We (myself & FRC Team 342 students) created a 7-minute animation explaining the layout & rules of the new game:
Please check it out & let me know what you think. But you’ll need a high speed connection. The high-rez version is 44Mb and the low-rez one is 11 Mb.
Kevin Thorp
Charleston, SC
That was awesome! You guys did a great job with the animation. I can understand how the game will be played out now, and can use this as a tool in recruiting new teams to FVC.
Thanks for all the hard work!
I also agree, very nice. How long did you guys have to create the animation?
The Vex game design team gave us about 5 weeks. We worked part-time in the beginning but things got real interesting as the kickoff date approached!
The 342 crew did an AWESOME job with a rather short timeline. Kevin worked closely with a few members of the FVC GDC to provide an amazing product. Today was the first time I got to see it and I was blown away by how entertaining, professional and useful the product is. Kevin, now I know why Griffith and others speak so highly of you 
Thanks for providing an invaluable resource.
Props to 342! This pushes the standard to a new height.
I have to agree with everyone else, great animation. Love the example of gracious professionalism! 
There is a reason why 342’s won four AVAs, two AIAs (including an Honorable Mention at the Championship), and two Kickoff safety animation contests since 2003: they just plain turn out great results. (And that’s just the tip of the iceberg that is 342’s accomplishments over the years, but you can read that for yourself.)
Great work, guys! This’ll do wonders for explaining the game.
Anybody notice that the picture of the sweeper robot in the attachment is on the red alliance, when the same robot is in blue in the actual animation?
Wow, that was an amazing job. Thank you so much. I spent a long while on Wednesday reading all the rules, and I definetly understood it, but this explained it just as well in 7 minutes. I showed it to both of my parents, one of whom has no experience with robotics in the slightest. They both entirely grasped the competition.
Is there any problem if my team were to turn this video into a DVD and mail it to our sponsors? I think there is no better way we could effectively communicate the competition to them.
Yep, my six year old saw it right away…I didn’t believe him at first.
wow what a cool animation…just curious…who does the voice for all the animations like the kickoff safety one and this one…they do a very good job
Absolutely fantastic! What I liked most was it was broken up into clearly defined parts, and was slow enough to understand. The real FRC game animations are just fantastic too, but I kind of wish the real FRC game animations would be more like this one. Maybe it’s just me, but they always seem a bit quick for me to grab ahold of. But maybe that is to make us read the manual.
Anyway, nice job.
[quote=“Rich Kressly”]
Yep, my six year old saw it right away…I didn’t believe him at first.[/quote]
This video appears to be aimed at a more general audience than teams at kickoff. The point is made fairly early (starting at ~2:12) that “you might be on a blue alliance one match and red on another”. The detail that Rich’s son and Billfred picked up on supports this point.
Wow - thanks for all the compliments gang. That sorta make all those late nights worth it! It appears we achieved our goal of making the rules understandable to newbies, friends & family members.
The Vex narrator’s voice is mine. I couldn’t find a professional announcer who was willing to work for free at 1:00 am. Our 2 safety animation narrators were Mike Conroy (graduated in '06) and Bill Epperson (class of '07).
Dave Lavery does an outstanding job with the FRC animations each year but because they are broadcast live they must be kept very short to fit the Kickoff agenda.
I don’t think there’s a problem of burning DVDs to send to sponsors but I’ll check with the FIRST people (or perhaps they can chime in here).
In the next week or so we should have a revised version posted. Just few minor changes:
Kevin
I think there is very broad agreement on this.
… but because they are broadcast live they must be kept very short to fit the Kickoff agenda.
There is room for debate on the word “must” above.
Explaining the game is an important element of kickoff. A few extra minutes of well produced animation might be a better use of the limited kickoff broadcast time.
And there’s the practical element of the fact that Dave is one guy, he already participates in the FRC GDC, the timeline he has for an animation is shorter, he runs an FRC team, he oversees ALL NASA team grants, He’s at a regional playing multiple roles nearly every week of the season, the same goes for the Championship, and he’s got something called a job that takes up a little time too …
So let’s just celebrate and congratulate Kevin on a fine FVC product.
But why does Dave have to be the only one that works on the animation?
Very observant 6 yr old. I’ve got a warehouse full of sweeper bots out back. I guess I grabbed the wrong color for the photo shoot…
Now that’s a sight I’d love to see in wallpaper size.
(By the way, my room’s a little messy right now–what’s the going rate for one of those sweepers?)
Awesome job guys. This animation is top notch and will be perfect for explaining the game to anyone.
Although, one thing I noticed was that the final score of the match didn’t include the scores from the autonomous mode. Maybe this should be fixed?
