This week saw the premiere of a new Epic Rap Battle of History, which utilizes lego stop-motion animation to blend the worlds of Harry Potter and Star Wars. The lines and puns delivered by Luke and Harry, portrayed by EpicLloyd and NicePeter, are filled with nerdy references to the wider worlds each of the characters inhabits.
Fans of the series might be familiar with the Thor Vs. Zeus episode of Epic Rap Battles of History, which was also directed in Lego fashion, by Forrest Whaley. However, to create the newest video, the ERB guys reached back out to him and offered him the entire budget for the new episode.
We reached out to Forrest to learn more about the animation style and lego work that went into making the video. We learned about how the budget affected production speed and allowed him to bring together a team of animators and Lego masters.
"Being able to have this size budget for this scale of a project is nice. Because it's not multiple videos, it's not over 10 minutes; it's pretty scaled-down. I mean, it's a long Epic Rap Battle, but it's not that long of a video overall. Once you start hiring additional animators and putting a plan in place, things start to move really quickly. And that's exciting because every single day, you're getting animation sent. Like, in this case, we had animators who were working remotely, and it was exciting to be able to give them a direction and then to have stuff flying in, and putting it in the edit; we assembled everything inside like two months.
I try to make sure everything looks like it was built from Legos. So you're not substituting or making compromises anywhere. Like the hyperspace tunnel, like I wanted that to be built out of Legos, and thankfully I have my buddy Gus, he does these insane Lego CGI animations on the same level as The Lego Movie. So for certain key shots like that, where it would be impossible for me to build a structure of that size and scale, I farmed that out to him, and he came back with those out of this world visuals."
Listen to our full chat with Lego Harry Potter Vs. Luke Skywalker animation director Forrest Whaley and be sure to watch the video for yourself below! Don't forget to share your thoughts in the usual spot!
*This interview has been edited for clarity.*
Epic Rap Battles of History: Harry Potter vs Luke Skywalker Luke Skywalker battles Harry Potter in a magical rap. Who won? Who’s next? You decide!
Check out more Epic Rap Battle of History here!