11 Second Club

I finally found an online competition that's more my style, I'm happy to say. I've tried participating in modeling or other 3D competitions in the past, and while I'm a competent modeler and a pretty good texturer, I'm just not suited to competition in those areas.

I don't have the passion for modeling that it takes to pull off a stellar piece on a restricted timeline without a concept team backing me up, and frankly I find texturing incredibly boring unless its in the framework of a larger piece beyond the scope of a single competition. I absolutely love looking at texturing competitions like you can find on the Game Artist Forums, and I know I've done enterable-quality work in the past with a very quick turn-around. But without a larger project inspiring and informing the tiny prop, then I just can never arse myself into starting.

But now I think I've found a poison I quite like. Animation! I've gone and gotten myself hooked on the 11 Second Club. Even with rudimentary free characters like Norman and MooM, there's so much room for freedom of expression and bringing a tiny world to life! It may be a small 11 second window into another world, but that's plenty to breath some life into a character or two.

Since one of my regular duties at work is to set up rendering schemes for all our shots, I'm quite fast at producing quality lighting/shader set-ups. Being able to whip up a nice render without much time or effort is really rewarding, especially when you first get to see the animation you've been watching in hardware for so long make the leap to MR. Too bad I just don't enjoy competitions over such things.

My first month's entry was a testing of the waters for me. I know what it's like to stare down modeling and texturing and even concept competitions, so how does it feel to try entering an animation competition? Well, it feels great! And now that I know I'll be able to stick with my pieces through to the end without running out of the fun factor, I can start taking my entries seriously. I'm having untold amounts of fun with my second month's entry, and can't wait to see it all come together.

11 second is a wonderful competition for acting and subtle animation, which is probably the aspect of animation that takes the longest to master. I think I might also look around for any others out there more oriented around action, to vary it up. More competitions please! More animation!

Oh, and have a gander at month 1's entry. Since I more or less half-assed it I don't particularly want it to wind up in the portfolio, but right now its better than the whole lot of nothing I've got going on. (blasted NDAs!)