Being a typical 11 year old boy, LV loves anything to do with computers, movies and video games. So when he was given the chance to review the Stikbot Pirate Movie set he was over the moon!
We had one lonely little stikbot already that LV hadn’t really known what to do with yet, but as soon as the Movie set arrived, and he saw the costume stickers, he started planning his epic battle between the pirates and the continental soldiers!
The set comes with everything you need to create a stage for your movie, we just added a big blue background with the help of an old sleeping bag.
The instructions are very simple to follow. You just pop the numbered pieces out of the page and slot them altogether. Everything is numbered, even the holes! Apart from a couple of fiddly bits LV managed to assemble everything by himself, although younger children will probably need a fair bit of help. The pieces are made from what looks like laminated foam, they are pretty sturdy, but longer, thinner pieces like the flagpoles might easily get bent if you are a bit heavy handed with them.
The Pirate Movie Set comes with one Stikbot, who is already dressed as a pirate captain, and there is also a page full of other costumes to choose from. These can be a bit fiddly to get off the page, LV couldn’t do it as he has no nails, I have nails but still struggled getting the plastic sticker off the paper! Not sure where I was going wrong but I got there eventually and the pieces were all shaped perfectly to go on to the stikbots body parts. The bodies are articulated which makes it very easy to pose your characters as you like and when they are on a flat surface they are very good at staying stood up, even when they are holding themselves in odd positions.
The set also contains a full array of weapons that the stikbots hold with the help of these little white clips that slip over their ‘hands’ which are actually suction cups. The suction cups are also on the feet too and they are great for getting your Stikbot to climb up or down anywhere!
We had a few practice runs so we could figure out how much to move the figures to stop them looking like they were bouncing around the set. We also learnt how important it was not to move the camera AT ALL, or the scenery looks like it’s all swaying in the wind! We don’t have a tripod for my phone but a shoebox and some blu tack to hold the phone still worked great for us.
We used the Stikbot app to create the actual movie. It was very simple to do, it is just a case of taking the pictures and the app does the rest of the work for you! Once you’ve finished taking your pictures you can then either add sound effects or music that are already available, or record your own voices over your video.
Here is LV’s finished Stikbot Pirate Movie:
What do you think? I think he did a fantastic job! It may only be 7 seconds long, but those 7 seconds took pretty much an hour and a lot of patience to create!
LV gives the Stikbot Pirate Movie set a big thumbs up and can’t wait to get creating more movies soon!
The Stikbot Pirate Movie set is available to buy from many stores including Amazon. The following link is an affiliate link meaning if you purchase the set after clicking through I will get a small percentage from the sale. This won’t cost you anything extra though!