Planning for next year yet?
 

Well, now since our jobs are done, I am wondering, are any of you planning on what you want to do next year for your animation?

I know that if the requirements are the same, that my potential theme will be "we are here to stay" or something like that. Showing people coming into a "bunker" like building by a chopper. And then going down the stairs where our robots are from previous years, perhaps have a voice-over....

Or maybe something similar to a shortened version of this Black Hawk Down trailer. About not "leaving a student behind", teamwork, comradeship, helping others, and achieving our goals....

http://www.apple.com/trailers/columb...down/high.html

So what are your plans?

Re: Planning for next year yet?
 

What are the rules regarding using content made/planned before the kickoff? I understand that there is no way to enforce such rules, but it just seems dishonorable to go out and start working this far in advance. I know this year my team didn't even start to plan the animation until kickoff, and we did fine in competition. How early do you guys start work?

Re: Planning for next year yet?
 

Its always best to start brainstorming during the summer. But more importantly, use the summer to learn, and to see whats possible and realistic. If people really want to work over the summer, I say let em. It not gonna make that much of a difference, I wasted 2 weeks cause it was my first year on the team, and then cracked down the last four, and we did fine. Until Autodesk changes the prompt, there will always be teams workin ahead, it really doesnt bother me that much.

Re: Planning for next year yet?
 

it's hard getting away from the animation aspect of FIRST, so much fun doing it.. this year, i think our animation team did try to raise the bar by focusing on lighting and character animation. I had fun waiting for those long renders... Next year.. hmm... i was thinking of trying out Mental Ray, but it seems complicated. I havent found one simple tutorial for max yet on the basic setup for a realistic render. Maybe i'll try using HDRI...

I definitely agree with Rowe about how teams should brainstorm over the summer and try out new techniques and tools. It really wouldn't be a challenge if teams started their final animation before the season. I dont care, but i just dont think its as fun as it is during the six weeks. Summer is all about learning new stuff and improving your skill.

One thing i hope for next year is that Autodesk changes the theme and adds some flavor to the competition.

Re: Planning for next year yet?
 

For next year, our team is planning on using MX Flash to create a sort of rough and cartoon-looking animation, with rough lines and very baisic shapes representing objects (i.e. solid circles represent weels, sticks w/hook represents an arm) Hopefully this will put our team in a distinctive catagory. And after a disscussion between me and next years animator, he is thinking of adding some Japanese-style action to the animation.

Re: Planning for next year yet?
 

Our team is considering not only working, but doing as much of the animation as possible over the summer. Why? Because we want to be able to work on the robot in the build season. Some may call it cheating, but I call it an innovative schedule that allows students to get the full experience of FIRST.

And I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who spends half his summer brainstorming and working with 3dsmax.

Re: Planning for next year yet?
 

well. what if new members join the team and they want to do animation? what's there to do when majority of it is already done?
i guess there's just an equal amount of negative and positives in doing animation over the summer..

Re: Planning for next year yet?
 

HAHA, no you are not. and...
No offense to newbees, but atleast on my team, there wasnt much new animators could do until they gained a basic understanding of the program. By doing the animation over the summer, the lead animators would actually have more time to devote to teaching. Im just playing devils advocate here, i only plan to experiment over the summer, maybe put together some possible storyboards, but thats it.

Re: Planning for next year yet?
 

Plus, since my team is comprised of two schools, we are allowed to submit two animations if we really want to. So the "veteren" animation could be done over the summer and the "begginers" could be done in the build season.

Re: Planning for next year yet?
 

I think that is an exellent Idea, Maybe our team can try somthing like that as well.

Re: Planning for next year yet?
 

I am currently the only animator on my team and its looking like i'll be doing most of the work this upcoming year as we will have only a few members on our team.. so i'm really trying to get some tests done of the summer, build models, work on lighting and then start working on some concepts by september.. So i'm starting in June and ending in Feb :)

Re: Planning for next year yet?
 

Thats pretty much exactly my situation, work on things during the summer, but dont actaully "officially" start til build, jus start to prepare myself.

Re: Planning for next year yet?
 

Geez rowe procrastinating until build season....tsk tsk tsk. :rolleyes: Yeah hopefully we can go into recruiting mode to get more animators plus the possible new servers will allow us to do more. You also will probably have your own office once we get the mess sorted out. You might want to start thinking about a training day for animators. Probably start developing a presentation for the newer guys.

Re: Planning for next year yet?
 

Our team did this in the fall last year. It really smoothed things out in the build season since we didn't have to go over the basics.

Re: Planning for next year yet?
 

hey, this year i procrastinated until 2 wks into build season, only had 4 wks to do it in, but we did fine. ill be happy if i can go to sleep the night its due. (this year i didnt do so well on a math class cuaz i got no sleep the nite before, that and i neglected my homework for that chapter cuaz it was right during build, oh well :D ) i try to learn from my mistakes, but i rarely do. heh

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.