Planning for next year yet?

[opnickc]

@White_Orpheus

The kids do as much of the animation as possible? Big deal. Shouldn’t they be doing the entire animation? It seems ridiculous to me that other teams are getting help from adults on their animations. Our “advisors” basically babysit us to make sure we’re not breaking any school rules. Our robot and animation are entirely student planned and executed. Maybe our robot has never won, and our animation has only one once in 7 years, but at least we have some integrity.

Why would it be fair to have adults help build the robot but not the animation?

I mean, my team has never won an animation award, and the animation has always been almost 100% student made (the robot is usually imported from CAD, which the mentors have a hand in). I wish we had some more mentor help to show us how to do things and help us through tricky tasks. Mentorship is a key part of FIRST, why should animators have to build their project entirely on their own while the robot group can tap into the expertise of any of the people around them?

[White_Orpheus]

@opnickc

Why would it be fair to have adults help build the robot but not the animation?

You misunderstand. Our advisors don’t do anything with the robot or the animation. They are only around due to legal restrictions saying we need adults present.