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This award celebrates the art of digital animation and its close relationship to STEAM (Science,
Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics).
The 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.
THEME: “SPACE”
“SPACE” – you can interpret that however you want. It could be the how your team has SPACE for new team members or how your team provides a maker SPACE for the community to use. It could be about a deep SPACE mission. It could be about the empty SPACE your team fills in the lives of its members. This is completely up to you. For this award, what you choose for a story is not nearly as important as the skill and expertise you use to tell the story. Videos that use the theme will be prioritized over videos that don’t.
2019 Winner: TEAM0846: “Fantastic animation and storytelling!”
2019 Judges Favorites (no particular order):
Special thanks to Theory Animation for doing the Judging. Theory is an international team of animators and special effects artists.
They 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 constructive critique along the way:
Team0503
Love the clever use of the “Space” theme and the sound effects. Lighting could be improved to help with composition, and the resolution on the dinosaur graphic could have been higher.
Team0846
Fantastic animation and storytelling. Timing seems very linear, consider letting some things overlap, happen sooner, or any combination there of so things don’t all end/begin at the same time. Consider letting scenes hold for a bit longer to let the idea read
Team1160
Things happen too fast for the viewer to acknolwedge. Consider holding on animation scenes so we can really appreciate the idea
Team1317
Love the animation and styling. Consider lighting and how it can tell a story, felt bland in the beginning and distracting at the end.
Team2583
Really cute and fun to watch. Good performance and storytelling. Would encourage learning composition and texturing to refine better the look and design of it all, but overall solid performance!
Team2708
Hilarious! Consider style matching as backgrounds didn’t fit. Love the animation style, review Principles of Animation to refine your technique. Overall very enjoyable
Team4099
This caused a lot of internal debates over story, which is a good thing! Having your audience watch over and over and ask questions is good. Very enjoyable style and movement, great use of camera rack. Overall would recommend studying more motion design, could be a great future there!
Team4500
This was very well done. Review camera motion and refinement as things were difficult to follow. Especially the tumble, was very disorienting at how long it took
Team6017
Really enjoyable to watch. Consider photography fundamentals like white balancing, exposure locking and such to craft an animation that is next level. Nice use of medium to tell story
Team6520
Funny, clean, to the point. Good shot design and timing. Overall very good piece. Consider pushing your textures and materials to the next level, but overall really liked this!
Team7108
Absolutely solid. Good performance, motion design, artwork, everything. Consider Principles of Animation to refine your technique, but overall very pleased.
Team7476
Really fun to watch, good modelling and design. Consider lighting and animation fundamentals to strengthen the performance. Funny timing too!