Regarding your Animation Mentor suggestion, Spark...think it will be hard to get involvement. Students would need fully rigged/weighted characters (they don't teach rigging at AM) and already have a pretty big work load if they are still at AM. Alumni may be interested, tho, but don't know how AM would pitch to them.…
Yea normally contests are run like a poker tournament. You pay your fee you get in and if you play your cards right you walk out with more than you did when you walked in. Either way the cost of admission is the cost of playing the game, it funds the prize and makes sure things go smooth as well as filtering out the people…