[mikexstudios]

I totally agree with Eugene Marinelli. His striking arguments have been carefully contrived, and he has throughly presented many great points.

In robot designing and building, students have mentors and engineers helping them, while students working on animation usually do not have mentors or anyone with an astute knowledge of the program. Students have to take it upon themselves to meticulously learn the program and produce an animation all by themselves! Usually, the animation team is encompassed by no larger than 5 students. Throwing a few callow students into an industrial 3d modeling and animation program, and telling them to learn and build an animation in less than 6 weeks is an impressive task to accomplish.

The importance of the animation should be held at the same level as the other wonderful aspects of FIRST.