How do you feel about how the Autodesk award winners were decided?

[=Martin=Taylor=]

Originally Posted by "Big Mike"

My opinion is that Autodesk/FIRST should see if they can aquire volunteers from companies like Pixar or Dreamworks to judge the award on the championship level, i also think that they should use a pre-decided set of metrics released to teams at kickoff and that the award should be judged on technical stuff not which one has the prettiest colors...

We are sponsored by DreamWorks and several of their animators mentor our team.

I'd be pretty happy if they were recruited to judge the AVA awards


Having a rubric would really help. But as with all movies, the real deciding factor will always lie with the storyboard and theme. If you go back and review the winning AVA's you'll see that they all flowed beautifully, and had great themes.

You can have technical excellence and a bad animation.

[Robert Thacker-]

I agree. That's something I've been trying to tell my team for years.

[Evenstar_342]

Professional judges would be a great idea! If Autodesk is concerned about the competition taking up too much of their time, that would be a great solution.

[JasJ002]

They had professionals in the past judge the awards, but getting professionals to judges from a company like Pixar may not be the best idea simply because the animation is not the most important part of the entry. You supposed to utilized Inventor into the design factor. What I've been thinking lately is to make a presentation mandatory for the top three teams, and you are simply permited computer files and a projector to display your product to a team of engineers how your system works. In the real engineering world this is how things are done.

[Robert Thacker-]

Now I like that idea!

[Joe G.]

I really like the idea of having FIRST participants vote, but obviously the team size issue is a problem. So here are my four ideas:

1. Limit voting to something like five per team, so that larger teams don't have a advantage, but also allows some individuality

2. Instead of voting "that one is the best," rank them from one to five.

3. DEFINATLY have the award at the regional level, as Hachiban VIII said "to give the little guy a chance"

4. I'm not sure if this is practical, but maybe move the award submision dedline back a few days. Many teams simply don't have enough members so that a few people can be fully dedicated to Inventor work during the build season.