Off-Season Challenge - I Like to Move It, Move It!

[Kevin Thorp]

Here's a fun challenge to work on before or after the AVA competition.

This dance segment in Madagascar is pretty hilarious:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp05mOGij5E



What if we create an animation of robots, team mascots, or any other characters in our AVA entries - all dancing to "I like to move it, move it"?

Each team or individual could create one character, rig it, key frame the dance moves, then send the .MAX file to a central "director" who will merge all the files together.

The details will have to be worked out, but I guarantee FIRST will play it at the Nationals and the audience will go nuts!

What do you guys (and gals) think?

[JaneYoung]

Originally Posted by Kevin342

What do you guys (and gals) think?

I think it would be absolutely historical, er - hysterical.

[MadeAtMidnight]

I think that sounds fun -- I'll run it past the animation team.

Can we get permission to use the music without it costing $$$ ?

[Kevin Thorp]

Not sure about this music permissions. This is not sponsored by FIRST or Autodesk, it's not for resale or rebroadcast.

[Kevin Thorp]

There might be a big time saver for those who create a biped robot or mascot.

I think we can save the keyframed dance moves as a .BIP file that others can import into their robot or mascot. Instant choreography!

[BuddyB309]

There are some things to keep in mind when taking on a project like this.

1. Data flow: your asking for a HUGE amounts of data to be moved accrossed the internet. I'm working on a 2 min and 26 second short and the amount of data that it takes up on my computer is well over 50 GB.

2. Communication: Big problem here. Many people will have different ideas on what you want to accomplish, you have to absolutely make sure you know that they know what you want.

3. Time: a good character animator in the industry takes a week for a good solid 4 -10 seconds of animation. Thats when they know what they are doing. a 3 min song will take a LONG TIME. Its taking me 6 months to produce my 2 min and 26 second animation. I've worked with humanoid characters before, normally 2 hours of work, will produce one second of animation.

[=Martin=Taylor=]

If you make a worthy submission, I'll try and see to it that it gets played at Dreamworks PDI sometime.

I'm sure they’d love to see FIRST talent going to good use. Heck, they might even hire you

We got to see that scene before it was rendered, when all the creatures were hairless and just sliding around. lol

[Kevin Thorp]

Is it better to have a couple very skilled mentors and/or students create this, or a bunch of teams with various skill levels?

With many different teams working on this project I wouldn't expect to see Academy Award level work. But it still could bee a lot of fun.

I assumed the various teams would email their finished Max file to a central "director". He/she could merge or Xref them all into one scene and do the lighting & cameras.

Perhaps have standards everyone has adhere to:

• Units set to inches
• Have a maximum character/robot size (60" x 36" x 30"?)
• Have a maximum file size or # of polygons
• No special features than might excessively drive up the file size or slow down the render times.

If "I Like to Move It" is too difficult to keyframe maybe we could do the Macarena. Yes it's cheesy but it would be hilarious to see all the characters lined up dancing to it.

A robot with wheels or tracks and maybe a pivoting turret & gripper would be relatively simple to keyframe.

(just throwing out ideas)

[BuddyB309]

You would need to develop a strict naming convention so people will know what they are looking at when they open file 3ds max. Also so they will know where the textures are and where they go.

[fireball3004]

This sounds like loads of fun, I'm just not sure if I can make time for this... it's a lot of work in addition to the safety animation (which will rock) and teaching all the new people, inventor, class, college apps, ect.
I wish you had mentioned this as an over the summer project...

[Kevin Thorp]

Originally Posted by fireball3004

I wish you had mentioned this as an over the summer project...

I didn't think of it until a couple weeks ago.

Perhaps this could be a fun project to do after the AVA deadline. If most of the dancing characters will be team robots we don't wont know what they will look like until after they're built.