Oh Yeah!
They should do the Animation award like they do the Chairman’s award and have only the Regional winner be considered for the Nationals. They could knock it down to a fianl five and do it like a mini- Oscars and show each of them during the awards cermony and announce the winner for EACH category. And don’t tell me they don’t have time. They have time to let these VIP’s give speeches the can find time for the aniamtion and for the Autodesk too.
I think a regional animation award is a bad idea because it will cause many great entires to be overlooked. For instance, if our team went to a regional with the future grand prive winner, we would certainly lose at the regional. Our entry would then be automatically eliminated for nationals when it still could have a good chance for honorable mention. This same issue exists for chairman’s. At least our team has the privelage of knowing we lost to the national chairman’s recipient at our regional this year. I think FIRST needs to reevaluate how they judge and organize submissions.
I don’t think it should be like Chairman’s award, but I do think there should be regional animation award winners. If you don’t win at a regional, it wouldn’t eliminate you from future competition at nationals, but there would be a limit as to entries (meaning you only enter one regional animation competition, then all those entries go to nationals)… Not only would it prevent a team sweeping everything, it would take care of shipping concerns for a lot of teams. Two years ago, our team didn’t even get judged because FedEx messed up. If we’d just been able to hand our entry to a judge at a regional, it would’ve gone a lot smoother.
However, one issue looms. There are a <i>lot</i> of regionals that take place before the animation deadline. This year, we finished before March even started, so we would’ve been fine, but I have a feeling that if there was a regional animation competition at the KSC regional, we would’ve won by default because we were the only animation entered.
Personally, I don’t believe that, with the current system, a regional animation competition would be feasible. However, I believe that the judges should release a specific top 10 or 15 list. Still just the grand prize winner would get the big trophy, and the honorable mentions would remain the same. The other entries in the top 10 or 15 would receive a plaque or some other kind of trophy and one copy of 3d studio to give to their team Animation Champion. They wouldn’t even necessarily have to show the animations during the awards ceremony (most people think it’s long enough as it is), but they could certainly recognize more teams than they do.
Just a few ideas from a somewhat underappreciated animator (aren’t we all?)
Keep in mind, the animations are not judged at the events. It was done a long time before. You all have good points. I’d lean towards better integration of the animation competition. If all the hard work gets displayed on smaller levels then more people can appreciate it. Maybe a dedicated viewing area that people can wander in and out of or sit and watch for a while. Now they display the animations during down time at the nationals. Thats the same time we are running around trying to grab some food (long lines) and relax and then sit out in the SUN to get the audio from the animations (which they only play with audio once- as an animator and video graphics professional, I know there is a difference seeing the animation with the designed audio and SFX than seeing with no audio (in the pits) or with random bed of music (on einstein stage with the DJ overriding our audio with his musical selections). This year our Regionals played last years entries. Oh yeah keep in mind that the regionals start before the deadline for the animation. I know I dont want less time to work on it. Our team members work on other parts of our team as well. One Guy does all the video recording and editing for our team. Others help with the web and others actually work on the robot components- so they are busy, less time to complete it isnt and option in my mind. So Regional awards wont work but I vote to enhance the ability to view it, and not cast us aside like it doesnt matter. I worked these last two years on revising our teams view of the the web, animation, newsletter, etc. These are important tools of technology that students are learning. The view used to be, lets build a webpage to talk about our robot, now we tried to say lets learn how to use the web for the sake of the web and such, and oh yeah well advertise the robot and animation on there as well. You want people to see your chaimans award entry- put it on the web- our is. You still have it for next year as you do more on top of whats been done. Keep your chin up and lets get integrated into the main stream thought and hearts of the entire team. Use the tools to enhace the whole teams education of technology, not just to cator to a hunk of metal, plastic, and rubber-controlled by strings of binary code.
I think the current system of judging every entry at the same time works. The only reason to have the regional award would be to give more than five teams recognition. Instead of having that I think we should have more categories but I honestly like how the animation awards are done already. My beef stems from the lack of animations during the competitions. I like the idea of having a seperate area just for animators in which we can share information to each other and watch animation entrees by the various teams. The same tent could also be used for the chairman’s award submissions and the Inventor submissions. I noticed this year Ted was using an interface with the top 50 animations in numerical order when he was presenting them. I think if we used the same interface we could just set up computers that would display the entrees in an easy manner, point to the team you want and click to view.
