Friday, April 23, 2010

First official Spungella Animation Contest

Contest is over, thanks a lot for participating!
You can vote for your favorite clip here: spungellacontest.blogspot.com
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Alright! Here we go! The topic is:


GUILTY
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Welcome to the first official Spungella Animation Contest!


Why a contest? Let me backtrack and explain a bit:

When I started with the first blog I also added those pesky Google Adsense advertisements. I was intrigued by the financial potential and if you have a big site with a lot of good content updates, it can be very lucrative. Animation is pretty specialized, it's not like I have a site about house mortgages, religion or something similar which attracts a lot of interest, so the money I make is minimal. But still, it can average out to $30 a month. Pocket change you might say, but to me, that's my monthly web and domain hosting bill. Sometimes I make more, sometimes less, but it's all coming from visitors clicking on those ads. So after all that time, I wanted to reward the people who click on those. Not that I know who does, but at least I wanted to take some of that "free" money and do something useful and fun with it. And why not use it to fund a prize for an animation contest and give back that way?

So here we are. Hopefully the first of many contests to come (in whatever shape or form). I talked already about it (see here), but let's explain and outline all the aspects of this contest:

  • Challenge: create a shot or sequence based on a specific topic using only 100 frames within one week
  • Medium: whatever you want
  • The topic will be announced this Sunday, April 25th, at midnight. So technically Monday super early morning on the 26th. :)
  • Hand in your work on Monday, May 3rd. Send me the movie file either as an attachment or via a link so I can download it.

You can check out examples of this kind of exercise here and here.

I will not be providing any type of feedback within that time frame. You will have to go from shot idea to final polished end result on your own within a week (peer feedback is fine of course).

Please use a commonly used codec. A quicktime file with an h.264 compression for instance would be great. Render the animation big enough, around 800x600 (widescreen format is fine too of course). Please don't send something like 40x30 or 4000x3000.
If you work in 3D, any rig is fine. You can find free online rigs at Animation Buffet.
You can add sound if you want to as well.

You can do pretty much whatever you want to. Just keep it to 100 frames, no more. Include a frame counter in your submission.
And stay on topic. So let's say the topic is "Nervous", don't have a guy being super relaxed reading a book. The interpretation of the topic can be pretty open though. So if it would be "Dying", then it doesn't have to be just about characters dying. A cell phone signal dying works too. If you have any questions about the topic, just email me.

Ok, what do you win??

  • First prize is an Art-of Book of your choice. I will buy it and ship it anywhere.

As pointed out in the comments already, I'm thinking of Art-of Books like the ones available on Amazon for instance, which hover around the $50 area. I'm open to other ones of course, but a $400 Pixar: 20 Years of Animation book is not exactly realistic. I was expecting common sense, hahaha! But I guess my wording really leaves it open to everything. So there, be realistic. Don't find some crazy rare book on ebay or whatnot. :)


Who decides that?

At first, I will put up all the entries and there will be a poll where everybody can vote for their favorite clip. We will narrow it down to the top 5. After that I will select the winning three entries.

That should be all. If you have any questions, leave a comment or email me and I will update this post.

Cheers and good luck!!
JD

39 comments:

Omar said...

Sounds great!

Nico said...

Might be a good idea to include a few more parameters for the first prize. For instance: http://www.stuartngbooks.com/animation.html#PIXAR_20_YEARS
That book is $400 and would be quite nice to "win" ;)

Jean-Denis Haas said...

Hahahaha, Nico, you crack me up, but I guess I had it coming. Nice book though, but definitely not what I had in mind.

If my advertisement clicks sky rocket and I suddenly make that much in one or more months, I'd totally do it though! Promise! That would be such an awesome contest!!

Omar said...

Is the "shipping anywhere" including Canada?
On the off chance I win it would be a bit of a disappointment to find out it's only in the states.

Darrin Hofmeyr said...

JD that is a super-fabulous thing you are doing. I remember watching your clips on 10-second club (before your ILM days) and got pissed that you kept winning :) Now you got your own competition to get people inspired. What a legend!

Unknown said...

woW that is great JD ..great way to engage artists into learning. I am in :).

