Random thoughts that occur while watchin anims
 

Has anyone else noticed the specialization of animators?
I myself specialize in character modeling and animation (organics), others have mechanical abilities. (which completely elude me)
In the real world animators would be divided into such teams when working on a project. Its sad how one or two people have to do the work of many, and be good at it. woudnt it be cool to have all the top animators work on something as a team. ^__^
That would be amazing indeed.

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I smell a major project comming on! :D

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That might be fun. I specialize in box-modeling (though I'm moving towards organic, it just takes longer so I haven't had much experience with it in the animations), and the actual animation, not characters or riggings which confuse me a lot.

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If you ever seen any of Roushey's work you won't have to worry about the character design. He's got that down to a science.

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I specialize in just about anything, modeling, and texturing, not too good w/ fx, and animation. what do you have in mind that all the animators should work on?

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I specialize in storyboard, concept, extreme nit-picking, and ensuring the overall flow of the animation. At competitions, I do animation scouting. ...I can't do any animation at all. The farthest progress I've made on 3ds max is making a few boxes and funny globby aliens and making them dance. And texturize. I can so spot a error from a mile away and dash over and jab at the figure and tell you what's wrong, though I can't fix 99% on my own (read: max crashes & beeps & dies).
I really hope that I can do some basic modeling by next year...

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I've been pondering the idea for a while of a separate animation competition, imagine what FIRST did for science, technology, & engineering, imagine what FIRST A+nimation Challenge (my name) could do for art & technology.

Imagine having a separate competition where you were given a problem statement (in terms of what the animation is about), a time (2 months), and the tools. The competition could be held locally and nationally, it could tie in with traditional FIRST program like it does now, but also have an addition reach outside of it. Think of the synergy! The animation teams come and see the tournament on Saturday, judge the entries, then after the regional winners, they announce the animation winners.

I see a day when the a FIRST team is a hub, with regular major meetings. One spoke to the hub will be the robotics challenge, another for animation, another for Lego League, and another for VEX. But at the same time animation teams could sign up for the competition outside of FIRST. After a $2000 registration, the team gets all the software needed to compete. They'll upload the animations to the server just like now after 2 months, then there will be an animation competition held around the country in current FIRST regionals and outside of them. We could have the TSA type "design & make in a day" competition and the awards they give out, then the 2 month contest awards.

How does that sound? Cool? I think it would really catch on. I could see major motion picture companies signing people up for this.

But the main problem is that it doesn't fit into Dean's theme of changing the world. This helps the same thing FIRST is trying to compete against, mindless entertainment. FIRST is for getting people into engineering and science, how does this fit in? Will FIRST have to widen it's mission beyond inspiring kids into science and engineering? Will FIRST focus on chaining the culture into a place of technology and understanding, of positive attitudes?

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Man Roushey, you got quite a team going here. I think that you guys should contact FIRST and tell them that you have a team of the Top animators from all the teams and you want them to give you a project. I'm sure theyd be more then happy to do something. Maybe they could have you guys do the Game animations each year or something.

(P.S. congrats on getting into RIT, though im not suprised as everyone says on here, you are the KING of animation, im sure it will get you far :D )

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Quite honestly I never expected so many animators interested, and was speaking purely in hypothetical terms. A project of this magnitude would be extremely complicated to organize, as well as execute. If people are really serious about starting something up, I would be more than willing to help out. I just hope everyone who signs on knows exactly what they’re getting into. First and foremost, we should think about the topic of the animation. If we’re gonna’ “get this party started” here’s how I see the schedule.

1. Team selection. (Some form of application process)
2. Concept planning & storyboarding.
3. Delegation. (who does what)
4. Content Creation.
5. Editing & sound.

I shall say this. Unless everyone takes the project seriously (Whatever we decide on) it will not be worth it.

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Hey! Now you are stepping on my turf!! :)

Seriously, I really like the idea of a "meta-team animation project." It could be very, very cool. If any of you are seriously interested in doing something like this, speak up now. I will be more than happy to bring this up with folks at FIRST and see if they might have an appropriate project. Some possibilities that I can think of might include:

- instruction animations for advaned kit-of-parts assemblies (e.g. showing how to assemble the transmissions from this year's KOP)
- companion animations for the "Guidelines" documents, to illustrate basic robot construction concepts
- "message" animations that help illustrate the philosophy and impact of FIRST (including growth, history, distribution of teams, etc.); animated graphics with a lot of information content
- a "Super AVA" entry - take the basic Autodesk challenge, but see what you could do with it if you had six months instead of six weeks, and lots of animators collaborating instead of just a few folks on one team (e.g. establish the ultimate animation example to which others can aspire)
- etc etc etc

-dave

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I would be interested in something like this. I'm fairly new to 3ds max, but my team's animation turned out pretty well. I'm alright with modelling, haven't done much animation. Check out my team (114)'s animation on streamline.

