A challenge to all 2006 Regional AVA winners

[Kevin Thorp]

To all 2006 Regional AVA winners:
It's unfortunate that Autodesk doesn't have the resources to judge the Regionals but we can do something to reward the creativity & hard work that goes into these entries.

What if all the 2006 Regional AVA winners sponsored an animation award at their 2007 Regionals?

We (Team 342) won the AVA at the Palmetto Regional :) . This year we're going to present a trophy to the team competing at 2007 Palmetto Regional that creates the best 3D animation. Of course we're disqualified from winning our own award!

This is not connected with the Autodesk Visualization Design Competition, but just to keep things simple we're going to use the same rules (30 seconds long, must use 3ds Max, "Think Green" theme, same judging criteria, etc.).

So, 2006 Regional winners, what do you think? Ready to share the excitement?

[Koko Ed]

To all 2006 Regional AVA winners:
It's unfortunate that Autodesk doesn't have the resources to judge the Regionals but we can do something to reward the creativity & hard work that goes into these entries.

What if all the 2006 Regional AVA winners sponsored an animation award at their 2007 Regionals?

We (Team 342) won the AVA at the Palmetto Regional :) . This year we're going to present a trophy to the team competing at 2007 Palmetto Regional that creates the best 3D animation. Of course we're disqualified from winning our own award!

This is not connected with the Autodesk Visualization Design Competition, but just to keep things simple we're going to use the same rules (30 seconds long, must use 3ds Max, "Think Green" theme, same judging criteria, etc.).

So, 2006 Regional winners, what do you think? Ready to share the excitement?
Sounds like a party to me!

[BuddyB309]

Hmmm... I like it. Being winner of St. Louis last year, I think it would be fun to have an underground competition. How would the grading work?

[RoboJedi75]

We're all for it. We were discussing about placing an animation award on our list of Team Awards. My team's going to New Jersey and Chesapeake.

And here's a scoring option: Get all the animation leaders from the teams at each regional to judge the animations. That would be an unofficial peer judging!

[wt200999]

Is there a way to contact all teams that won from all regionals. Maybe I should mail to the winning team from the SBPLI and/or Rochester regionals :cool:

[BuddyB309]

Is there a way to contact all teams that won from all regionals. Maybe I should mail to the winning team from the SBPLI and/or Rochester regionals :cool:

Or at the reigional you go around asking for the animation leader and then give him an invitation to the judgeing

[T3_1565]

Thats a pretty neat idea!! I like it a lot and I'm not the one who makes the animations

[Ryo Chiba]

Won the Buckeye Regional last year, won't be going there again this year, but I'm eager to join the bandwagon. St. Louis Regional and Boilermaker Regional are ones that our team will attend this year. Already have an idea planned out for the award. :D

I'm ready for the excitement.

[114Klutz]

114 would be happy to host regional animation awards at PNW, SVR, and Sacramento.

[Dan Zollman]

Once I can determine how much of a time commitment it would be to organize this, I could probably help at Philly. Some questions:

How would animations be submitted and viewed by judges? I guess teams could be asked to bring DVDs, and all the peer judges would view them at once?

How can all the teams competing at a given regional be contacted with enough notice before the competition?

Are team-sponsored awards usually presented during the awards ceremony, or separately?

[114Klutz]

114 is willing to set up a webpage to do the voting online.

I would do this, on thursday, voting begins, on friday, the highest two teams are selected, and then run off against eachother.

If a team lacks internet access, they can drop by our pit to cast their votes.

[Lil' Lavery]

116 has been toying with this idea for a little while now, and we will see what happens with VCU. No guarantees at the moment either way.

[Wetzel]

How would animations be submitted and viewed by judges? I guess teams could be asked to bring DVDs, and all the peer judges would view them at once?
Autodesk said that they would still set up a display with the Animations running at the regionals, but they would not be judging them due to a lack of manpower. Seems like we've found that manpower!

Wetzel

[Rick-906]

interesting idea, ill speak to our animation guys...

[Kevin Thorp]

Looks like this grass roots competition is really taking off!

To keep it simple I suggest we keep the same judging criteria that Autodesk uses:

Concept - 35 points
Creativity - 35 points
Technical Execution - 30 points


For judges we have two options

1. Student Judges
Done at the Regional, just like last year. One student from each team that submitted an animation can judge. The Organizer (2006 Regional AVA winner) would have to find a quiet area to set up a TV/DVD player or laptop with all the animations loaded. They would have judging forms printed and arrange viewing times for the student judges. After every judge has submitted their forms the organizer will tally the results & present the trophy.

