Moho Forum

Would anyone be interested in an informal/friendly contest using Moho?

In a recent post, someone asked where was all the info on Moho, where was the community? Well, as all of us here already know, there's quite a bit of community, but not much public knowledge of Moho. Now part of me wants to hold Moho close to the chest, not giving the "competitiors" the advantages that I know Moho gives us. But, the better Moho does, the more resources Lost Marble will be able to put towards continuing to develop this amazing tool.

Along those same lines, a little competition will also help spur some of us without direction into using Moho and pushing it and coming up with techniques that would benefit all.

So, I was thinking, a friendly contest might just serve both of these goals.

As far as rules, I'm definitely open to debate. Here's a list of some of the rules and themes I've seen work well with other animation/film contests:

-Member of the forum
-Start with a theme (Halloween,"5", Aliens, Love and War, etc.)
-Cap the length (no more than a few minutes long 1,2,5?)
-Start with a character everyone uses (design or Moho file)
-Start with audio everyone uses (see the 10 Second Animation Club)
-Need to use Moho for all or a majority of the animation, wtih some exception being made for post work with sound and editing
-Try to keep the offensive material to a minimum (would you show your Mom, Grandma, or 8 year old Nephew) and avoid criticizing other members
-Must be able to host the video on their own site (unless webspace is donated) and other technical items like format (Avi, flash, QT? All three?), resolution if it isn't swf, compression codec, etc.
-Given enough interest, perhaps a new Forum subsection could be opened

As for judges, it could either be the team at Lost Marble (assuming they'd be interested), any minor celebrities we could con in to watching, a group of volunteers from the forum (who promise not to vote on their own film) or even viewer poll (although that often feels more like a popularity contest, and can be rigged by multiple usernames, unless someone knows how to do secure polling on the web). And the prize, in order to keep it friendly, would be bragging rights and maybe a keen icon you could use here while posting.

What do you all think? Could be just the motivation some of us need to get a project finished.
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Penny stock pick

Sounds like a great idea! I think Lost Marble should try to stay independed and not judge the results, but otherwise it sounds good.

.

I think Lost Marble should try to stay independed and not judge the results,

Duly noted.
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Roor bong pictures

Great idea. I like the idea of an individual judge pulled randomly from forum volunteers so each contest would be subject to personal quirkiness. Borderline practical maybe, but multiple judges means voting, procedures, rules, bickering. I'd be willing to maintain the random (subject to bribes) Judge Picker (TM) if people opt to go that route. Once a judge, you'd be out until the other volunteers had a poke at it. Downside is fewer people involved in judging aspect. Although I suppose one person could pick the theme, another the audio clip. I could write a small Javascript to handle this.

Not sure I like the idea of setting the character ahead of time. Unless you mean in the abstract sense, like "a dog". If it's an actual file of some kind, I'd rather see everyone's individual style. Outside tools might tilt the table too much.

The prize icon is a great idea. How about picking a particular feature of Moho that has to be used? Maybe the winner should have to outline his process too.

If people don't have webspace, they could solicit webspace from others. Another way to be involved if you didn't have time to animate anything that cycle.

I'd also vote for the shortest clip length. Everyone's busy. Getting enough people to submit clips might be the biggest problem.

Best -- Greg.

Great ideas! I really like the random Judge from a pool idea. Any judge would of course be allowed to participate in a exhibitionary type roll (that is, they can submit, but not win).

I agree, I'm not too keen on the set audio or character. At this point Moho is still fairly unknown as compared to other software and anything that could be done to encourage expirementation with the look and design should be encouraged.

As far as the timelimit, it's just an upwards limit, you could make your animation as short as you want. I'm thinking a limit between 3-5 minutes. It's a lot but some may find they want to go for this.

Topical themes would be great. Something to do with the seasons or holidays (without excluding too many, perhaps allowing for an alternative, like winter and any holiday associated, or just scary instead of Halloween).

Getting enough people to submit clips might be the biggest problem.

That does tend to be one of the hardest challenges for any festival. Perhaps we could announce the creation of the first contest with the release of the full version of Moho 5? That should give us a little time to hammer out what we want in a contest and what would encourage the largest participation. Maybe tonight I'll start drafting up some rules/outlines of how the contest can run and run it by everyone who's interested.

