Here is team 1625’s animation recruiting video. Its a little over the top but its design to be that way. My stratagy is to get a lot of kids to sign up for animation and then slowly ween them out. So the kids that make the cut will be more dedicated with the team because of there initial investment that they had to make. We’ve had problems in the past where kids would see that the animation team can be a place were they can goof off and they distract the rest of us who are dedicated to the animation. (Thats why we locked ourselves in a broom closet and came up with our animation this year.) (Im still in awe that it won).
I know some of you might disagree with this stratagy but I’m trying it for a year. Im keeping in mind that everyone can contribute to animation but im just trying to find people that are willing to learn and work for the animation team.
I know that is similar to the strategy employed by 116 a couple years ago, and while it did have some success in helping get more dedication to the animation team (although it still had some issues with lack of focus and goofing off) and better training (although that has never really been an issue with 116 since the early days of our animations), I feel that it caused more issues than it resolved. I know members “cut” from animation had worse experiences with the team as a whole, had hard feelings against the animation leaders, and entered the rest of the team with improper training in their new role.
i’m aren the lead mechanical person of winnovation and petes arch nemisis when it comes to the argument of which is better animation or the robot i usually just use the line “wait wait the robot actually exists” to knock him down a little.
But stuff still works out well and everythings good.
hmmmm… i see your point there. Well im holding summer animation classes to get the kids past the basics. (Its never a good idea to try to teach someone the basics durring the season. Your working on the animation and then have to take time helping them. Then that hinders your production) If i get them past the basics durring the summer they will have a good sense of what animation really is about.
teaching is hard. I’ve held summer classes before. But now im going to be a little more prepared when presenting this kind of information to the kids. Last year I had a projector and just went with it. The problem with that way of teaching is that kids would see what i was doing (they were suppose to be following along with their computers) and then they would forget what i did when they get the chance to mess with it at home. So now im makeing little packets to hand out and video tutorials to give to everyone. Wow, I had no idea setting up lessons took this long.
But i will be glad when i get them done. This can be a teaching tool that the animation team will pass on from generation to generation. Its a lot of hard work, but I really enjoy teaching this kind of stuff. I don’t think i could make a career out of it, but i could definatly see myself in 20 years still teaching animation to a FIRST robotics team.
I’ve always wondered what it would be like to have an animation “team.” In 2001, team 648 won the Animation All-Star award with a team of animators but that was the year before I joined. Since then it’s only been one person doing it all. I stepped up my senior year (2005) and had a pretty nice resulting animation. Didn’t win any awards or anything but I thought it was good. Anyways, I learned everything as I made the animation. It was fun and I don’t know how but my grades stayed good.
Very nice animation. I expect great things from 1625 in the future. Animation and robot.
