Thats right, another Toon Boom contest! This one isn’t run by me at all though, so I get to just sit back and bask in the Shatnerisms. The big prizes in this one are 10 copies of Animate Pro and 2 scholarships to an online university . Nope not CartoonSmart, a real online university. Oh and the top winner gets a job on an animated show.
The dealio is all laid out by Shatner himself in this animation here (click on the cartoon Shatner when you land on that page, the real Shatner plays a different video). But basically you just need to animate 1 of 3 possible voice clips.
Dan, c’mon down and pick up your prize! You’ve got a shiny new copy of Toon Boom Animate PRO waiting for ya. I’ll email you in just a moment.
For second place, The Big Lebowski by Squishy. I’ll email you in a moment too to discuss your winnings.
And third place was a tie between Coffee & Cigarettes – Pawel Krupski and Gladiator - by Alex Rodriquez Fernandez . And I’ll email you guys too in just a second.
Also I know everyone that participated will be interested in how the voting brokedown so I’ll post some more notes on that in the Vimeo forum.
Okay, I’ve mulled over my top choices for the past few days and this afternoon, I’ll decide. It isn’t easy folks. I’ll be in touch with the other judges today too, so we can have a grand prize winner tomorrow.
I can’t possibly post a vimeo embed for each entry because this blog is already slowing down because of the current ones embedded, so I’m going to make a master list of everyone’s entry…
Alright, at the time of me writing this time is just about up for new contest entries. Judging will take place this week sometime, and we should have a grand prize winner by Friday.
Lets spotlight some “just in” entries since hopefully many of you have already devoured whats been there in the past few days…
Some of the best animation yet by Dan. Very cool!
Great work by Vu! I haven’t seen this movie yet, but I think I just saw the end
Its back! This is now our 2nd Toon Boom Animate Pro Contest.
The contest theme this time is (drum roll)….
“Recreate 15 Seconds of Your Favorite Non-Animated Movie”
YES, only 15 seconds, so this time its even easier to win, and even if you don’t, you’ll be creating something for your portfolio that is (hopefully) a recognizable and creative moment from a movie. Which everyone loves of course.
Like our previous contest, you must use Animate or the Free Animate Personal Learning Edition to enter. And to enter all you need to do is upload your video here to Vimeo and add it to this group by August 2.
Here’s my suggestions…
Don’t go under 15 seconds. A little over is fine though if it finishes off a sentence or part of the scene, but don’t feel like doing extra time will score more points.
“Recreate” is a broad word. Meaning, you can either loosely recreate the scene, or you can strictly recreate it, even to the point of rotoscoping. Personally (and as a judge) I think the loose, more stylized interpretations will probably be more interesting, but I’m sure I can be persuaded otherwise too.
Unless you have a good reason not to, I think your piece will be most effective using the audio from the original movie. And us judges will probably “feel it” more with the original actors and music stings. You are obviously on your own though for capturing audio, but worst case, you can stick a mic in front of your TV or computer and capture 15 seconds like that.
When you upload the piece, be sure to tell us what movie the scene is from, just in case its not obvious.
Good luck and feel free to ask any questions on the Vimeo Group forum. I’m one of 3 judges though, so my suggestions are just that.
My friend Andy is giving away a Flash caricature this Christmas, you know a drawing of yourself. Which you could use for email signatures, letterhead, vanity plates (both license and dining), Cafepress products, or you could just sit outside tattoo parlors and try to convince people you should be on their bodies. Here’s where to enter… http://www.flashbooty.com/holidaycharacter/ ..also there’s a game you can play afterwards.
To Enter: Submit a short animation (30 seconds to 1 minute is plenty) in the style of a Classic Animated Commercial. How classic? I’ll post some references below. What I think would be cool to see is something in that style, but with a twist on it. Animate Pro has some amazing 3D capabilities, so I think it would fun to see a piece that looks old at first, but is freshened up by some FX that animators 50 years ago couldn’t work with.
Timeline: We were thinking 2 months is a fair timeline, so lets round that up toOctober 31 November 9.
Submit: Post your work to here… Animation Contest Vimeo Group I think you’ll need to sign up for Vimeo, but its free.
Judging: Me and some folks from Toon Boom. Feel free to butter me up as much as you want, but I’m not the only casting vote.
Requirements: Download the free Animate Pro Personal Learning Edition (PLE), and animate using that. Your final renders will have a watermark, which is fine, we obviously realize that if you’re entering a contest to win Animate Pro, you don’t own it. And come to think of it, thats proof you’re actually using Animate Pro.
Chances of Winning?: Good I think. Very good. Hopefully we’ll see a lot of comments below from people that will enter, but as we all know, talking isn’t walking. September will breeze by, October will start losing days, and I’m sure we’ll get fewer entries than we’d like. Contests are just like that. So seriously, spend a Saturday or two on this, and you’ll have an excellent chance of winning.
Tutorials: I taught one lesson so far in Animate Pro, but its a long 80 minute one. That should help get ya started. And that same link has some lessons on Animate non-Pro which also apply to the Pro version. Hit me up with emails during your journey and I’ll try to record some quick videos and post them here to solve any road blocks.
Materials / References : To make your finished piece as polished as possible, you can obviously include your own audio tracks, BUT I think its just as good, if not better, to just swipe audio from any of the 100′s of classic animated commercials on YouTube. Most of these are older than 50 years which I think is their copyright lifespan, but regardless, you’re just using the audio in a contest. Big whoop. I don’t think any old animators from the Retirement Village will chase you down.
Here’s some gems (did you know the Flinstones smoked??)…
Also on Amazon for $8 you can buy a DVD 1001 Commercials. Have fun getting through all 1001.
Wanna help us get the word out? Give us a retweet! Click here
The title says it all doesn’t it? Well almost. I’ve got a couple hard drives loaded with lessons ready to ship out to the next two bulk buyers. You can still download after the order, but you’ll also get a Western Digital 250Gb Passport Hard drive shipped with every tutorial on it. If you’re interested, here’s the bulk sales page.
Also congrats to one of my Twitter followers who won $30 in store credit this morning for guessing which movie this line was from… “hit me in the bugle, got a dent in it”. And while you’d think that would be easy to guess with Google, I exact quoted it, semi-quoted it, and searched those keywords as much as possible before the contest, and nothing turned up the answer which was El Dorado . I think my hint that I was watching the movie at the moment led to the answer. How many movie on at 7am could have that line.
…Or Mike Judge. Better include him as Fox animation royalty since King of the Hill is somehow still in their Sunday animation block. Although I think this is the last season. As much as I like Mike Judge, I couldn’t get into that show. Anyway, now Fox wants to make you as rich as those guys. They want you, yes YOU, to submit an animation which might lead to a development deal. Other prizes include, cash-money! And the deadlines are pretty manageable (Aug 31), so you’ve got 2 months to put something together. And you’ll notice on their competition site that the example videos they are showing all look pretty Flash-made (i.e. just okay), so they probably aren’t expecting something that polished. And as much as I’d love to be supremely sarcastic about Fox, and them possibly screwing over finalists in the way that big mean companies usually treat the little wussy creative guys, that might not be the case. I think I remember hearing that Matt Groening pitched The Simpsons to Fox with scribbles on a napkin. Of course its worth reading the fine print if you do submit your precious work. I’m sure if Fox’s lawyers could they’d make it so that just by thinking about submitting to this contest you forever give up all rights to any characters you’ve ever thought of. Oh wait, there’s that sarcasm I said I’d avoid. Anyway, here’s a link…
And whoa wait! CartoonSmart sells animation tutorials doesn’t it! This whole article is a pretty good segway to those now that I think about it. =)