2. Professional Judges
The Organizer will find a couple local industry or academic professionals (in computer arts and/or broadcast) to judge the animations before the Regionals. The results would be kept top-secret until the trophy is presented to the winning team.

What do you guys think? The first option has more student involvement but could be very difficult to organize.

[BuddyB309]

Looks like this grass roots competition is really taking off!

To keep it simple I suggest we keep the same judging criteria that Auto desk uses:

Concept - 35 points
Creativity - 35 points
Technical Execution - 30 points


For judges we have two options

1. Student Judges
Done at the Regional, just like last year. One student from each team that submitted an animation can judge. The Organizer (2006 Regional AVA winner) would have to find a quiet area to set up a TV/DVD player or laptop with all the animations loaded. They would have judging forms printed and arrange viewing times for the student judges. After every judge has submitted their forms the organizer will tally the results & present the trophy.

2. Professional Judges
The Organizer will find a couple local industry or academic professionals (in computer arts and/or broadcast) to judge the animations before the Regionals. The results would be kept top-secret until the trophy is presented to the winning team.

What do you guys think? The first option has more student involvement but could be very difficult to organize.

I personally like the peer reviews. I know it is hard to organize but I think most animators that submit an animation to the competition would be willing to take time to judge. Also the peer judges will know what it takes to archive the animation. They will know what the other animation team made their own models or just used the default models that came with the program. However, the professors would be unbiased, but the fact that they won't know the program will seem to cause problems.

For example. My friend entered a Lego design competition at the fair. He spent a week coming up with his own Lego scene and he was proud of it. He took it to the fair and put it up on the table and judges started looking at all of the entries. The problem was, the judges didn't know a thing about lego's or any of the Lego kits that were out there and gave the awards to the kids who went to the store, bought a Lego kit, and put it together following the directions that came with it. This competition was suppose to be a creative "come-up-with-your-own-Lego-scene" but the awards were going to the kids that followed directions because the judges didn't know about lego's.

Thats why I think we should go with peer judges. They truly know what it took to get an animation to look the way it does. They understand the time it takes.

[RoboJedi75]

The animations are due before any of the regionals. If we use the FIRST site to find which teams are at each regional, we could each judge them and on thursday or friday we could get together and add up the totals to each team's animation. The team with the highest overall score would receive the award on behalf of the other animation teams.

All a website would need to be is a page with links to the animations of each regional.

If anyone has contacts, we may be able to go onto the field and announce it during the award ceremony. Now that, might as well be a regional AVA...

[114Klutz]

I personally think that peer reviewed judging is a bit too complicated; and it would be far simpler/easier to have a vote + runoff of the top two animations.

But one thing does concern me; what if a team is to give themselves the award? Considering that these are the teams which won the year before, it wouldn't be too unlikely for this to happen.

[Fio003]

The host team would of course have to disqualify themselves. Which is probably very discomforting for them, as they won last year and having tasted victory, want more. Heck, it would definitely be a downside for Team 116...not winning a regional this year will end our streak :ahh: but I think it's a great idea, and it would show Autodesk that we are more dedicated to the regionals than signing a virtual letter. Maybe it will inspire them to get that manpower they're lacking.

[Ryo Chiba]

But one thing does concern me; what if a team is to give themselves the award? Considering that these are the teams which won the year before, it wouldn't be too unlikely for this to happen.

I believe that the award would lose its purpose if a team were to give themselves the award. Any self-respecting team wouldn't do something like that in public, don't you think?

You'd have to either be excessively proud, or very misled, to give yourself an award.

Because the whole point is, animators support animators. We make animations because we learn from them, not to win a shiny trinket.

Personally, I don't care about my team's animation. It'll come out the way it comes out. And you know what? I'm not very proud of it, because it was just a tool for our animation team to learn more about a very complicated subject. The illusion of life, computer graphics, crazy mouse-based user interface, whatever. It's the learning experience that is the award.

So, I think that as long as FIRST teams are still rational, there won't be any self-awards. And they're a lot more fun to give out than receive.

