I know everyone just now are starting to recover from the late nights but there is some thought of holding a Fall Animation competition here in Michigan along side the Fall Robotics league.
I don’t know what rules would be in place but who would interested?
Is there any reason a team from New Hampshire can’t join in and compete? Do we have to be in attaendance, or can we just “mail it in”? (as they say)
Thanks,
-Quentin (Team 811) 
Well, its still just a thought. Like I said there are no rules yet or any decisions on anything so far. Not even whether its open to teams outside Michigan or not. Right now I’m just testing the waters with the idea.
I mentioned this in another thread, and this seems somewhat similar…
GRT was going to do an animation training thing over the summer, and our community outreach people had the idea of turning it into a second animation competition. The idea was to spend 6 weeks during the summer making an animation as a “practice” FIRST build. The rules would probably be different (like letting you use whatever software/codec you wanted), but the intent would be similar: make a 30 second commercial for your team, mostly as training for next year. I’m not exactly sure how judging would go (possibly a bunch of people, selected from teams near us), but I think that it would be a fun thing to do and a good way to prepare for next year’s competition.
So not during fall (when school has started and all those other annoying things), but it seems like it should be fairly easy to let people from wherever participate (CDs are easy to mail). Obviously some details would have to be worked out, but I’m just testing the waters too. If you are interested, send mail to Eaglek@rocketmail.com
I’ve given the Fall competition some thought as too how to structure it.
It would be a double dog dare ya challenge to create a theme based animation of any length with any software with any music or sound.
Prizes: there would be no prizes, but your animation would be critiqued on Communication/Creativity/Technical categories by professionals and you would be sent the feedback.
Your animation would be screened at the annual SEMAFX animation film festival (assuming we don’t get hours and hours of animation submissions I think we only have time for 1hr and a half of screen time).
Animation submissions would be on CD, DVD or Mini DV, there would be some .avi .mov codec restrictions.
The challenge would be open to anyone from anywhere.
What do you have to say about that?
That sounds like a good idea.
Is this animation a 3dsMAX animation, or a video type animation–like a movie?
OK. The GRT competition is going to happen. it is going to work something like this:
On July 5 I will send out an email with the prompt (Can’t have people starting early). Each interested team will then create an animation using whatever tools they want to (MAX, Maya, Blender, whatever) and send a CD of it to somewhere (not sure if this is going to be done through WRRF or what) by August 18th (6 weeks). If you use a codec that we don’t have, either provide the codec or directions on how to get it. After that, we will try to have some kind of mass distribution system so that everyone can get a copy of their animation, and we may have some kind of showing event on the weekend.
The purpose of this will be primarily training (letting people go through another build period for practice), but we may end up having some kind of award given to the top N animations or something (If we can get impartial judges).
It can be an animation you create with 3ds max, Flash, Maya, after effects, claymation, cutouts, sand, pixelation … whatever.
When you say video type animation, do you mean special effects film animation/compositing? You certainly could that as well.
Your finished animation would have to be rendered out and put onto a CD DVD or Mini DV tape.
Sounds like a great Idea.
I’m game at getting some Connecticut Teams involved.
One Sugestion:
How about atleast 2-catagories. One with Video and one with animation. Teams can enter one or both. The AVA Rules state a 30sec Student Animation, but based on last years winner this was interpreted differnetly. So how about an “All Video” Cat, A “Mixed Media”, and a full “3D Anim Cat”
The Way I see it"
The “All Video” would be all video edited.
The “Mixed Media” would be similar to last years animation
The “3D Anim” Catagory must contain 30sec of full animation, but can include composite footage as long as its within a prdominately 3D Environment.
This way we can expand on the technologies used and give each one a fair chance to win.
Another Idea that we can test out- Have an Online Polling System. I spoke to some Autodesk Reps last summer at the Chairmans Award Winners Gathering at FIRST and Deans House. They considered alternitives to the current student scoring method. One Idea was to have online voting. There were a few Ideas as to how to do it, we can discuss if anyone is game. This will also help to include everone in the process, practice for judging other animations, and eliviate the work on the group of people that would have to prep and judge the animations.
Just a thought.
Great minds think alike.
I actually came up with the same idea on my way home from nationals.
F.A.N.A.T.I.C.
FIRST Animators Network for Appreciation of Technology In Communication
Here was my idea:
The competition would have two segments. A four week “forum” segment followed by a four week “build”. During the forum segment, there will be a weekly meeting, or forum so to speak, at an oakland county high school. At the forum, animators will give presentations and discuss animation, as well as eat pizza and drink mountain dew and cherry coke. Perhaps, if we’re lucky, autodesk could give us some software or other goodies to give out and/or raffle at these forums. Anyway, at each of the forums there could be a specific area of animation we’d want to focus on, such as modeling, lighting, maps, etc. The forum schedule I have is: Thurs. Nov4: Forum Kickoff@Milford High School Thurs Nov11:Forum1@TBD Thurs Nov18:Forum2@TBD Thurs Nov25@TBD Build Kickoff: Sat, Dec2@OCCRA women’s comp. At the build kickoff, the theme of the animation submissions would be announced. This means that nobody can work on their animation before this point. The deadline for the animations will be somewhere around the new year (maybe an all night animation party?), and judging (by the students) should by shortly after. Unlike with the FIRST animation award, there will be several awards to give out, possibly things like best lighting, best storyline, etc. The overall winner will then (hopefully) be played at the michigan FIRST kickoff.
Well, what do you think?