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I REALLY like the idea of working with some animation gods out there. My team was relatively inexperienced (and lazy) this year and I would love the opportunity to learn from others as well as instructing, especially in a group project instead of tutorials. Hopefully this works out.

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This is a great idea, i love it!

For the past two years, I've been learning different lighting techniques and rendering methods; always trying to get photoreaslitic renderings. I'd love to work with such a talented group.

"A Super AVA", that sounds fun. This could be an opportunity to inspire other teams and bring some life to the animation competition.

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This sounds great- And to make sure we all have efficient computing Equipment, we can talk to our pals at JPL - LOL

Sound like a great Idea guys- But to pullit off- you'll need a staging server to pull and post files to. As Roush hinted- massive coordination.

The point would be (based on the first Post) to get the Specialists working on the Specific project areas. Very compartmentalized. Our team has had the luxury of doing that the last 2-3 years. We have Lighting- Modeling- Texturing- Animation- Camera-EFX People. There is overlap and some do multiple areas. But we have the Top person Work with the others- so they learn from eachother. It'll be a good way to teach others (If you document along the way.-- Since most people aren't in the same room)

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Well here's what I had in mind.
We kickoff after nationals, and work all the way up to next years Kickoff, at which time the animation would be unveiled shows, perhaps at the kickoff its-self?) That would be amazing, as well as inspire future animators. (Not to mention Hone the skills of some newcomers, thus "raising the bar" for next years competition.) Furthermore, I love the concept of documenting your progress. These logs could later be compiled into tutorials or something of that nature. At the very least they would give the "fresh meat" a step by step walk-threw of how to make their own animation.

Anyways, I say we submit this idea to FIRST, and get an all-star team together. Planning would be hard, but could be done via AIM chatrooms or something of the sort.( Not a big fan of hyper evil long distance charges) As for the animating its self, thanks to the sub-team setup, we could squeeze by with weekly progress reports and a FTP server. Sub-teams could upload their work (as a backup) with their latest report. Which would also contain their log for that session. Although it would be alot of work, I personally think it would be amazing by and and all standards.

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I already am familiar with doing projects online with a team :P (www.russianassault.com),

anyways this would be something that i would be interested in because i know the outcome will most definately be worth it! :D

oh yeah i should inform my partner in crime about this. :p

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Instead of using an ftp, I think a CVS server would suit us better, especially if we want to document the progress for others. Just my $0.02.

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Hey Roushey -

What about an animation describing the Chairmans Award, or the FIRST Hall of Fame? I know I've had a hard time describing it to people that aren't familiar with the competition.

Or, at competitions, instead of having an announcer read each award description - a brief clip introducing each award.

just ideas.

Keep up the great work man!

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what about setting up a blogger account @ www.blogger.com? I know that multiple members can post under one blog, maybe the animators selected could use that to discuss and show work in progress.

some thoughts on the member selection process:
-should have at least one year of experience with FIRST animation competition
-should currently be in high school and on a FIRST team
-should compile personal works and anything done for your robotics team
-an essay? :D indicating which role you want to apply for and describe in detail how you would go about contributing to the project and knowledge on your role. (i.e. if you're applying to do modeling, write something that shows you have knowledge in that area.)

:)

-kevin

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I love the Idea of having little clips that introduce the nominees for each award possibly, or ones that describe what each award will be, that would be like any movie award shows:)

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Not being an animator myself, I love the FIRST program and ALL of the ideas so far on this thread. So i say we should start setting up a server outside this or someone make a website(be creative with the title) Even get it a registred .com or .org. Im not even an animator and would be willing to pay for this. What a mark we would all leave on FIRST if we got this going and it continued. Like Roushey would say "Amazing on all counts"

So someone with some ambition get us going on step one, the website or our own blogger or something to get us rolling. Then we can discuss ideas there and figure out where we're going with this. Cause i really think were on to something :D . I would do it but i am not an animator and dont know how you guys want to do this. I'm simply making sure this idea dosent die in this thread.

