what do you guys thinks makes a “better” animation one thats funny or one that has the F.IRST engineers of tommorow teamwork blahablahbah etcetc… u know what i mean right? i was thinking of trying to blend the two… i think this part is really good for everyone on the team to help w/ the anim…making the story anyways what do you guys think?
the animations that have won are more commercial/professional-ish
But the animations that are remebered are usally more humorish 
If it was Pixar running the animation contest instead of Autodesk I’m sure the imaginative and clever would be celebrated more than the by-the-book approach(i.e: boring) that Autodesk prefers.
If you go by the books, then the judges will be pleased by the animation. But, you need something in there to grab their attention so that they will remember your animation above others. Humor is a good way to do that. Working it in is the hard part and tends to come from heavy brainstormign from as many people as possible.
Thinking back to the 2004 build season, many of the leadership examples by mentors that stick out in my mind are truly humorous. The point of such competition aspects as the theme of the animation and the Chairman’s Award is to represent your team, so as long as you express the meaning of FIRST, with or without the use of humor, you should be OK. Just remember that you have a time limit. Good luck!
Well, the animations that win regionals tend to be more humerous and action oriented with high concepts while the ones that win the overall aniamtion awarded by Autodesk is more straight laced.
This causes a biut of friction between the animators and Autodesk (in 2003 the winning animation didn’t even win a regional and the animators felt univerally insulted and G3D was born. Things have clamed down since). Basically do what you do best and don’t worry what Autodesk or even otehr teams like and do something that you can be proud of.
This is a great question. I’m still confused about what Autodesk is looking for and this will be my third year on Animation. I think it’s more challenging now since the regionals are peer judged; many of us have different tastes. Personally, I like an animation that is put together well, flows smoothly, and has several elements that just makes you think, “wow, how did they do that?”. Others may look for humor. But what do the professional judges want?
Well, after reviewing all the regional winners from last year’s AVA competition from the DVD, I’ll have to disagree that most of the winning animations contain humor. Most of them have little or no humor.
And my opinion to Salik’s question, I’m still clueless… The teams that win regionals are more like commericials; so I guess teams shouldn’t focus too much on humor since pixar isn’t judging it… Humor is fine as long as the animation as a whole is “serious” and appealing.
Happy Animating 
Last year we weren’t really trying for something humorous, but we tried to focus more on making something visually stunning rather than promoting FIRST. Our animation essentially had no meaning whatsoever, but it sure looked cool. It held out at the regional, but we got killed in the content score at the national. I think the best approach is just to make something that looks cool, yet promotes FIRST, cause the national judges certainly aren’t going to have much appreciation for humor.
My old team (151) decided that making a serious animation would not be fun so they made a humorous one… with Ninjas. They won the visualization award at the BAE regional in 04’.
-Aaron
our team likes doing humorus type ones but a commercialish one would most likely go over better with the judges at nationals if it makes it
Well i am not an expert on this b/c our team has been too busy on the other aspects of the competittion to do any serious work with the autodesk but i have seen many of the presentations and i think the best ones are the ones that are humorous but still represesent the basic idea of hte competetion and a little bit of what first is all about aka improving the world
Like team 114’s championship winning aniamtion from 2002.
That was one the greatest I have ever seen.
For the past three years 905 has “tried” to go the informational/serious route, this year though we are going off on a tangent and putting a dark mysterious animation around our message
I too am planning on heading towards a humorish side, something simple, both in concept and modeling. I plan to spend about week modeling and texturing, 4 weeks animating since I want a very strong, fluid animation in my character and the surrounding props…
Really, it’s whatever you want to do. If you look at the Thunderchicken’s animation from last year, it was somewhat humorous, and displayed their message well. You just want to make something that people will remember, and humor seems to be the easiest way to do that.