Dukes of Stronghold GIF Contest: Discussion Thread

[Joe Johnson]

TLDR: There is a new contest to make a GIF of a robot (or robots) getting air during an official match. Polls will be taken, winners will be declared, GIF cards will be awarded (see what I did their ;-)

Some background.

• My Triple Tortuga Contest has been a huge success and it is only Week 0.5.
• In this post, OccamzRazor coined the term "Dukes of Stronghold" to mean a robot that gets air as it crosses a defense.
• Watching The Robonaut Reveal video and observing one of the Blue Alliance robots jump a defense just prior to the first Triple Tortuga of the season has convinced me that a LOT of robots are going to be getting air as the cross defenses.

Sooooo... ...I am announcing NEW CONTEST:

The Dukes of Stronghold GIF Contest.

Here is how the competition is going to work:

1. The Dukes of Stronghold event has to occur during OFFICIAL FIRST SANCTIONED MATCHES to qualify for consideration (Qualifying or Elimination matches only, practice matches are not eligible, nor are afterglow competitions or whatever happens on a practice field or in your gym at a school demo, ..., you get the idea).
   
2. You have to make a GIF of that event. It can be from publicly available video or it can be from you own phone or it can be spliced together from video gathered from 2 phones, a GoPro, a Twitch TV feed, a YouTube video and 3 Vines. BUT YOU HAVE TO MAKE IT INTO A GIF THAT CAN BE ATTACHED TO A CD MESSAGE (2MB max size).
   Notes:
   • this is not a "compilation GIF" by which I mean several things.
     • First, the video clips showing the action all have to be from a single match.
     • Second, the GIF has to be telling the story an event that happened during the match. This is going to be harder to define than I'd like but for instance, I don't want a "here is every shot of every robot that caught air during a match" video. I want something that someone who was watching the event would say, "Yeah, I saw that! That was sick." Does it all have to happen exactly simultaneously? No not really but there has to be some sort of "this happened during a limited time window" connection. It is a little like art in that we'll know it when we see it.
     • Jump cuts? Yes. Playing with time? Yes, yes. Mixing views? Yes, I say, yes!
     • Just don't get too tricky for your own good.
3. Name your GIF using THIS FORMAT: TBAMatchIDText_ROBOT1[_ROBOT2][_ROBOTN]_CDUserName.GIF.
   Notes:
   • TheBlueAlliance is great for making compact match ID texts. Let's use their format. Start here if you are looking to crib their format. For example the first qualifying match from Palmetto Regional is "2016scmb_qm1" (look at the URL for the results from a Qual Match) and semifinal 1 match 2 from same regional has the text "2016scmb_sf1m2" (again, look at the URL)
   • Use 4 digit team numbers (left pad with zeros e.g. H.O.T. would be 0067). If there is only one robot in your GIF (which will be the majority of posts), then only use just one robot number but if multiple robots are involved in the Dukes of Stronghold Event, then add them to the list (up to 6 I guess if we get a Double Triple Dukes of Stronghold Event ;-)
   • CDUserNames are allowed to have a bunch of crazy characters that are terrible for file names. Please convert your CDUserName to something that is going to work for most operating systems (e.g. I would replace "Joe Johnson" with "Joe_Johnson")
   • EXAMPLE1: If I made a gif of team 125 at the Boston District in Qualifying Match #5 where they are seen launching off Red's Outerworks and landing in Blue's Courtyard then I'd name the associated gif file: "2016mabos_qm5_0125_Joe_Johnson.gif"
   • EXAMPLE2: If 10 matches later team #247 was seen jumping over team #5000 at the Boston District in Qualifying Match #15 and I made a gif of that amazing event, I would name the file: "2016mabos_qm15_0247_5000_Joe_Johnson.gif"
     
   
   
4. Reply to this thread: Dukes of Stronghold GIF Contest: OFFICIAL SUBMISSIONS ONLY and attach your properly named GIF to your post.
   
5. I will make a poll or a series of polls (I am not sure exactly how I will do this. A lot depends on the number and frequency of entries) that will enable you, yes YOU to vote for the best GIF. Exact details to follow.
   

Other Details:


Please use THIS DISCUSSION thread (I mean THIS THREAD -- just hit Post Reply below) to talk about the contest details and such and use the OFFICIAL SUBMISSION ONLY thread for, you know, OFFICIAL SUBMISSIONS. Use the POLLS (links to come when I have set up actual polls to vote on) to discuss the merits of the various submissions (or start a new thread on that topic -- it's a free ChiefDelphi.com after all).

Winners? I am not sure how this is going to go. But notionally, I will have "qualifying polls" that I will host every N gifs that get submitted. Based on those results, a subset of those will then be included in the "Top M Dukes of Stronghold" poll (think something akin to the ESPN Sport Center Top 10 Videos list).

The contest will run during the "regular season" (i.e. only districts and regionals for now) and must be submitted prior to the start of qualifying matches for the District Championships. Voting will close some time before the start of the Championships.

At which time, the good doctor will reach in to his pocket and buy some $10 gift cards for the top few slots and a $50 gift card for the #1 gif.

IF this turns out to be a fun competition and there is continued interest, perhaps I'll have another round of entries that will include the District Championships and the Worlds.

Finally, this award is for the MAKER OF THE GIF not the teams in the videos or even the makers of the original videos that produced the GIF. Sorry about that but that's how we are going to play this.

Let's have fun.

Dr. Joe J.