April 2008 Bowmaster 2 Animation Contest!

Congratulations to Zack for winning the $100 animation contest! Good job. Check out his animation below.

$100 Cash Prize

Contest Submission Due Date was March 24th 2008. This contest is over.

All entries have a chance to be featured in the next Bowmaster. Get your name in the credits!

I need help from talented Flash character animators and I’m willing to award $100 to the person with the best animation. The animation I need is a Bowmaster characters like the ones you see in my previous Bowmaster games. They walk, run, attack, fly, die, etc. If you think you have the skills, I’d like to see what you can do. Feel free to create whatever kind of character you want. It can be a spider, a blob, a demon, a dragon, an ogre – whatever you want! To enter the contest you must follow my guidelines closely and agree to the contest rules.

Contest Rules

1. You must submit only original work that has not been featured in any other project.
2. All entries will have a chance to be featured in Bowmaster or future LostVectors.com games. You agree to allow LostVectors.com exclusive rights to the animation and artwork submitted even if you do not win the contest. This means you or any other entity other than LostVectors.com cannot use the animation or artwork for any other commercial projects. You may use the submitted content for personal use such as for portfolio’s or academic non-commercial projects.
3. You agree that your entry does not violate copyright, patent, or trademark rights of any individual or entity and that it is your original work.
4. You agree that entering this contest does not violate any laws or software licensing agreements and that if you win it is legal for you to accept a check for 100 US dollars.
5. Feel free to submit more than one original entry. Entries will be judged against criteria listed below.

Animation Requirements and Guidelines

You must use Flash 7 or higher. It is unlikely that you’ll need to use any ActionScript but if you wish to implement ActionScript to support your animation in anyway it must be compatible with ActionScript 3.0.

Download the demo template here.

Required Animation Sequences

1. Walk
2. Run
3. Jump
4. Quick Attack
5. Strong Attack
6. Block
7. Flinch
8. Get knocked down
9. Stay knocked down (e.g. stars above head animating)
10. Get back up from being knocked down
11. Die
12. Prepare Jump
13. Jump
14. Loop animation for flying through air from jump
15. Land jump
16. Get thrown into the air (different from jump, caused by external force like a bomb exploding causing the character to fly into the air against its will).
17. Hit ground from being thrown into the air. This is a clumsy ground hit. Should end with same stance as “stay knocked down” animation frame

Bonus Animations:
Depending on the type of unit you have, you may want to include animation sequences that are a little more specialized. E.g. if you had a daemon unit that could walk and fly, maybe you could have different animations for walking and hovering with his wings moving. Perhaps you want to include animations for using melee weapons as well as firing a magical fire ball.

Animation and Graphical guidelines

• The character must stay constrained to his general bounding box for all animations. E.g. for the walking sequence, the character must appear to be walking in place. E.g. for the jump sequence, his feet can contract and expand, but his general position must stay relatively centered (the unit x/y position is controlled by the game, not the animation).
• It is okay if his center of gravity shifts a little but not by a lot.
• His body parts are allowed to change scale or rotation.
• You may use new graphics to illustrate different animation sequences (e.g. if your guy swings his fist horizontally then you may need to create graphics for his fist at different angles).
• Do not use excessive use of alpha blended effects. In other words, don’t have several layers of semi-transparent objects. Doing this may cause the game to run slow.
• Avoid using mask layers whenever possible. This may severely decrease game performance.
• Avoid using lines. Lines do not scale well and can decrease the performance of the game. If you like using lines to outline your objects make sure to convert them to fills before you finish.
• Do NOT use filter effects.
• You may use ActionScript to create dynamic effects (like my blob demo) but be sure you do not go overboard.
• Use as many layers as you need.
• Feel free to use both motion and shape tweens as needed.
• Feel free to use guides as needed.
• You can put your animation sequences in any order and start sequences anywhere you want on the timeline. Make sure you clearly state where each animation sequence starts and stops (use frame labels). You may stretch out each animation sequence for as many frames as you feel necessary.
• Use 35 fps to test your animations.
• Use solid colors instead of gradients when possible. Feel free to use gradients if you would like but it may affect the performance of the game. Using solid colors is also more consistent with the current artistic style of the game.

Performance Tips

• Avoid using alpha less than 100% for movie clips
• Avoid using masking
• Convert all lines to fills
• Don’t use filter effects
• Use solid colors instead of gradients when possible
• Avoid adding too much graphical detail to objects that will appear very small on the screen
• Try “Modify > Shape > Optimize” feature to reduce the number of curves of a fill.

Contest judgment criteria (What I’m looking for)

1. Originality and Theme
1. Does the animation and graphics stand out as something new (compared to other Bowmaster games) but still hold true to the theme. Note: I don’t want people to think that I will give more credit to monsters that look super weird and original – if you create a “Death Knight” you might very well win if it’s cool and follows the guidelines when competing against the “look what I made it’s a 12 eyed blob monster with 7 feet and two toes” 
2. Artistic style
1. Simple yet professional style. Not overly elaborate but not super basic.
2. Good use of color and contrast. Can simulate depth or volume without depending on filters such as bevel or shadow.
3. Quality of animation
1. Does each sequence look believable and organic?
2. Do animations transition well (where applicable, e.g. prep jump – jump – fly through air – land jump)
4. Performance
1. Can multiple copies of this unit be displayed on the screen at once without causing a lot of slow-down. Note: If your animation is so cool that it warrants boss-like rarity meaning that you’ll only see only one of them at a time then I may forgive performance slowdown. However, if even just one version of your animation is hard for a normal computer to process then it’s not likely that I can use it.