One tough question is, how long would the contest run for. The Ten Second Club runs a contest once a month, but that's only ten seconds. On the other hand, if the contest runs too long, people start to loose interest. Two months may be tight, but doable. Maybe we can announce the next contest half way through the current one? Hmmmm, may be getting ahead of myself.
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Weed News

i think this is an excellent idea!

I wouldnt mind the audio providing its something ambient and/or can be put to different scenarios.

artwork would have to be all the the artists... however we could suggest an object that has to be in all of them.

also definatly shorter period of time, say less than a minute.

For voting: why not just get LM to make an announcment and all the nominess are put into a voting poll on the forum. and that way everyone can vote.

One of the formats I've liked, as an example, is the Midnight Madness film festival setup. Contestants are assigned a style and concept (e.g. film noir, what if you found out you're best friend killed someone) and then have a specified amount of time, in that case 24 hours, to write, shoot and edit a final film. Kinda like the ZBrush forum's Monday Night Challenge, but way harder. There's also the initial Project Greenlight submission setup, where each participating group is given an EXTREMELY generic script to interpret as they like. I've looked at a lot of their submissions, and it is truly amazing how many different things you can do with a script that goes out of it's way not to lock you in. You get to change, I think, maybe 3 or 4 individual words in the script, but that's it. It would be worthwhile checking out some of the submissions, I think it's a pretty amazing format. In a very general sense, that would be where my vote would lay.

One of the reasons that people submit pieces to these things is, frankly, shameless promotion. If you want people to send in work, you really have to work to ensure that people are going to see it. And, at least initially, as far as not giving the competition the whats up I think anyone who is already here has a distinct advantage in gaining notice. It's not like having to plow through endless submenus and parameters like many 3D progs, but it does take more than 5 minutes to animate with style in Moho.

Even though there are ways to get around it, I might lean towards a more public voting setup, filtered by IP. Now, as the participant in more than a few halloween costume contests, I've seen how leaving the voting to the masses certainly shifts favor towards spectacle over quality, but its worth considering. I'd also vote for the shorter lengths. More because i think it's harder (and more telling) if you have to compress your story into a minute or two. If there is a bit of publicity, perhaps an actual prize or 2, I wouldn't worry much about participants. If this happens, I'm sure there, no doubt.

Also, what would be the standards for, um decency. The two pieces I'm currently working on are a probably 40 minute zombie cartoon, and a kinda "slice of life" walk around my neighborhood. They are, respectively, violent ant creepy, and , as it's a pretty rough hood, pretty rude in some content. The latter might fit in a short timeframe (I'm still going around to record audio for it) but considering that a fair number of the characters are going to be dealers and prostitutes going about their business, I would wonder how that's gonna fit. Probably one of my primary questions.

--Brian

I really like the idea of working from a common script. You get to produce, direct, act, set design, etc. just like a "real world" project. I think we should definitely vote. Personally, I don't have any sound recording capability. Only my internet microphone. It won't sound very good. The 10 second club is good in that respect. I could use captions I guess. Whatever we end up with, it sounds like a great idea.

This is a great idea! Couldn't the judgeing be open for all on the net... not just members? Get as many as possible interested.
A "Tell and friend" and you may win a license... is another idea.
This way Moho could get known by more people.

The choice of theme for this contest is crusial... i think.

The choice of theme for this contest is crusial... i think.

I totally agree. It needs to encourage people's creativity. It needs to walk the line between simple and inspiring.

A few of the ideas I was thinking about (please add to it):
"5" to celebrate the impending release of Moho 5
Lost Marble (Losing your marbles...)
A day at the movies (parody your favorite movie, or have something to do with movie production)
True Love
New Year
A day in the life of...

Any opinions (I know you've all got them)?
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Half-baked

The Moho Animation Contest is a go!

Check out the Moho Contest Forum at: http://www.lostmarble.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=14

The first theme: 5 (to celebrate the new release of Moho 5).
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Honda Cb1100F History

Nice job on the contest! Glad to see LM put some prizes behind it. This should be a lot of fun ....

Best -- Greg.

Thanks! I hope everyone has a great time with it. Hopefully, it's the first of many!

And, yes, an extra big thanks to Moho for the cool prizes.
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JUGGALOS