The 2007 Blender Conference Suzanne awards. Winners Announced!!!

[macouno]

The winners of the 2007 Blender Conference Suzanne Awards!

Best designed short film
Eoin Duffy - Stop

Best character animation
Juan Pablo Bouza - The dance of the bashfull dwarf

Best short film
Astralpancakes - Night of the living dead pixels


All the nominated videos can be downloaded from: http://www.blender.org/community/ble...ence/festival/

Congratulations!!! And since none of you made it to the conference (none of the winners I mean). I'll get in touch with you for your address information so we can send you your lovely awards. I hope you saw the video stream cause they're pretty this year.

Also to everyone else... The blender server is having troubles which is why the videos are not online yet! I'll get them up as soon as it's possible.

Below here are the old announcements.

The nominees are

BEST SHORT FILM

Astralpancakes - Night of the living dead pixels
Harrisyu - Blood
AndyD - Out of the box
Jason Pierce (Sketchy) - Alchemy
Thomaslav86 - Giants

BEST CHARACTER ANIMATION

LGM - Soccer exersize
Pildanovak - To be or not to be
Bataraze - Pelados
Jpbouza - The dance of the bashfull dwarf
Octavio - Prueba

BEST DESIGNED SHORT FILM

Daniel Lima (Prenudos) - Snakes can fly
Eoin Duffy - Stop
Virgillo -Jungle Series
Sebastian König (Stullidqb) -The Cathedral
Mallow - 8


Remember the people at the conference will vote on who gets to win! So make sure you're there!

To the nominees.
Good luck! On the friday evening at the conference everyone will see your work and on saturday the winners will be announced. If you win and you're there you will receive your award then. If you are not there yourself I will get in touch with you and we will send your award to you (they're pretty this year too)!

If the name used above here is incorrect, or you want me to use a different name for you... please let me know!!!



To all those that submitted work but didn't get nominated.
Thank you very much! You made it hard for the committee this year. I will put all your videos in some compilations and they will probably all get shown at the conference (depending on how much time there is).

Also... even though no more video submissions are accepted for the Suzanne Awards, if you still have something you'd like to show, please let me know.



Below here is the original message with scheduling and other information.


The 2007 Blender Conference Suzanne awards, and Animation Festival.


This year's award categories.

The categories are:

1. Best short film
2. Best character animation
3. Best designed short film

Dates, deadlines, and flow of events.

Wednesday September 12th, The deadline for submissions.

Once the deadline has past the committee will view all submissions, and pick 5 works to nominate for each category.

Friday October 12th, The 2007 Blender Conference Animation Festival.

Shown will be:

1. The 15 nominated works (5 for each category).
2. A selection of the best non-nominated submitted works,

The visitors to the conference will have the opportunity to vote.

Saturday October 13th, The 2007 Blender Conference Suzanne Awards Ceremony.

Winners will be announced. If the winner is present he/she will receive the award during the ceremony. Otherwise the award will be sent to them afterwards.

The committee.

The winners from last year's competition will be asked to form the committee (confirmation of names will follow shortly). Last years winners are welcome to submit their work, but are not elligible for nomination. The committee chairperson is Dolf J. Veenvliet (macouno).

Details about the categories.

1. Best short film
   This covers the nominated work the audience likes best, because it is just the best experience to watch... whether it is for story telling, the jokes, the design or the great characters.
2. Best character animation.
   Covers only character animation. The submitted video does not have to be a finished product. Only the animation of the character(s) is looked at. It can be fully rendered, but may for instance also be a video capture from the game engine.
3. Best designed short film.
   Covers only the visual aspects of the submitted video. Simply put, the prettiest short film.

About submitting a piece.

All categories cover animations, only digital video files will be viewed/considered for nomination.

One can submit a video by:

1. Posting a link to a downloadable file here in the thread (be aware it may be downloaded by a lot of people).
2. Sending a private message with a link to a downloadable file to macouno through the this forum.
3. Sending a dvd/cd with the material through the regular mail to macouno. Send a private message through the forum to obtain the address. Don't forget to take into account the time it may take for the material to reach us.

You are free to submit a piece only for viewing during the festival.

Videos can be of any format/length, though they will be rerendered to a single hd/widescreen format (24fps, 1280 x 720px, xvid encoded video, 44.1hz 16bit stereo audio). If you have the opportunity, submitting material in a similar format will result in a better final quality of the viewed work.

If the submitted work is longer than 5 minutes, you may be asked to provide a shorter version for the festival, or to tell us what portion to show.

The Blender Foundation must be allowed to show/distribute the work. The videos will be made available for viewing/download at the blender.org website during the conference.

[macouno]

That is the official bit....

But I want to mention the following
Untill now the festival has always show only submitted work for the awards. This year we want to do some more. There's a big movie theatre at the venue and it'd be a shame if we didn't take full advantage.

So we want your non award material as well!
If you have some cool experimental vids of new features or well basicly anything in a video format you would like us to show on friday night (or maybe on the other days as well in between sessions, last year we showed a bunch of stuff on saturday as well). Just get anything and everything to me and we'll see what we can do.

