Team 103's Animation in DIVX

[reisser]

Please go to the folowing link to download a compressed divx version of team 103's awesome animation, Impact:

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/brandonr05/

The file size is now just 22.2MB!

Enjoy

[FizixMan]

To the animation team of Cybersonics Technology:

I have to admit, the animation quality is very high. But the actual animation itself resembles the spider man teaser trailer quite a bit.(http://www.apple.com/trailers/columb...n/qt_high.html for the high quality version, http://www.apple.com/trailers/columb...an/qt_low.html for the low quality version, both of which are quicktime movies)

In fact, if you play both movies, the trailer and the impact animation, you can easily see that they are nearly identical. I wouldn't be writing this if you had at least given credit to the spiderman trailer somewhere in your animation's credits. But you didn't even do that, and in my book, that qualifies as plagiarism.

Anyhow, next year, make something a bit more original storyboard, OK?


P.S. I appologize if this actually was a completely unintentional duplication of the spiderman trailer, since however unlikely, it is possible.

[reisser]

In response to FizixMan comment,

Thank you for your concern about plagiarism in our entry. I must admit that your post caught me a bit off guard; however, you are correct that our animation resembles the Spiderman trailer. Our team decided to use the look and feel of the trailer as a guide for our story on the notion that a proven format could help us create a better entry. It was not our intention to steal anything from the creators of the Spiderman trailer or try to pass anything that did not belong to us off as original.

I did some research into what constitutes plagiarism and found that the definition is taking someone's idea and trying to pass it off as one's own. I suppose then that it would have helped for us to cite the trailer in the credits. Still, we did not take any copyrighted material from the Trailer. There is no stolen intellectual property in our animation because you cannot protect a format. All of our wording and action in the entry is completely different that that of the Trailer. Even our music is composed in house, as well as many of our sound effects.

Lastly, our team is well known for producing completely original stories for all of our entries. This is the first year we decided to try and improve on an existing format. Regardless of whether or not one feels using an existing format is right, it is something that appears countless places in cinema, radio, and literature. All of the network television station scrambled to invent thier own version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire".

I honestly do not feel that our team has done the people of Columbia Pictures an injustice by emulating the timing and feel of the Spiderman trailer. Granted, it would have been a good idea to mention the trailer in the credits, it is too late for that now. During the rigorous 8 weeks, it is difficult to remember every single detail.

Thank you for your concern,

Brandon