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Count me in! I specialize in spline modeling and environmental design. I know how to use all the reactor functions as well. Sadly, my organics and lighting are terrible. For those of you who haven't seen any of my work, here's something from this year: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...entaclebot.jpg

and somthing from last year:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2.../LASTSHOT2.jpg

(Like I said, I'm terrible at organics, so i had to use the same facial tutorial for both years :rolleyes: )

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I'm in. Here's some of my work.

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heres some of mine...

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Give me a quick, bulleted summary of an animation and I can do a professional storyboard...even colored, if needed:

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Hey takieddine, your mapping is awesome!!! I'm going to have to learn from you sometime.

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Characters and Animation.

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What you ought to be really doing is running a charater animation seminar at the championship. That is one serious set of skills you got there, young man.

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Hey roushey, are those photoskins on the faces, and bodies of the characters?

i couldnt really tell, maybe tis the dramatic lighting. :rolleyes:

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Sorry if this is gonna Kill some of you 56k'ers






and everyone's favorite :D



my highs are modeling/texturing, not so much animation i know basics.

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Yes, I do use quite a few photoskins, in my exprence, I've found PS's to be the easiest way to get good looking skinds in a (very) short period of time.(and time is quite scarce.) All's you need is some handy photoshop aciton and a digi-cam. Let me say that using photoskins is probibly the worst way to do things because it makes other content (that you can't take cam shots of.) look 'lacking' next to the your model with a wonderful texture. Furthermore, simply using a photoskin will not get the job done. It must be used in conjunction with bumpmapping as well as specular mapping. ( Render of me above) If you're lazy (like me) you can add your fancy photoskin as a spec map and it turns out pretty well.
Latley ive been trying to use (what I think to be the best method) of using hand painted skins (not real paint... photoshop) as well as photoskins. In addition you can make a simple max material look rather nice without any skins at all. (Flesh-tone on the 'female' model above.)

ANYWAY, that lengthy slideshow aside, lets get down to buisness.
First things first. Before we can get started we need several things. A website, a server for hoasting files, a team (lol), and a project leader(s). Perhaps that 'blogg' deal could help too, but its not needed right away. We must also find out how to get all these things. (Hopefully without costing any money) From what ive seen here, as well in your animations assemble'n the team is no issue at all. The topic and web-space, however will be more difficult. *shrug* seeing as how so many people want to do this, why not just get this shindig started. Does anyone have any objections to myself heading the project? (If so, no worries, we'll just get everyone interested together and take a vote of sorts)

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I personally have no objection, seeing that YOU are the one who came up with the idea!

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I second that. :)

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Well im jumping the gun a bit, but I went ahead and got one o those free forums for us. http://roushey.proboards34.com/ Anyhoo, they're open to pretty much anyone. Anyhoo, I suggest anyone interested in following, or joining the project just bookmark it and leave it be 'till we start rollin.

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I'm definitely no 3ds max guru. I'm proficient but not nearly at the levels of many of you. However, I'm particularly skilled in NLE software (FCP & Premiere), Compositing/Color Correction Tools (2+ yr. experience in Shake), video pacing, and video compression.

Some of my work from last year:

http://homepage.mac.com/av11d/newShake/theBlob.mov
An animated blob from maya composited on a still photo. Used distortion, color-correction, and compositing tools in Shake to accomplish.

http://homepage.mac.com/av11d/newSha...mitecurves.mov
Used shake's hermite curves to create smooth animated text. I think I was trying to replicate a blockbuster commercial.. not sure.

http://homepage.mac.com/av11d/newSha..._text_test.mov
Using distortion and DoF effects to create a shaky 2d text in a 3d environment. I usually prefer AE for this type of work... but I was just experimenting with Shake.

I'm also good at compressing videos for the web. I've researched all the available codecs and am good at choosing bit-rates and codecs based on the amount movement and color saturation of the videos.

I'd love to participate in this event. Just send me a PM if you want me to help out. :)

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Okey dokey.

Everyone who wants in for this project (there will be no cuts) drop me an email at: Tadakichisan@gmail.com Just say your name and a brief discription of what you plan on doing for the project. If your a rookie, cheers. You can observe, learn, & hone your skills for next year. Basically, everyone who wants in, is in. Mentors, Vets, and rookie's alike. (Mentor input is always welcome. Perhaps the mentors will learn a few new tricks too)