[114Klutz]

I believe that the award would lose its purpose if a team were to give themselves the award. Any self-respecting team wouldn't do something like that in public, don't you think?

You'd have to either be excessively proud, or very misled, to give yourself an award.

Because the whole point is, animators support animators. We make animations because we learn from them, not to win a shiny trinket.

Personally, I don't care about my team's animation. It'll come out the way it comes out. And you know what? I'm not very proud of it, because it was just a tool for our animation team to learn more about a very complicated subject. The illusion of life, computer graphics, crazy mouse-based user interface, whatever. It's the learning experience that is the award.

So, I think that as long as FIRST teams are still rational, there won't be any self-awards. And they're a lot more fun to give out than receive.


I think you missed the point. If a team is issueing awards by taking votes in consideration from other teams, should they simply leave themselves out?

The best option would be to simply disqualify the host team from this years awards, and then give the job of hosting the compettition to this years winners next year....

[BuddyB309]

How about this, the teams that want to vote, vote for the animation entries. The winner of last year will go around and find the animators from the teams that submitted an animation entry and ask them if they could join a private screening and fill out a paper for each animation. If the animator cant make it to the private screening, then they could send a represenative, or set up a separate private screening.

The paper work that the animators will grade off of will be downloaded from chiefdelphi so it is standard accross the nation. Also a team cannot judge their own animation.

This is better than having one team do all the judgeing. Also, if someone cant get the autodesk entries, they will have a dvd playing in the autodesk booth at the reigionals. Someone bring a universal remote so we can control the tv and watch the videos in there (cause the buttons on the side never allow people to skip to another regional. So the tv just cycles over one regional or group of animation the whole time durring the competition.) Also im sure the people at the booth would understand if we ask to barrow the disk and we tell them what its for.

The next thing, who is making the trophey? I think it should be the riegional winner of last year. But one proplem that we have is that not every animator in FIRST logs onto chiefdelphi

[Ted Weisse]

As the winner of this award at the Wisconsin Regional, Team 1716 would be honored to participate in this award system. 1716’s Mentor for this area is a “certified AutoDesk Instructor” for this product and would be willing to do the judging at our regional. We are also going to the Midwest Regional and would be submitting our animation there also. We agree that we should sit out this year at the Wisconsin Regional but still would like to show what we produced this year. If someone would come up with the artwork for say a clear plate award we could machine all of the ones needed for the different region's that want to do this. It could be the same for each with the addition of the regional’s name and the hosting Team’s name and number. We just need the layout and the list of the regions that want to participate as soon as we can. As far as judging, whatever standard is established we would be willing to follow. :cool:

[Kevin Thorp]

We are going to try to contact all the teams attending the Palmetto Regional and set up a viewing/judging room. One student animator from each team will be a judge.

I don't suppose we can use "FIRST" or "Autodesk" in our award engraving, so we'll call it something like the "3D Visualization Award"

Below is the type of trophy we'll present to the winner. A local trophy shop had it in their catalog. It looks something like the FIRST awards:

http://www.corpawds.com/images/acrylics/lg/3c3105.jpg

[rfolea]

We would be willing to host the Peachtree Regional AVA competition ...

FRC 1746.

[RoboJedi75]

Supposedly all the animations will be hosted on the Autodesk site. Every team could score the animations before they even get to the regional. Not everyone will be at the regionals on Thursday, so that doesn't leave too much time to do all the judging...

[legotech25]

If someone would come up with the artwork for say a clear plate award we could machine all of the ones needed for the different region's that want to do this. It could be the same for each with the addition of the regional’s name and the hosting Team’s name and number. We just need the layout and the list of the regions that want to participate as soon as we can.

lol... clear is our specialty. Our team has the capability to make clear awards and ship them to 2006 AVA teams. However, we're not entirely finantially able to "donate" them... We're working with one of our sponsors to get material donated, but shipping costs would be a problem. Would teams be willing to cover shipping/materials if need be? If not, then it might not be entirely possible for us to help out in this way.

Also, we would need a design. If we can get the necessary design, materials, funds, etc., then we could have standard awards at all of the regionals, which would be cool.

[JaneYoung]

then we could have standard awards at all of the regionals, which would be cool.

Standardized, across the board would be very cool...

[Lil' Lavery]

Coming soon, an update from Autodesk on the Autodesk Visualization Award at the
Regional level.
:)