Re: Planning for next year yet?
 

Rowe, i prefer the attitude; "Mistakes? what mistakes?" therefor there isn't anyting to attempt to fix and not end up fixing. Ok so i'm joking, I definitly have alot of personal stuff to clear up if i plan on doing year book, drama, robotics, and senior video next year.. and keep 3.6 minimum. Certainily didn't happen this semester. Lets see what other random 1097 guys will comment in here.
Animation has the exact same problems those of us building the robot have. Alot of people. Alot of talent... (ok so maybe not that one for animation, not knocking you rowe, just saying we don't have 10 Rowes around,) and despite people being "interested" in animation, when it comes down to it, deadlines need to be met, and jobs need to get done, which is typically done by a a small minority of the team despite the people interested no matter how many subcommittees and divisions you make and no matter how much dead wood you prune in the process of growing into a stronger team. I dont know if we'll ever truly solve that problem fully. But as Glasser says, "FIRST is real life with training wheels." (That may be someone else's quote also, if so props to you.)

Re: Planning for next year yet?
 

I can practice but every year I end up with a new animation team every year and I won't find out who they are til January.
We really insist the kids do as much of the animation as possible. We insist they have thier hands in every aspect of the robot, website and Chairman's Award submission as much as humanly possible no matter what their level of skill is.
It's just the way we do things.

Re: Planning for next year yet?
 

I plan on just training my animators in various modeling types and animating. All of the modeling and animating should be done during the build season, but I have already been brainstorming ideas. I definitely do not plan to finish (or even get more than 5 seconds) of the animation done before build.

Re: Planning for next year yet?
 

Yeah I am a bit embarassed to have not only storyboards and script, but actual final models and animated scenes done for next year's. It features a photogrammetry shot of the Georgia Dome fast forwarding into a city populated by robots helping humans. (the first part is actually done.)

Though most of it will probably be trashed, as the script is too complicated and it will suffer from the same pacing problems as this year's. Also I have a tv miniseries to work on.

Re: Planning for next year yet?
 

The kids do as much of the animation as possible? Big deal. Shouldn't they be doing the entire animation? It seems ridiculous to me that other teams are getting help from adults on their animations. Our "advisors" basically babysit us to make sure we're not breaking any school rules. Our robot and animation are entirely student planned and executed. Maybe our robot has never won, and our animation has only one once in 7 years, but at least we have some integrity.

Re: Planning for next year yet?
 

Why would it be fair to have adults help build the robot but not the animation?

I mean, my team has never won an animation award, and the animation has always been almost 100% student made (the robot is usually imported from CAD, which the mentors have a hand in). I wish we had some more mentor help to show us how to do things and help us through tricky tasks. Mentorship is a key part of FIRST, why should animators have to build their project entirely on their own while the robot group can tap into the expertise of any of the people around them?

Re: Planning for next year yet?
 

You misunderstand. Our advisors don't do anything with the robot or the animation. They are only around due to legal restrictions saying we need adults present.