How One Video Changed My Life…
And launched a studio!
Hi, I’m Paul Hollingsworth, founder of Digital Wizards Studios. We’re best known for our high-end LEGO stop-motion animations and official collaborations with major entertainment brands. Our "success stories" range from viral YouTube sensations to pioneering work in VR animation and incredible indie films playing in film festivals around the globe.
It all started with one video: LEGO Jurassic Park. This project came from a place of love and being a fan. I love Jurassic Park! I watched it with my daughter, and we built our own Jurassic Park out of LEGO! It had been years since there were official Jurassic Park sets, so we built our own. We started with the visitor’s center, jeeps, ford explorers, fencing dino attractions, the cast of characters, and one big pile of bricks! Then, I taught her how to animate the LEGO minifigures. It was amazing because I got to share something I love with someone I love!
The video was an instant success, amassing millions of views. Over one weekend our video was viewed over 400,000 times! My body was buzzing with adrenaline. We were featured on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and in the New York Times.
Let’s take a deeper look at the success of LEGO Jurassic Park and why it did so well:
It’s a feel good story - A father/daughter duo building LEGO was cool; a father teaching his 8 year old daughter how to animate: even cooler!
It was genuine, made with love by a family and friends who loved that Jurassic Park brand. We were so focused on whether we could do it that we didn’t stop to think about whether we should do it!
It was released a few months before the new Jurassic World film, so Jurassic Park was already trending.
We pulled back the curtain on how we made everything. We made a Behind the Scenes video showing all the details and personalities of our friends and family making this brick masterpiece.
It was dripping in WOW factor! We made something so unique and so epic, no one had seen anything like it at that time. Between myself and the team, we were pulling from a massive collection of over $100,000 of LEGO!
Following our viral successes, the studio becomes a go-to for major brands like Harry Potter, Batman, Lord of the Rings, Avengers, Spider-Man and Paw Patrol to create promotional content. We’re being asked to produce awesome engaging content for big brands because they love what we do and how we do it.
Why does stop-motion work in branded content?
In a world of digital tomfoolery and AI, there is a psychological phenomenon where viewers find physical objects more relatable than digital ones. Let’s look at the recent Super Bowl commercials as an example. The 2026 Super Bowl became a "reality check" for AI in advertising. While brands hoped to showcase innovation, the sheer volume of AI-driven commercials (estimated at 23% of all ads during the game) led to significant backlash.
The failure of these commercials can be broken down into three main categories:
Hollow Storytelling: Viewers felt overwhelmed by the “AI Bowl”. The over-saturation made the technology feel like a forced trend and didn’t bring any meaningful improvement to storytelling. How often did you see something and have no idea what the ad was for? The writing and production was lazy and the public reception reflected it.
Uncanny Aesthetics: Audiences found that AI-generated footage prioritized cost-cutting over quality. Many viewers complained that ads appeared disjointed, lacked the emotional resonance typical of Super Bowl ads, or felt like "filler." There were technical artifacts, inaccurate proportions, surreal movement patterns, and synthetic-looking textures. On the biggest screen of the year, distracting "good enough" AI visuals felt noticeably inferior to traditional, human-led production.
Deep-Seated Privacy Concerns: That Ring commercial really scared a lot of people! Behind the mask of their new “Search Party” feature, advertised as a way to help locate lost pets, lurked the slippery slope of a total surveillance state. Many questioned whether the feature could be used to track humans, as it would be powered by artificial intelligence. Where will companies like Ring draw the line between lawful compliance with law enforcement and an abuse of the right to privacy?
Using AI for fast, easy, and cheap content comes at a cost: audience confusion, a lack of trust, and the impression that your brand is cheap. Your brand deserves better!
Unlike stop-motion animation, AI can’t generate a genuine connection. Stop-motion feels tactile: it highlights design, texture, and finish. The sheen of the plastic, the fabric of clothes, or the “click” of two bricks connecting.
It’s the best way to showcase action figures because it displays how the joints move, how the accessories fit, and how the plastic looks under real lights.
It allows for demonstration. We can animate the play patterns, show a transformer changing shape, or build a LEGO set piece by piece in a way that feels achievable and wondrous to a child.
Here’s what’s working well for our 3 biggest brands.
Harry Potter: We’ve produced high-quality stop-motion videos for “Harry Potter Magical Movie Moments”, a web series of scene-by-scene recreations from the movies. Each season features all the new toys from LEGO, Spin Master and Funko Pops. Season 1 is an imaginative “out of the toybox” approach where all brands of toys play together with a handcrafted approach. So our team of amazing artists are sculpting, sewing, painting, and needle-felting incredible sets for these magical toys to be animated in. You can watch the nearly 2 hours of animated content for Harry Potter right here!
When we started, the Harry Potter YouTube channel was at 800,000 subscribers. Now, they have over 2.5 million! LEGO Harry Potter toys are also a year-over-year bestseller; they’ve always been in the top 5 best-selling LEGO Themes.
The Harry Potter films are an excellent franchise that’s over 20 years old, but a new one hasn’t come out since 2011. By creating an animated web series, we’re crafting new content for children to enjoy and hopefully introduce a new audience to the magic of Harry Potter. It acts as another touchpoint for fans and consumers.
In addition, the later films in the series became progressively darker with heightened stakes. The battle between good and evil reached new heights! Recreating scenes from those films with an emphasis on humor with toys allows a younger audience to enjoy them too!
Marvel: Working for Disney on the Avengers LEGO spot for What’s Up Disney Plus was a dream come true! It’s got everything: a clash of heroes and villains, cinematic epic scenes, and our delightful hosts Andre Meadows and Jenny Lorenzo.
The spot was a success because of the relatable influencer hosts, the showcase of a new line of LEGO sets and highly desirable minifigures, and epic action!
Those toys sold extremely well! Like Harry Potter, Marvel has been consistently featured in the top 5 best-selling LEGO Themes.
DC Comics: We’ve produced a number of projects for DC Comics: A Batman Series, Super Pets, Black Adam and the Flash, all part of a series named DC Toybox Adventures.
For Super Pets, we made a series of funny animations revolving around the Fisher Price Super Heros, primarily Krypto and Ace the Bat Hound. For example, what if Batman’s working so much he doesn’t finish his laundry and all of his stinky underwear forms into a giant Laundry Monster and wreaks havoc in the Batcave?
Kids love funny videos! We told the story without dialogue, so it plays well internationally. And because of the web series, it gave kids another entertaining touchpoint to interact with the brand. Even after Super Pets had completed its theatrical run, toys like Krypto and Ace continued to fly off the shelves!
If you’re looking to produce genuine content that connects with your fans and drives sales, book a call today!
