Vfx Challenge 2 - Urban Destruction

Oh, I expected more to come. So how many have we finally got?

You did an awesome job Mark! That needs to be appreciated. Thanks alot for all your hard work again!
 
Well, we only have four entries again but I don't want people to be discouraged. I've had a ball setting this one up and I don't mind at all putting in the time trying to find the "sweet spot." At least one member had an upload problem and we'll wait to see if others of you had similar difficulty. Please PM me if this is the case and we'll work it out.

The game plan will be as follows:

1) Sort out the stragglers, if any, and get a viewing/voting page up hopefully later today

2) Have a short voting period and post breakdowns as before

3) Begin a group discussion to figure out how we can get more people involved. Perhaps we need to do more simple challenges? Maybe better prizes? Maybe we don't have enough VFX oriented people as members here and we should recruit new members? Maybe we should try doing a film project that everyone can participate in. Maybe shoot footage in multiple geographic areas and have someone shooting green screen with members doing the keying? Our company (Fat Monster Films) would be happy to coordinate some production elements and perhaps we can get others involved so that our VFX group can serve as sort of a 'virtual' effects house to get a variety of FX done? Anyway, we'll discuss all of this and more in the coming weeks.
 
Hey mark, for getting other people involved, we ought to expand the invite into the CGTalk forum, and theres a couple of game dev places I could drop a thread or two in...
 
Mark,

Maybe we should tackle more broad topics, like a gun fight. And have people mess around with that. Over a month period. Or like "general battle" and let people do whatever.

I would have entered this one, but I couldn't get anything done on it since I have a deadline on another project coming up. I think more time would be something great to have.

I still intend on starting my project and getting it online as soon as I figure it out. Trying something I've never done before - so it's taking a lot longer than I thought. But maybe we should have this on the main page to get some others to look at it. I've learned not many people come down this way to the VFX forum.

People always want gunshots and explosions. We can try something like that. And work our way up from there. :)
 
Mark Johnson said:
Well, we only have four entries...
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Aww, I was hoping for third place :D

Some good ideas are coming up. A gunfight sounds interesting and is definitely something people are interested in.

Also an over a month period would be good. Or maybe exactly a month. Even though it is good to have a short time, so we can have more fests, but on the other hand I think that keeps people away.

I was struggling with real life a little bit and some computer problems and then the time was already over, so my entry is quite poor.

An official VFX-Fest section would be great. It needs to be a little bit more apparent on the board to attract people, as Mattykins said before.
 
I didn't have time or rescorces to get one submitted. I wanted to, believe me.

I don't think we should include people from CGtlk or wherever, I think we have all the people we need right here.

I think the complexity of the challenges is scaring off potential people, as is the lack of people either not knowing or not wanting to collaborate.

I don't think a longer time frame is a good idea either. One or two weeks should be the standard.

I think our best bet would be to ask the mods to make an announcement in the cafe section for a few weeks as a sticky, letting people know what we are doing here.

And we need to start with eaiser projects and get progressively harder over the months. For those of us who are at a more complex level, it will be practice, for those starting out, it will be learning. After the first one, I'm sure people viewed the entries and said to themselves, "There's no way I can do that level of work, and I'm not even going to try".

Simpler contests, each contest subject to a voting system with at least 6 choices. Give people the chance to choose what they want to work on, and keep it simple initially.

And we need to really stress that any work submitted is only going to help people learn, and that they can ask questions during the competitions in the main comp thread as to how to achieve something and have people who know make a serious effort to jump on it as quickly as possible. Let the newer and less experienced folks feel they have plenty pf people in the know who are not only willing, but WANT to help them, and help them learn.

We also need to rethink the voting system. A simple one vote "I like this one best" poll is not going to work. Say someone has a great idea, fantastic concept, but is not able to pull it off visually as well as someone like Mark or Raptor. They should be acknowledged for the creativity and attempt to bring into fuition their ideas.

We need to discuss more polling options. I can think of a few:

1. Creativity, Conceptual Design/Basic Premise
2. Level of Complexity
3. Originality
4. Likeaability
5. Ingenuity
6. Overall visual Presentation
7. Audio design
8. Overall Audio Presentation
9. Overall Intent (regardless of how it finally looks or sounds)
10. Workflow

And, with each entry, we allow the artist to explain his entry (anonmously), what he wanted to get, how he tried to achieve it, where his ideas came from, how he accesed/created/adjusted portions of it to become elements in it.

