June 2008 Special Effects Animation Contest!

$200 Cash Prize Awarded to Animog

Contest is over! Thank you everyone that participated.
Entries were sent to my email address: "jason.reinsvold (at) gmail.com" (zip them or send them as .fla files)

The theme for this contest is "Special Effects." This can be anything from explosions to magical spell effects. An example of this would be the explosion effect you see from a bomb in Prelude, or the "charge up" effect you see on the mother ship laser cannons of my background space battle. This can be any special effect you want and it doesn't have to be long or super elaborate -- it just needs to look cool.

All entries have a chance to be featured in any of my future games with your name in the credits!

I need help from talented Special Effects Flash Animators and I’m willing to award $200 to the person with the best animation.

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 using the guidelines listed below.
6. Feel free to submit entries early, though this will not increase your chances of winning. However, it may increase your chances if give you feedback and you are able to improve your animation before the deadline. NOTE: all revisions count as submissions and are subject to these rules.

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.

There is no template animation for this contest. Use your own imagination and create whatever you want.

Special Effects Examples

• Explisions - Can be tweened or dynamically generated using code.
• Tracers/Sparklers - e.g. sparkles that follow a projectile would be a good example.
• Smoke or Dust - e.g. smoke that follows a meteor or smoke that animates on a continuous loop or dust that occurs after something hits the ground.
• Fire - looping animation or dynamically generated with code.
• Impact - when a projectile hits something or something takes physical damage.
• Charge up - e.g. the space ship charge-up effect on the mothership cannons on my main page.
• Splatter - water or liquid splash effects (e.g. blood)

NOTE: All of these animation types have a chance at winning the contest. I do not favor a specific category.

Animation Performance Tips and Guidelines

• Animations should be self contianed in their own MovieClip object (do not animate on the main timeline).
• Use 35 fps to test your animations.
• Use fills instead of lines whenever possible (lines don't always scale well and they can have a negative impact on game performance).
• Try to use alpha = 100% for fills whenever possible (changing the alpha can have a negative impact on game performance).
• Only use masking if you cannot perform the same effect using any other method.
• 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. Cool factor
1. Does it look cool?
2. Artistic style
1. Is it simple yet professional in style? Is it not overly elaborate but not super basic?
2. Does it have a good use of color and contrast? Does it simulate depth or volume without using filters such as bevel or shadow?
3. Quality of animation
   1. If keyframes are hand drawn, then does each frame look professionally illustrated and do the transitions look good?
   2. If keyframes are shape or motion tweened, does it make sense to do this instead of manually drawn frames?
   3. If keyframes are shape tweened, are transitions between key frames smooth and well guided?
4. Performance
1. Can multiple copies of this animation 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 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.