AVC 2006 and 3D Awards

[Ernest Burden III]

Working from an existing project proposal was something I was thinking about, though my idea was to not provide much more than conceptual sketches, maybe hand-drawn sketches, as a starting point. So it would allow lots of creative licence while still having everyone working off a 'program'.

 

Click on your AVC 2005 Judges Avatar.

 

OK, I wasn't smart enough to think of that, and thank you so much for pointing it out publicly. But what I meant was, how does a visitor to your site, who lands on the main page, get to the cometition pages? It is far from obvious, and those pages should be celebrated. I was further suggesting adding a tab in the header bar to go to comp. pages.

[Sketchrender]

I have a suggestion.............

.........can we disqualify the guys and gals who got through last year.

 

only joking

 

but I may get through this year if people like Niall browne were not in the running, no offence niall.

 

As much as i would love to be on thier level, I can only aspire to their work, which is not a bad thing, i picked up a few pointers last year, but I would loved to have seen the full build-up, and lighting and rendering set up ect.

it should be used as a teching form too........

 

 

 

 

phil

[dbarc]

Working from an existing project proposal was something I was thinking about, though my idea was to not provide much more than conceptual sketches, maybe hand-drawn sketches, as a starting point. So it would allow lots of creative licence while still having everyone working off a 'program'.

 

I think leaving it open to interpretation in this way may defeat the purpose of having a perdefined brief in the first place. If you only had control of the building's skin for instance, you could come up with two dramatically different buildings.

 

I take your earlier point about the level of creativity displayed in the last competition but to me a challenge based on the realistic set of constraints which define our jobs was the biggest thing missing from the competition last year and it would be a welcome addition to rather than a replacement for the other more open challenges.

 

..and what Scott said much more eloquently earlier!

[Brian Cassil]

Scott, you make a compelling argument, and I agree with all your points about there still being room for creativity when we are given a design. But I still think that if we are given a design that is set in stone most of the entries will wind up looking a lot like each other.

 

I actually really like Ernest's suggestion of having sketches to work from, rather than plans. Maybe by keeping the design direction loose that would aid in the diversity of the submitted work, which in my opinion is the most important issue. Also, working from sketches and filling in the gaps actually would represent the type of work I do 90% of the time.

[Scott Baumberger]

I never meant that the design drawings should be set in stone. Even by the time a conceptual drawing set has been produced, the design itself has been tested and many people have been involved in its creation.

 

My main point is to remove the burden from the competitors of having to create a building design from scratch for the challenges. Regardless of how tight or loose the drawings are, the competitors will be free to focus on the illustrative aspects of the challenge from the beginning. As I mentioned earlier, the burden would also be removed from the judges to interpret or decipher the building design/program as they would have the same set of drawings to review.

 

Allowing for a certain amount of "filling in the gaps", adherence to the drawing set and brief is imperative to maintain fairness and, in my opinion, legitimacy.

[kimblarsen]

Hi all,

I'm in the planning stages for the next AVC 2006 competition and wanted to get your feedback. I think things went realtively well last year considering the size of the competition and it being the first time I'd planned such a huge undertaking, but I want this year's event to be even better. I'm going to detail some rough ideas below and I'd like your feedback.

1. There will be 3 challenges (rather than 5 like last year), as the workload was pretty extreme for both the competitiors and the judges.

2. I'm thinking the challenges will be a 1. a rendering, 2. an animation and 3. something abtract/artistic with fewer contraints to make up the three challenges.

Great that you are doing this again Jeff! I have not been involved with this in any way but I do think that reducing the amount of work required for all parties, both participants and judges is a good thing.

Also, I am not sure how well defined each challenge was last year. I do think that everyone would benefit from a topic or some form of framework for each challenge since it is all to easy to spend a lot of time just coming up with an idea, any idea, on what to make. I also believe that some form of formal or idea constraints, other than time, will help the competitors focus and it will allow the judges to more readily compare two projects up against eachother.

6. The timeframes are roughly as follows:

Qualification Submission period: 1 month

Qualificaton judging: 2 weeks

Challenge 1 (abstract relatively simple challenge): 2 weeks

Challenge 1 Judging: 2 weeks

Challenge 2 and 3: 1 month each

Challenge 2 and 3 Judging: 2 weeks each

This works out so there is roughly 30 days between the final judging and SIGGRAPH. This allows enough time for competitiors to arrange travel VISAs and for me to plan the CGA event without having a near nervous breakdown.

I am not on the judging end of this nor planning to enter the competition - I simply cannot find the time. However I would advice that leaving the judging of the final challenge to the 30 days before SIGGRAPH could be tricky if you have judges that are taking their summer holiday. It might only be in Scandinavia but here people usually take 3-4 weeks off for summer - mostly the whole of July. I know that in souther Europe most people go on vaction later, like August though. How is it in the US and Canada?

9. There will be two entry categories: Individual (Like last year) and Group (Studios)/Team. Students can participate in either.

Does that mean that there are 20 entries for each challenge then? Are you planning to have separate judges for each category? The 10 x 3 x 2 = 60 submissions to judge seems to me to be quite a daunting task to submit to.

Cheers,

Kim