What a Way to End the Week

Oct 27, 2016 Written by Frank Merrick.

Don't miss this great blog about the Digital Animation Award, the DLC Pack 2, plus Frank's weekend plans!

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Digital Animation Award sponsored by AutomationDirect.com Feb. 12 2024| 0 KB

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The FIRST Robotics Competition 2024 Digital Animation Award

Sponsored by: AutomationDirect.com

This award, sponsored by AutomationDirect.com, celebrates the art of digital animation and its close relationship to STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics).This award celebrates the art of digital animation and its close relationship to STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics).

 

Automation Direct Logo

 

The Digital Animation Award is offered to help encourage students to cultivate skills in design and creation of animation including, but not limited to, storytelling, creativity, use of computer software, and an understanding of different techniques and forms of animation. This award is open to all FIRST Robotics Competition teams and is optional.

This Year's Theme: Crescendo

Be they musical, personal, or triumph in other endeavors, we all reach many crescendos as we go through life. 

2024 challenge: Create an animation of “crescendo” that celebrates your FIRST experience.  

You can interpret “crescendo” in any way you wish:

  •        Reaching for new heights
  •        Conquering your own personal challenges
  •        Celebrating success
  •        Finding a new peak experience
  •        Etc.


What you choose isn’t nearly as important as how you use your Digital Animation skills to show your innovative concept.

Hints:

  • Animations that use the theme and provide a positive inspiring message will be prioritized over animations that don’t.
  • Animations that use Humor tend to do better
  • Keep it simple! A well-executed, simple animation will perform better than the alternative.

2024 Winner, Team 3100: Lightning Turtles

Judge Comments: We were honestly blown away across the board - extremely well done. We loved the cohesive visual style, design, smooth animation, camera movements, everything

Special thanks to Theory Studios for doing the judging again this year!
Theory is an international team of animators and special effects artists.

This year, we would also like to recognize our 2nd and 3rd placed teams:

  • 2nd: Team 1197, Torbots
    • Judge Comments: We loved the cute, clever story, cohesive style, and solid character animation. Also, great use of depth of field to direct the viewer's focus
  • 3rd: Team 122, NASA Knights 
    • Judge Comments: Great set building, lighting, and camera movement - and we LOVED the very on-the-nose story.

 

The judges asked us to pass the following comments along for some of their favorite animations because they all started where you are and remember how much they valued contstructive critique (these are team number order, not ranking order):

  • Team 75: Awesome style, color palette, and very well done with the painterly 2d animation
  • Team 1086: Great character style, good use of smear frames in the animation, and we loved the cheese puns
  • Team 2554: Well done telling a cohesive story, and great job with the lighting and rendering
  • Team 3341: Great storytelling, foreshadowing, and follow-through with the story through composition. Also, well done on the cute style
  • Team 4717: Very cool animation - we loved the style with the 2d face animation on the 3d characters, and the robot dragon was awesome!
  • Team 7459: Great job with the motion design, interesting 2d style, and the story
  • Team 9175: Well done telling a tight story with beautiful style and lighting

 

JUDGING

Judging is purely subjective. We are looking for excellence in animation skills and in the use of animation to tell a story. The Judges will be a diverse panel of Technical Marketing, Visual Effects and Animation experts from around the world from Theory Animation. We will be specifically looking for:

  1. Mastery of Animation
    1. Quality of Animation
    2. Complexity and Presentation of Images
    3. Expertise in Medium
  2. Ingenuity
    1. Originality of ideas
    2. Effectiveness and efficiency in execution
    3. Use of original 3D models and modeling technique
  3. Clarity
    1. Comprehensibility and organization of ideas within the animation
    2. Pacing
  4. Artistry
    1. Aesthetic Appeal
    2. Implementation of Artistic Elements
    3. Use of Medium

 

AWARDS

Official FIRST Trophy will be sent to the winner from FIRST.

 

SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS

 

The following requirements must be met for an animation to be submitted to the judges and displayed for other teams to watch. THERE ARE SIGNIFICANT CHANGES VS PREVIOUS YEAR'S REQUIREMENTS.

