally misleading, spurious information. Let’s take a look at this email, shall we?

Iconic toy brand LEGO recently launched a new line of toys meant just for girls — but two young women, Bailey Shoemaker-Richards and Stephanie Cole, think the products are unfairly “dumbed down” for girls.

I follow you so far. Taken at face value, this seems like a perfectly reasonable criticism to level against the play theme.

The new line is called LadyFigs, and it’s made up of busty, pastel-colored figurines that come with interests like shopping, hair-dressing, and lounging at the beach. The uninspired toys even come with pre-assembled environments — so there is no assembly (or imagination) required.

Wait, what? Okay, hold on — the new line is called “Friends”, the figures are hardly busty, only one of the 28 sets in the line feature a “beach”, and the environments are far from pre-assembled — heck, the flagship set has close to 700 pieces (many of which I want)!

Bailey and Stephanie say they’re frustrated that LEGO is pushing outdated gender roles on girls and cheating them of the opportunity to build and discover. So they took to the internet, blogging about what they call the new “Barbielicious” LEGOs and petitioning the toy company to lose the sexist LadyFigs line and go back to empowering both boys and girls with its original products. Click here to sign Bailey and Stephanie’s petition today.

And now we’re back to reasonable comments. However, the fallacious nature of the preceding paragraph can make even the most logical complaint seem questionable, especially for anyone who knows about LEGO product history (or has done a modicum of research).

LEGO hasn’t always thought its toys were only for boys. In the 1980s, the company was actually celebrated for a major advertising campaign that spotlighted a young girl and her LEGO creation with the tagline “What it is is beautiful.” But since then, LEGO reversed course and decided to market its products only to boys.

This, of course, refers to this ad campaign from the ’80s that was hardly girl-centric but did feature children of both genders playing with LEGO products (and which I don’t remember anyone “celebrating” TLG for). The LEGO Facebook group has been flooded with posts featuring this particular advertisement, despite the fact that a) spamming a Facebook wall to get what you want is almost as ineffective as an internet petition, and b) there are other ads from the campaign that are just as valid but could potentially dilute the petition’s argument.

It should also be noted that the reason LEGO “reversed course” in the mid-2000s to focus on boys was to avoid bankruptcy.

The company claims its research shows girls just don’t appreciate the original LEGO line. But Bailey and Stephanie argue that with LEGO’s renewed emphasis on boys — featuring only boys in its ads and stocking products in the boys’ aisles of toy stores — it’s no wonder young girls wouldn’t think LEGOs were meant for them.

Technically the company claims its research shows girls don’t appreciate modern LEGO lines, and the minifigure in particular. The “original LEGO line” that folks seem to be erroneously nostalgic for hasn’t really existed in a couple of decades.

I do think more of the LEGO commercials could feature girls — it would be really awesome to see a girl-centric “Build Together” spot. But then we’re back to inaccuracies, saying that LEGO products are found in “the boys’ aisles of toy stores”, when anyone who buys LEGO sets knows you find them in the construction toys section.

Bailey and Stephanie’s fight to get LEGO to return to its gender-neutral toys is already making waves, with the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Time weighing in on the issue. But LEGO is stubbornly holding its ground and told Business Week that the LadyFigs launch is a “strategic” move to “reach the other 50 percent of the world’s children,” as if girls have never been part of LEGO’s focus.

Again with “LadyFigs”. I’m not even sure what to say here. It’s doubtful that LEGO will ever return to fully gender-neutral toys (by which I think they mean “plastic primary colored blocks in a bucket”), what with the success of LEGO Star Wars and the other licensed themes. Girls have historically been part of LEGO’s target audience, but I think they’re being fairly ingenuous by admitting that their recent focus has been solely on boys, and then doing five years of research to try and change that.

Public pressure can prove LEGO wrong. If enough people sign Bailey and Stephanie’s petition, it could convince LEGO that the new LadyFigs are bad business and the company should return its focus to empowering boys AND girls with toys that inspire creativity and innovation.

Tell LEGO to stop selling out girls — sign Bailey and Stephanie’s petition today.

I would love to see LEGO empowering boys AND girls with products that inspire creativity and innovation. But this petition request is a really poor way to go about enacting any kind of significant change. Having a lot of people voice their disapproval is probably a good reaction for LEGO to see, but when the voice is shouting a lot of nonsense, it makes it hard to have any kind of productive discussion. And productive discussions are what get things done.

So bear with us, and we’ll see you on the other side. Thanks!

We spent a few months this year putting these four episodes — Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter, Alien Conquest, and Star Wars — together. More airdates (and some behind-the-scenes) to come!

EDIT: Here are the additional airdates for the week!

Nickelodeon: 7/26 @ 3:27pm, 7/30 @ 8:19am and 2:18pm

NickToons: 7/26 @ 6:40pm, 7/29 @ 2:09pm, 7/31 @ 12:09pm

Matt Armstrong (monsterbrick) has taken the Playback-style animation puppet instructions I made (for the LEGO Animation issue of BrickJournal) and gone in some monstrously wonderful directions with it. I heartily approve!

EDIT: Matt has also added The Mummy, Wolfman, and Gill-man (the Creature From the Black Lagoon) to round out the cast. Sweet!

They did the Monster Mash | Flickr – Photo Sharing!

With the blessing of editor Joe Meno, I was given the opportunity to not only concoct four articles of my own, but also to put on my “Feature Editor” hat and cull together some neat content from a variety of talents in the LEGO film world…

- David Pickett on “How to Animate”

- “Inside MindGame Studios” with Zach Macias

- A look behind the scenes with Spastik Chuwawa

- A review of Shatterpoint Entertainment’s “Jericho: the Promise Fulfilled”

- “Playing Nice with Garrett Barati”

- and more!

Plus there’s instructions for how to build one of my “Playback“-style characters, designed by yours truly.

The issue just came out on March 30th, and is now on sale at fine bookstores everywhere (or through the link below)! You can also catch a free preview of the issue here! Be sure to check it out!

BrickJournal 14 : TwoMorrows Publishing, Celebrating The Art & History Of Comics.

YouTube – Adventures of Max: Space Police

YouTube – Adventures of Max: Power Miners

YouTube – Adventures of Max: Atlantis

YouTube – Adventures of Max: City

YouTube – Adventures of Max: Racers