That evens the playing field. Someone could have an entry that visually is the worst, but sounds great, and after reading what he wanted to achieve and how, he could still win. And I personally and truly believe that people he will be fair and open minded enough to take all things into consideration.

Lastly, for the next couple, whatever is voted as the fest, some of the more experienced amoung us should write up a small paragraph or offer suggestions to get people started, or, provide links to tutorials that will get them in the right direction.

Prizes are a great idea, but a bit premature yet. Once we have established this as a serious and real learning and sharing experience, we should have prizes. Maybe by fest 5 or 6, after some of the less experienced have a chance to get a few under their belt.


Those are my ideas, add to them, suggest a change, improve upon, or disagree with.


We have got to stress this as a learning experience, and something that is a fun thing to be a part of, as well as making sure people understand that no matter the quality of their work, each entry will help us all and will be appreciated.
 
Maybe if we lost the anomosity we could get more buzz. I feel a bit limited right now in what I can post without blowing my cover. Even so, I think most can guess who did what.

I don't think a seperate forum and participant threads are deserved just yet. Maybe when things pickup I could see asking for some dedicated space. As it is right now I'm just grateful Dvxuser has allowed us this much.

I think the Dvxuser shorts fest is the model to go by in the future as they have long worked out the bugs. But this would still need to be slightly different in other ways also.

//( Posted at the same time as Matt.) Good ideas Matt.
 
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dory_breaux said:
Hey mark, for getting other people involved, we ought to expand the invite into the CGTalk forum, and theres a couple of game dev places I could drop a thread or two in...
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In my last post I disagreed with this. Now that I reread it and rethink it, I can't see how that would hurt, and would not only help the VFX challenge, but increase membership to the forum.

CGtalk's visual effects challenges have been going downhill for quite a while, so we may be able to pick up some people and maybe even some of the heavy hitters. Not only that, they have almost as many (or maybe more) members as we do, and those are members who are about only 3D, compositing, VFX design and such, folks that work pretty much for the post end anyway. Not so much like this forum which covers everything.

Can't hurt. But make sure you contact an admin (or since Mark is running the show, maybe he should) from both our site and theirs with what we want, so as to not step on any toes.
 
Raptor365 said:
Maybe if we lost the anomosity we could get more buzz. I feel a bit limited right now in what I can post without blowing my cover. Even so, I think most can guess who did what.
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Anomosity? Do you mean anonymity? I hope so, because I would hate to think there is anomosity (except my own, and that is only directed towards you and Mark for giving me such a viscious spanking in the first fest :) )

I think we should keep the entries as they are. If you feel you can't post without blowing your cover, maybe we could somehow set up a discussion sticky thread when each contest begins where when you post, it just says "guest", or somehow does not attach our names to it. Jarred or Barry G may be able to do that, of if someone is able to whip up a quick message board type thing (very very generic and simple), I will host it myself on my server, and we can just link to that.
 
Matt Grunau said:
Anomosity? Do you mean anonymity? I hope so, because I would hate to think there is anomosity (except my own, and that is only directed towards you and Mark for giving me such a viscious spanking in the first fest :) )
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"anonymity" YES. I spelled it that way first, then used my spell checker. It didn't have it and suggested the former. I thought it looked and sounded wrong but my spelling is questionable anyways so I went with it.


Matt Grunau said:
Anomosity? I think we should keep the entries as they are. If you feel you can't post without blowing your cover, maybe we could somehow set up a discussion sticky thread when each contest begins where when you post, it just says "guest", or somehow does not attach our names to it. Jarred or Barry G may be able to do that, of if someone is able to whip up a quick message board type thing (very very generic and simple), I will host it myself on my server, and we can just link to that.
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It's just weird not being able to talk about things before & during the fest.
For example if someone views your entry and has a question or makes a comment on a particular element, I can't explain what the intent or purpose was in doing it. I've been known to do things accidentally visually where someone see's something that I intened to be something else, but can work both ways. In the last entry for example, the rolling clouds, I didn't know if they meant shadows from the sky clouds casting onto the ice, or rolling clouds of surface snow which was what I was trying to do. It was weird having to sit there and get compliments for something that maybe wasn't even for what it was supposed to be, and not being able to clarify it. I did in the breakdown ofcourse.
It's just weird but I'll go along anyways. Just my thoughts on it.