I like the idea of a seperate viewing area. When a bunch of us went to the michigan regional to scout, they had a room (which was totally out of the way and hidden and like no one knew aboot it) where they were playing animations that the teams brough in on CD. There was only like six or seven animations, but I got to talk to some of the other animators there and share ideas. The guy who organized the viewing also had little voting sheets where the people could vote on who’s was their favourate and give constructive criticism. Even though there was no award for the animations there (to my knowledge) it was still a great idea. Even if it’s something like that at the regionals, an unnofficial award and just the opportunity to converse with the people who put in the countless hours of effort to make the animations.
hey,
I think we should all meet in a chat room via aim or whatever. I dont care what the date is, but I think if we all met, I would be great to share our ideas with other.
I would like the meeting to be like in a month or so, this will give each person that wants to show up ample time to plan and be there.
Let me know what you think about that,
Tyler
how does june 1st sound as a date to people, I need to knwo what time is the most convient to all of you so i will post a poll on it once this date is confirmed
Tyler
Maybe we can convince them to do an Animation/Autodesk tent. Like a mini movie theater or something. Animation seems to be an afterthought with FIRST and if that’s the case then why bother having teams do it.
I don’t know about you guys but we have a hard time getting kids to work in the PAW room(Promotions, Animation, Website) because they feel isolated from the team(but because the whole PAW room staff except for the two animation mentors, Greg and I were female we didn’t seem to be short of lurking boys from the rest of the team).They have little or nothing to do with the robot. This years team was all first year animators and we may have to start from scratch again next year.
i think an animation chat would be cool. june 1st works for me too. i was wondering where you were thinking to have it. an aim chatroom or IRC? irc prolly faster but more people have AIM.
Just My $.02
Weather we use Irc or AIm doesnt matter to me, i do nto have Irc but i can dl it, so what ever works for the most people we will do.
Let me know people so we can get this going.
Tyler
In Regards to KOKO ED’s Last Post
Ive found the same thing. The HS set up a CISCO Networking room (Students actually get cirtified if they want- Pretty Cool) And we were finally able to get the Software Loaded on decent computers in this lab (last year it was in the make shift Robotics computer lab- the best computer in there was one that I got a client of mine and me to donate. The other computers could barely load a scene let alone work or render. So this year we had some computer power, really cool for network rendering. But it is seperate from the group and an animation team that started at Ten strong finished at Three (two seniors- WAAAAAH). The room is connected to the Robotics lab, but seperated by two sets of doors. This isolates the students, as you said. On Weekends we have parents of the Robotics students alternate on bringing food to feed lunch to everyone, a couple times the animation team was never informed the food was there because people forgot they were in the next room. Don’t get me wrong, our team loves us and we all get along, and we work together on stuff, but There is a seperation in the Competition that has always bugged me (and this is only my second year) In fact I have a degree in Architecture and that includes structures calculations/design and building stuff which is engineering based, but I really work in the video graphics industry but theres never a clasification for me so I am called an Engineer. I’m mechanically capable and love working with the robot, but I’m never fully comfortable with that title. But as far as FIRST knows the whole programs is made up of “Students” “Teachers” “Parents” & “Engineers”- So by default I’m an engineer. OK with me but FIRST needs to understand that there are other people in this world that contribute and volunteer and give back. So I agree, we need Further Integration and Recognition of Science and TECHNOLOGY so students dont feel like they are a seperate team. We do alot to work it in on our end- but thats blown to bits at the competition when everything they worked on for 2.5 months is never even mentioned and just thrown in as FILLER “… if there’s down time!!!” (and that came from the mouth of autodesk rep)
We love this whole thing, Lets Just Raise the Bar Each Year!!
FIRST doesn’t give the amount of respect to the amount of work it takes to make an animated piece. I think Disney should step in and showcase them somewhere in the parks(like at MGM studios near the animation attraction). We all worked hard on these 30 second films we deserve better than second class citizen status! Just because we’re not engineers doesn’t make our work insignificant!
I totatly agree with the attitudes that you all share. I have noticed one thing that is similar on every team that I have talked to. We all learn about the robot and chairmans award but when it comes to animation everyone is like ani-what? you guys do 3-d animation through first thats cool. Evryone in this forum must know that as animators, we spend the most time out of any one working on our project and by far we get much less recognition. For the teams that were in the top 50 nice job, honestly, but I don’t like having to wait around 8 monthes to see everyone elses animations on VHS. I think that as student animtors we should work on getting more recgonition at regionals. Have one or more contact teams that can set up a tent and bring some equiptment to show off the animations. If we start this and submit our proposals to First it probably wouldn’t be hard to get one or two Autodesk reps down there with us, with some free stuff or better yet some judges for a regional animation award.
I know i’m kinda new to this forum but from what I can tell alot of you guys know what you’re talking about and I’m sure that together we wouldn’t have any problems putting some sort of plan into motion in order for us to gain some recogonition.