Also you may have noticed that the thread is up a bit earlier than last year, and the deadline is a bit earlier as well. Since we're doing some more I need a bit more time to really prepare everything.

I'm looking forward to seeing everything and meeting you all again at the conference!!
Dolf Veenvliet (macouno)

[BenDansie]

Hooray! I suspected it would be on again. I'm definitely going for it.

[AndyD]

I haven't entered one of these before but think I should have a go this time with my "Out of the Box" animation.

It may be a weird question, but would people suggest it be entered in the "short film" or "character animation" category? Or can I enter it into both categories?

Thanks for the help and thanks, of course, to the Foundation for holding the conference again.

[mallow]

At first: that`s great news that there`s Suzanne Awards this year. I hope I`ll finish my animation and could participate in the competition this year

And now a little question about the videos resolution:
It`s said in the info that: animations "will be rerendered to a single hd/widescreen format (25fps, 1024 x 768px, xvid encoded video, 44.1hz 16bit stereo audio)".
I don`t think that 1024x768 is a hd format. So what is the desired resolution? Is it 1024x768 or did you mean 1280x720 which is one of the hd resolutions - 720p.

I`m looking forward for a quick respond. It`s still time to set the resolution of my animation to the one you`ll use on the BConf.
cheers

[macouno]

Yeah I used 1024 x 768 last year since it worked rather well... we're really only showing things through the computer on either computer screens or beamers.

But I think you have a valid point. And cool... why not... lets use proper HD this year

I'll adapt the post/blender.org page... we'll go for 1280 x 720 progressive 24 frames per second.

[mallow]

It was just a suggestion, but if you`ve already decided... Good move if you ask me. HD formats will be standards in no time and why to stick with the DVD formats and etc.

[RobertT]

Thanks for the information, macouno.

I believe the Suzanne Awards should acknowledge not only the animations but also still work, coding contributions (Blender source, plug-ins, Python scripts, etc.), documention, tutorials, and websites.

The majortiy of Blender's creative output will always be stills.

Major causes of Blender's continuance, maturation, and extended abilities are those who contribute to its code and its creative communities.

Blender's documentation and tutorials steadily improve and open up more of the program to more people. The same can be said of Blender-oriented websites/blogs.

Then there is the activity centered around the game engine.

I believe all of these efforts are worthy of official acknowledgment and celebration in some way. Recognition of those efforts can only inspire more such efforts.

I hope the Suzanne Awards can be expanded in some appropriate way to acknowledge each of these respective endeavors, all of which are essential to Blender's success and the thriving of its communities, not to mention its public image as a serious tool for digital creators of all kinds.

Thank you all (especially Ton and the Blender Foundation) for considering these suggestions.


RobertT

[macouno]

Kxs: Any helpfull suggestions are always welcome... and yours was good

RobertT: Read the above But yeah we did stills last year, and it was fun, and you're right there is a lot more going on in the blender community than animations alone. Every year categories are switched somewhat and new ones are considered. But one has to remember that the Suzanne Awards show is also an hour of entertainment for the people at the conference... That does weigh in heavily in the decision of what categories there are. And trust me... Ton considers them all. In short... maybe next year Thanks for thinking with us.

[RobertT]

macouno: Thanks for the reply. There's so much good going on in the community at all levels, even with the books in recent months. It would be great if, despite the logistical limitations (one hour) of the awards ceremony that there might be some way to fit all categories and not have to choose year to year what gets recognized, even if the rest of what is not covered in the ceremony gets announced online at blender.org. Just some ideas

Thanks for your work in coordinating all this. From past experience with this, I know it's never an easy task

RobertT

[AndyD]

Sorry to be a pain (checks to see invisibility cloak is turned off this time ) but can I enter one animation in two different categories - or do I just enter it and let the judges categorise when they short-list?

[macouno]

Last year the committee categorised. We'll do that again this year... If you have a preference then that will be taken into account, but no promises.

[AndyD]

Okay, that's easy then. Thanks.

[jpbouza]

24 fps or 23,976 fps???

Just to make sure...

[macouno]

24 fps... lets not make it too specific

[popski]

The message you have entered is too short.

[guitargeek]

Not sure if this fits in any category, but here is an entry I had for the "Heinz Top this TV Challenge" obviously it did not win. But I will enter it here since it is one of the better animations I have done with blender.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reGfW_wWyHU

I can provide a higher res if you want it for some reason.

Johnny Matthews

[magiciandude]

I might as well have a go at this!

Here's my entry!
http://www.badluckbob.com/superheroguyfinished_lower quality.mov
If you need higher quality let me know!

And here's the low quality youtube link!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4Wx8mlPrHw


Thanks,
-Chris

[macouno]

Got it. And a bunch more through private messages.

But there's still lots of room! I hope more people will send things in! Lets see how much of the evening we can fill!

[Meltdown]

sorry, forget it!

hardware troubles... i'm out!