No animation award in 2013! :'(

[Eagleeyedan]

Well, this is it folks. Autdesk blogged today confirming what many had suspected, there will be no Excellence In Design award this year. No CAD or animation :( Here's the link and quote.

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/blog12-7-2012

"Blog Date:
Friday, December 7, 2012 - 11:44
Excellence in Design Award

As many have noticed from looking at the 2013 FRC Administrative Manual, the Excellence in Design Award, sponsored by Autodesk, will not be part of our 2013 season. I had intended to give more advance notice of this change, but things did not go as I had expected, and I’m sorry about that. While a relatively small number of teams – less than 50 – submitted for this award last year, I recognize that for the teams that did submit, this represented a significant portion of the effort they put forth for the season. Autodesk remains very committed to supporting the mission of FIRST, but wants to take this season to consider ways they could allow more FRC team members to explore the software-aided design and showcase sides of the FRC experience. We support their approach on this.

For teams that were planning to submit for this award in 2013, consider this: when a change gets presented to you, even an undesired change, it’s often a great opportunity to step back and evaluate the ‘whats’ and ‘whys’ of your activities. You may find new and exciting ways your animation sub-team can contribute this year. Here’s one idea: the new Digital Media Award will be looking at the many ways teams get the message out about themselves and FIRST. Could animation be part of your marketing strategy? "

[dcarr]

There is already a thread about this blog post...

[Kevin Thorp]

I think this is a good place to discuss this topic.

I hate to see the contest go. I hope another company or organization will step in to sponsor 3D animation. Probably too late for this year.:(

[Lil' Lavery]

This is really unfortunate, especially for long-standing and highly organized animation groups. I know several teams, like 103 and 116, took as much pride in their animation efforts as they did in their robots. It's a real shame that FIRST no longer explicitly values computer animation as an inspirational tool.

[wilsonmw04]

This is really unfortunate, especially for long-standing and highly organized animation groups. I know several teams, like 103 and 116, took as much pride in their animation efforts as they did in their robots. It's a real shame that FIRST no longer explicitly values computer animation as an inspirational tool.

We finally got a group together to tackle animation. We just finished our safety submission. Now I have to tell them there isn't anything else for them to compete in. Sad, really.

[Hallry]

There is already a thread about this blog post, found here (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=109896&highlight=excellence%20in%20design).