[114Klutz]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

My opinion was made about a team that I'm not even involved with.
My team didn't make the final cut so I'm picking from the pool of finalist. I liked that animation from the first time I saw it and I'm not changing that opinion because some people think that it's unfair.

Koko, please understand that no one is asking you to censor your opinion. The point here is, it's sometimes best to use different wording. The usage of by far the best normally denotes that everyone elses animation is awful or mediocre in comparison. I'd say using the words "a top canidate for nationals" or "one of the best animations submitted" a better wording.

If I posted that Team 5 was by far the best robot out there, I would be saying that other teams are mediocre, or even poor in comparison. This can easily be percieved as an insult.

Please don't take this the wrong way. I'm not asking you to censor your opinions or change them. I understand that you're presenting it as an opinion, but the way it is said seems to insult other teams. I know this is not your intention, but it is percieved in that manner.

Now I wonder how the First Round of Professional Judging picked the animation that didn't win Regionals. Obviously they didn't pick a second animation for every Regional (56 total - 33 regional winners = 23 animations) but looked at all of them and chose the top two dozen or so. Does anyone know? Whether Autodesk had to have 56 animations for the national competition or was it more like, nominate all of the good animations that didn't win Regionals?

I don't exactly know how Autodesk deems animations worthy for judging, I doubt they have a set quota. My guess is that judges simply look at animations and just decide whether they are good or not. I assume the judges have a set criteria to match.

Perhaps they have the judges do a quick scoring of all the animations, and then declare a certain cutoff threshold. This seems like the best and most fair way to do this.

I doubt student scores are used in this process, as the documents received declared that the first round of judging was to be professional.

As for animation, I'm very happy for all teams who were chosen, all of us put in an inordinate amount of time and effort - and that making it on the list is a stellar achievement.