  1. A single animation may be submitted by any registered FIRST Robotics Competition team. Submissions may be 2D, 3D, mixed media, stop motion or anything else you can use to animate a story.
  2. The submitted animation must be no more than 30 seconds long (does not include title screen or credits). Animations more than 30 seconds long will not be judged.
    1. It must be relevant to the Challenge stated above.
    2. 30 seconds is only an upper limit. Teams may submit an animation of any length up to that limit, and the duration will have no impact on how the animation is scored.
  3. It is recommended that animations be submitted with:
    1. Format: H.264 codec in mp4 file
    2. Resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels (720p) minimum. 1920 x 1080 (1080p) is optimal.
    3. Frame Rate: 24 frames per second.
    4. But any format and resolution that has been uploaded to YouTube (or similar public online repository) by the deadline below will be accepted.
  4. Title Screen & Credits
    1. The animation must begin with a title screen displayed for a 2-second duration followed by a one-second black slate, leading into the primary work.
    2. The title screen display will not be included in the total duration limit.
    3. The title screen must include your team number, team name, school/organization, title of the animation, and animation duration.
    4. Credits should follow a one-second black slate at the end of the animation and be no longer than 5 seconds total in length. Length of the credits will not be included in the total duration limit.
    5. Make sure to include team members, mentors, software used, list of public domain sources, and licensed sources in credits.
    6. Total length of work should be no longer than: 2 second title screen + 1 second black slate + (up to) 30 second animation + 1 second black slate + (up to) 5 seconds credits = 39 seconds total (max length). 
  5. Content
    1. Animation should be supportive of the FIRST Core Values.
    2. Animation must be free of copyright issues. Do not use copyrighted characters, music, or other elements, unless you have the legal right to do so.
  6. Submission
    • Upload the animation to YouTube (or a similar video streaming service) by 11:59 p.m. ET on Thursday, Jan 18, 2024. THEN YOU MUST ALSO SEND A LINK to the video to AnimationAwardSubmission@AutomationDirect.com – by that same deadline. If the email is not sent – the video will NOT be entered into the contest. DO NOT use a file transfer service (ie Dropbox, etc) – the video should be viewable on the platform without prior download. YouTube is strongly preferred.
    • You are welcome/encouraged to upload the video early and to set the video to “unlisted” until the deadline. The video must be viewable by anyone with the link by the deadline shown above.
    • NOTE: if you chose a streaming platform other than YouTube for posting your video – please consider providing a “download link” and permission to repost your video on YouTube. While not required (and will NOT affect judging), this may give your video increased publicity when the playlist is published.
  7. **DEADLINE**
    • All video uploads AND the email submission must be completed by 11:59 p.m. ET on Thursday, Jan 18, 2024. Any entries after this deadline will not be judged. Winners will be announced Mid-February.
  8. Public Viewing - A playlist of all the videos will be published for public viewing when the winners are announced. Keep an eye on official FIRST channels as well as unofficial channels such as Chief Delphi for the announcement. 

If there are any questions, please feel free to contact us at AnimationAwardSubmission@AutomationDirect.com.

 

Please Note: If you are looking for Information for the Safety Animation Award, please visit the safety webpage for submission information. 

 

REFERENCE:

  • Behind the Scenes Game Animation - In this video, AutomationDirect.com will take you behind the scenes and show how the FIRST Robotics Competition Game Animations are made, start to finish, in partnership with AutomationDirect.com.

 

 

COPYRIGHT

By making a submission, the Submitter irrevocably grants to FIRST and FIRST's designees the right to use any or all of the submission in any and all media for the purpose of describing the submission, describing the Award, and/or otherwise promoting FIRST and FIRST's programs.

FIRST Robotics Competition Chief Volunteer Coordinators

Oct 26, 2016 Written by Dennis Howland, Volunteer Resources.

Thanks for our long-time Chief VC, Jess Boucher, and welcome to our two new Chief VCs, Jess Jankowitsch and Laurie Shimizu!

So Much Information!

Oct 25, 2016 Written by Frank Merrick

FIRST Championship Waitlist Registration is scheduled for Thursday, November 3 at 3pm ET. We need more rookie teams! Rookie grants available until November 3. Plus DLC Pack 2 will be available on Thursday, October 27 at 7pm ET, and we would love to include your original work in DLC Pack 3!

Where STEM Skills and Soft Skills Meet

Oct 24, 2016 by Michelle Unser, STEM Outreach Lead, Caterpillar Inc.


Last week, our internal communications team got a frantic request for help, from an engineer who has to give a presentation at an upcoming conference but is terrified of public speaking. (Requests like this—and others related to writing—come in fairly often.) The team provided training for him, of course, but the situation made me think that if he’d been exposed to environments when he was younger that had helped him develop public speaking skills, he wouldn’t be panicking today.

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Fundraising Toolkit Sep. 29 2022| 0 KB

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Learn more about creating a fundraising plan

Learn more about community resources

Learn more about "The Ask"

Learn more about maintaining sponsor relations

 

 
  • SECTION 2 – COMMUNITY ANALYSIS – Helps teams gain a better understanding of their community and the opportunities available locally to them.

​THANK YOU to the following for their valuable contributions to this project:

The Argosy Foundation and John Abele;

Renee Becker, FIRST AmeriCorps VISTA, Indiana;

Members of the FIRST Community including Regional Directors and Committee members; and

FIRST Robotics Competition Teams 27,68, 234, 291, 359, 5420, 696, 781, 1018, 1100, 1111, 1477, 1511, 1625, 1675, 1816, 2175, 2177, 2220, 2470, 2648, 2713, 3132, 3847, 4274, 4787, 4403.

FIRST Tech Challenge Teams 1937,  2753, 3550, 4140, 4220, 4924, 4982, 5096, 5466, 5972.

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Varsity Sport Resources May. 5 2017| 0 KB

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Resources for FIRST Robotics Competition or FIRST Tech Challenge teams looking to pursue robotics as an Interscholastic Sanctioned Activity in their state.

"The MSHSL (Minnesota State High School League) designation, that FIRST (robotics) is a varsity sport, allows us to talk about FIRST in such a way that people new to our competition can understand. We use familiar sports language as a bridge to build new understanding about what it means to have a 21st century sport steeped in STEM." - Laurie Shimizu, FIRST Senior Mentor, Edina, Minn.​

​THANK YOU to the following for their valuable contributions to this project:

Mark Lawrence and Laurie Shimizu

Members of the FIRST Community including:  FIRST Robotics Competition Teams 1816, 2177, 1529

Stop Build Day Survey Results

Oct 21, 2016 Written by Frank Merrick.

The results from the 2017 Stop Build Day Survey are here!

Safety and 2nd Regional Event Registration

Oct 19, 2016 Written by Frank Merrick.

The 2017 Safety Animation Award sponsored by UL has released its theme! Plus, 2nd Regional Event Registration opens tomorrow, October 20th, at Noon Eastern.