//And in this entry there is something I'd like to explain but can't mention it yet. It'll be in the breakdown anyways. :)
 
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Really appreciate the discussion guys. I'm open to anything and everything. By the way, for what it's worth, I completely was sold on the rolling waves of snow Raptor. I'm from the midwest and have hunted on ice-covered ponds and lakes for years and that's exactly what it looks like. I was sort of taken aback when everybody kept calling the effect shadows of clouds! So, for what it's worth, I wouldn't change a thing as it was precisely what you intended it to be (in my opinion).
 
I still think most of the buzz & interest comes from the process, not the end results. Hopefully the final product will carry it's own afterwards ofcourse.
The Dvxuser fest & Movie Trailers would be an example.

I thought you were an LA born & raised kind of guy Mark. Didn't know you had some country in you. Huh. Learn something everyday around here. :)
 
I just accidentally stumbled across this forum and found out about the fest, I'm looking forward to participating in the next one. Great suggestions on how to increase submissions. Keep it up!
 
Raptor365 said:
I thought you were an LA born & raised kind of guy Mark. Didn't know you had some country in you. Huh. Learn something everyday around here. :)
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Indeed! I was raised in the middle of wheatfields in a little village of 2,700 souls. Practiced law in Kansas City until 1992 when I decided to make a huge change and moved to California to start a completely new career from the ground up. Life is interesting, huh? You never know where you'll end up.
 
I hate to disagree, but I think we should extend the time and also not even touch sound design. After-all, that isn't entirely our job.

The reason I say extend the time is due to the real life situation. I am a particles and dynamics guy myself. Explosions, fire, I can do fine. Modeling a city (as I was trying to do) not so much. It took some research to figure it out, and I still had a major issue with trying to get perspectives to match up, which led me to abandon my work in progress. I want to read up on it and mess around a little to figure it out and will post my results when I have it down.

A week to two is a short time. Especially with people working on actual projects. I have to edit two different short films this week and do visual effects on a third. Maybe that's just me, but if you are working on something you don't know how to do. Then you have to add in research, messing around, actually working, reworking, and hours of rendering if it comes down to it. A week is cutting it close.

I think the reason we are lacking people is the cloud over the fest. No one knows about it aside from those who look down here. I say a general sticky with the ongoing fests posts.

Maybe the next time, people should post their ideas and work in progress as we work, not just the end product. To see what people are coming up with. And what issues people are running into.

But the time constraint keeps me away.
 
All the comments and suggestions are helpful no matter what direction we finally take. We are in somewhat of a "Catch 22" in some respects in that if we had a lot of participation it would be a cinch to get some major prize sponsorship but we can't get major prizes without demonstrating participation.

My original plan for this fest included recruiting participation from forums such as CGTalk and VFXTalk. The latter forum has even had some posts from members bemoaning the fact that their Challenge series is sort of dormant so I figured we'd be able to get a number of new members interested in a new challenge series. Well, it seems that both of those forums are administered by the same group and they consider DVXUSER a competitor so my announcements were deleted.

Next time I intend to try some more sneaky ways to communicate with prospects there (PMs and e-mails etc.) It just seems to me that this place has some really unique opportunities for VFX artists given the broad and varied membership we have with a real good core of the indie filmmaking world.

I've got a viewing page pretty much ready to post for the entries we received and will do so when I get back from my meetings in Long Beach today.

Regarding the voting, would you all like to have the running poll like last time or would you prefer to just send your votes via PM (or some other alternative that I'm not thinking of)?
 
I don't like the running poll but whatever you guys decide I'm fine with.

Funny about being considered competition for those other sites and not being able to mention Dvxuser. One more reason I like it here better.
 
Just found out about this fest via Raptor365. Wish I knew about it sooner as I'm a VFX guy and would definately take a shot at it.

I think at least one sticky with a link to this subforum in the "DVXFest News, Info, etc." subforum would ba a good start.

Can't wait to try out the next challenge!
 
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