Jean-Denis Haas said...

Wow Darrin, didn't know that was so traumatizing for you. Especially since I only submitted and won once! :)

Nico said...

Haha, well I was looking out for your (and your wallet's) interest.

Anyways, I'm pumped for this. I don't Always have time to do a 10 (or I guess 11) second animation over at 'the club.

Perhaps if things take off we could start an unofficial forum somehow to bounce ideas off of each other. Rather than dumping stuff to 11 second club etc. It'd be great to "meet" other Spungella readers!

Jean-Denis Haas said...

Nico, I like that idea. By now there have been enough people asking for a forum, that I should really look into it.

Nico said...

I just saw the post update and thought the topic was literally "Welcome to the first official Spungella Animation Contest!"

Then, realizing you're on the west coast and I'm a moron, things came together.

...it's late.

Jean-Denis Haas said...

Hahaha! Well, it makes sense the way it is written right now. In half an hour the topic will go up and then it makes sense. :)

Bernie Warman said...

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

Can we recount the votes?

Hammy said...

HAHAHA BERNIE!! FAIL has failed. ONTO GUILTY! :D THE WINNAH!

Dean said...

GUILTY...interesting

marcelloalvarez said...

such a great contest!!!!....and such a great idea!! thanks!!!... I will try to enter here :D

sabri said...

Woooww,

I feel lucky since I just descovered Spungella right now and I'm on time to participate. It just begun! =D

Wish you luck guys. And thaks a lot for these super duper activities Jean!

Jean-Denis Haas said...

No problem Sabri, glad you like it!

Sorry Bernie, next contest can be "Fail". :)

If I had participated, it would have been 50/50! Tie breaker vote!

Jean-Denis Haas said...

Then I might have had to set something up where Indy decides. :)

Two of the same treats, one for "guilty", one for "fail", and whatever he eats first is the winner. :)

Unknown said...

great idea!!! I will participate this week. the animation don't need to be rendered right ?

Brazil in competition :)

Unknown said...

And, one more question.. where I put my video when finished ?

will be a email for that and everybody sends, or will be uped on website ?

thanks

Jean-Denis Haas said...

Hey Alex,

render is not needed, but I'm sure people will make the shot(s) as polished as they can.

You can email me the movie file or send me a link/path to the file. The specifics are outlined in the post.

Jonathan Bento said...

Nice one!! i'll begin to blocking it after work today!! more one from brazil hehehe

Guilherme Guidetti said...

HE HE HE...come on animate and dont forget to have fun (sorry about the English rs)

Bernie Warman said...

HAHAHA JD, I love the idea Indy should pick the winner!!

Jeffrey Lee said...

Hey JD, how strict are you on the 100 frames rule? What if we go over, say by 10 frames? Just wondering~ Thanks!

Jean-Denis Haas said...

@Jeffey: If it is over 100 frames I won't put it up for voting. So, pretty strict. The rules are outlined in the post, so I'm gonna stick by them.

Jeffrey Lee said...

gotcha. thanks!

Nanda van Dijk said...

are there restrictions on the frame rate? can the animation be on 12 frames per second? I already animated a big part before I thought about this. So hopefully it will be OK.

Jean-Denis Haas said...

@Nanda: Nope, it's just about the length of time.

Nanda van Dijk said...

so then it is 100 frames on ones and 50 frames on twos right?

Jean-Denis Haas said...

Correct. As long as the shot is not longer as about 4 seconds, that's all. In terms of 24 frames a second, it's a 4.166667 second long shot. :)

Nanda van Dijk said...

OK, thanks!

Hannah said...

It's more difficult than I thought to stay in a 100 frame limit! Fun challenge!

Jonathan Bento said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jonathan Bento said...

Can someone say to me the adress of the email and what subject should i put on ?


i havent find this information!

Jean-Denis Haas said...

The subject can be "contest" and my email is under the "contact me" section. But just in case, it's animate(at)jeandenis(dot)net

Nico said...

Good Luck Everyone!

Utpal said...

hi there...i want to participate in this contest...can u tell me when it starts ....from India.

Jean-Denis Haas said...

Sorry, contest is over.