Animation challenge?
polycounter lvl 11
I actually brought this up over at gameartisans, but that place is already overloaded with comps/challenges, so I thought this place would be a good place to suggest this.
There aren't any game related animation challenges that I am aware of. I think it would be great to have one on polycount. I know pc doesn't do frequent challenges, but a comp would be great. There could be a list of several animation events that show up in games, like climbing a ladder, reloading a gun, a three move sword-fight, whatever. And the contestants could each pick 4 or so out of the list to do themselves, and maybe have to choose one mo-capped action and kinda retarget it so it looks a bit nicer. And those five clips would be their entry. Would be a nice addition to portfolios methinks.
Thoughts on this? Any animators on polycount?
There aren't any game related animation challenges that I am aware of. I think it would be great to have one on polycount. I know pc doesn't do frequent challenges, but a comp would be great. There could be a list of several animation events that show up in games, like climbing a ladder, reloading a gun, a three move sword-fight, whatever. And the contestants could each pick 4 or so out of the list to do themselves, and maybe have to choose one mo-capped action and kinda retarget it so it looks a bit nicer. And those five clips would be their entry. Would be a nice addition to portfolios methinks.
Thoughts on this? Any animators on polycount?
Replies
>...Crickets...<
But seriously, it would be nice to have more animators around here. I really like the idea and would probably join up. BUT I don't think there are enough people around here who animate to have a top 5... but who knows maybe it would pull them all out of the wood work?
....sortof
Hmmm...maybe then a little -vs- comp would work? Not anywhere near on the scale of UC or DW...but if gamesartisans doesn't have many animators, and polycount doesn't have many animators, if you put them together...there might be enough to consider having the comp.
11secondclub.com is an animation community with amazing monthly contests.
Winners get their work critiqued by their peers at Pixar, Dreamworks, PDI, Disney etc.
http://www.mikerusby.com/anims/run.mov
far from convincing though:)
Yeah I am aware of 11secondclub. Personally I find it to be absolutely horrible. The dialogue is always dull as hell, the forumites are extremely condescending if you post a W.I.P and you don't have post count in the hundreds (because that means more than my five year animation degree) or extremely unhelpful when I've had a noobish query. I'm looking for a more 'game animation' orientated challenge.
Ruz, that your model? It's really good! As for the animation, all that it's missing is overlap mate, then you'd have a pretty damn solid run cycle!
Problem with my animation is the more I try and fix stuff the worse they get he he
The good thing about doing just a game animation challenge is that it's mostly short movements or loops, so it wouldn't take more than half a day to pound out an entry. The bad thing is, most aren't that interesting to work on, or watch.
I use to be a member of a forum (now extinct) where we did weekly animation challenges. They were 3 hour animations, no more. How it worked, was that you e-mailed an e-mail address, and then it automatically sent back an e-mail with the theme of the particular animation of the week. Then you had 3 hours to e-mail back a clip of your animation attached to the e-mail. Then they were all posted by the admin with no names attached, and we voted on them. Probably the most fun I've had with any sort of online challenge. I did about 10-15 of em I think.
But seriously looks like there is way more of a response for it here than I got over at GameArtisans.
And to answer I myself do join in the 11secondclub but i prefer to use a mute character as i want to animate solely body mechanics, but this gets looked down on so much its unbelieavable ;(
Id like to propose the idea of mebe doing glory/hero shots as apose to simple cycles/loops? Like right now ive just finsihed a pretty cool animation of my main character having to jump across a hole in a bridge
The snobbery over there is f***ing unbelievable. I actually hate this latest generation of animators that tend to frequent that place, have the animation podcast on auto-download, complete one course of animation mentor and think they can take on Glenn Keane and can quote Brad Bird all f***ing day and fap over anything mildly related to Pixar.
Gah.
It would be actually good to get some help on this stuff.
Most of the animators I have ever worked with just smile at my stuff with a kind of aww the
modeller is trying to be an animator type of look:)
modeller is trying to be an animator type of look:)"
In answer Ruz.... aww the modeller is trying to be an animator
we'd never finish a challenge! ..
however, some people here at polycount are nice enough to hand out their kickass models, I usually get my dirty paws on them and do some animations.
guess thats as far as polycount will every get with animation
hate it when they dont model in proper t-poses or at least somewhere in the vicinity..
Im an animator, not a rigger .. like I want to spend all day skinning those shoulders so they dont implode onto the chest?! .. bah!
;p
Or you could use Character Studio, or the hundreds of rigs available for other programs on the web?
My suggestion wouldn't involve modellers becoming our slaves, rather I think it would be best if we just used box characters.
Like an ingame FX challenge? With billboards and such. That would also be an interesting challenge...I would probably only be an envious fanboy for that one though. I've tried particles in my time, but not for ages...
I want to be a game artist, model and texturing. I personally wouldn't join the animation contest unless, the same model and rig was supplied to every body and it was just down to...animating it. I really don't want to spend time rigging, skiing and animating a character when it's not really what I want to do in the end, you know what I mean?
I just heard of 11secondclub.com from you guys in this thread. It seems like the place to be for animators. Game animations involve more than a gun reloading or climbing ladders, there's a lot A LOT of cutscenes that you would end up making the character talk and those animations are usually the ones that get looked at when people rate the games or play them. You can give the smaller, loop animations to the interns, lol.
I respect you being an animator and wanting animation challenges...if you make it easy enough for the rest of us I'm sure you would get a better outcome than 3dtotals animation challenge.
...and sorry for the wall of text.
I've wanted to try more animation. Many studios ask for examples of animation work, even for environment artists.
sign me up for that!
I'd like to get into modeling and rigging first... in order to better understand the space I'm working in, I better understand how all of it works at a certain level first... only problem is I don't have a whole lot of time to learn outside work... and my current work is sucking in terms of letting me learn new stuff right now. A pretty damn good reason for me to want out, but my portfolio is lacking after 2 jobs and 5 years of bullshit.