[Lil' Lavery]

I disagree with the whole "let's wait and see" mentality. Let's make it known, now, in a polite and professional fashion that the AVA was an important part of FIRST for many people. Maybe it's still around in some form, who knows? But if we let FIRST know it's value NOW, it will help encourage FIRST and Autodesk to continue to keep the award around in their plans and hopefully help it be a part of the upcoming Awards section of the manual.
If it still exists, they may roll their eyes at us and continue. If it doesn't, they'll take notice with time still left to change it.


I was a member of a team where the animation took a very prominant role. It was one of the largest, if not the largest, group of students working on an individual sub-team/project year after year. It was a source of team pride, a powerful promotional tool, and an additional avenue of learning about aspects not directly related to engineering/the robot (such as storyboards, film composition, computer networking, etc.) that wouldn't have been opened if not for the format of the competition. If it changes, even if 3ds max is still incorporated, it may lose a great deal of the other ANIMATION related qualities. Maybe those aren't important to some of you, but to many in FIRST, they are critical. There's a difference between learning to make a 3d model and learning to make a 30-second short film.