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Congratulations to the 16 entrants who have passed the Novice Round!

* NATA Website
* Intermediate Round Page

You will now face another winner of the novice round head to head, who you must defeat by creating a superior animation in order to move on to the Masters!

*** The Intermediate Round ***

The Theme for the Intermediate Round is...

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* A True Companion *
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*** Rules ***
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* You have until 11:59:59 PM, Eastern Standard Time, on July 5th to complete your submissions. No submissions will be accepted after the deadline without penalty.
* Entries must fit the theme above to both level the playing field and ensure that entries were not previously created.
* The animation must be no shorter than 1 Minute and no longer than 10 Minutes.
* The animation must be submitted on NewGrounds, in flash format or other acceptable format viewable on NewGrounds.
* Excess nudity, profanity, and other things of profane nature are not allowed. (It cannot have a "Mature" rating.)
* Absolutely NO copyright material is allowed without permission. If you use copyrighted music or other material in your animation, you MUST get the permission of the original creator of that material.
* If you would like to parody, then use similar names instead of the real names - ie. "Smears" instead of "Sears". No copyrighted material whatsoever.
* The Audio portal is a great source for music, just be sure to get permission to use it for this contest!
* Any entry in violation of these rules will be disqualified.
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*** Matchups ***
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* Pahgawk vs. CatFat
* Catoblepas vs. test-object
* BPremo vs. ExtremeFudgeMaster
* DuDul vs. McBinkles
* coughing-dog vs. Dannx3anim8ion
* JagonDudo vs. JerrodStorm
* EmRox vs. TeamTamago
* SlackMan vs. VieRickend

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*** Judging ***
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Entries will be judged by the following judges:
* Tom Fulp
* Dave Bruno
* NitWitt
* SymphyBunny

Judging will be done by each judge across five categories with 5 possible points in each: Artwork/Style, Animation, Originality, Structure, and Entertainment. If you're interested in seeing more advice and examples on these categories, visit http://nataguide.munchymedia.com/
Each judge will therefore have a total possible 25 points for a single entry, adding up to 100 possible points from all four judges on a single entry. The entry will a higher number of points among a matchup will win and move on to the following round.

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*** Submissions ***
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* Entries must be uploaded via the NewGrounds Flash Portal.
* Entries must be tagged with "nata2012intermediate" to distinguish them from other rounds and years.
* Entries must be submitted before the deadline. (See above)
* Be sure to post a link to your entry in this topic, to be sure your entry does not get lost.
* Entries will otherwise be found by searching "nata2012intermediate" on NewGrounds, showing all entries with that tag.
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*** Late Penalties ***
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Late penalties look like this for submissions after the deadline:
0 - 29 minutes: - 5 total points
30 - 59 minutes: - 10 total points
1 - 2 hours: - 15 total points
2 - 3 hours: - 20 total points
3 - 4 hours: - 30 total points
4 - 5 hours: - 40 total points
5+ hours: Disqualified
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*** Current Prize ***
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The entrants with superior scores in each matchup will move on to the Master Round and receive a $50 prize in addition to their previous prizes. All prizes will be awarded in October, AFTER the competition ends.
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*** Fine Print ***
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* By submitting an entry to NATA 2012, you agree to allow NATA and its organizers to use your material to promote the contest and use it for possible calendars and other merchandise.
* All entrants must have a paypal or the ability to receive a check in the mail in order to claim their prizes.
* The final Champion of Flash Artists at the completion of the contest must create an illustrated image of themselves interacting with planet Earth, as is NATA tradition to document their victory with such an image on the NATA website.
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Good Luck!!

FIRST

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

At 6/11/12 12:03 AM, McBinkles wrote: FIRST

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I wanted to do that. :(

At 6/11/12 12:08 AM, JerrodStorm wrote:

At 6/11/12 12:03 AM, McBinkles wrote: FIRST

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I wanted to do that. :(

sorry :( you can do second :D

At 6/11/12 12:14 AM, McBinkles wrote:

At 6/11/12 12:08 AM, JerrodStorm wrote:

At 6/11/12 12:03 AM, McBinkles wrote: FIRST

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I wanted to do that. :(

sorry :( you can do second :D

SECOND!!!!!1111!!!1one!!! :DDDD

I know what I want to do already. :)

I know what I want to do already. :)

I can only hope for the best

what to do, what to do...

I'm already having an easier time coming up with ideas for this theme than for the last one.

At 6/10/12 11:59 PM, NATA wrote: *******************************
* A True Companion *

I may have dodged a bullet here.

Generic must-comment:

That's quite an interesting topic! There should be a lot of different possibilities for this, can't wait to see what approach people will take.

Is it just me, or are the topics getting less and less specific?

Guess what, mine has a dog in it.

At 6/11/12 03:18 AM, BPremo wrote: Guess what, mine has a dog in it.

Nooo that was my idea! D:

Ooh, nice theme. Brainstorming time! I'm going to have to make something significantly shorter than usual so I can focus more on the animation itself (and also so I don't fail all my exams...)

At 6/11/12 04:38 AM, TurkeyOnAStick wrote:

At 6/10/12 11:59 PM, NATA wrote: *** Matchups ***
* Catoblepas vs. test-object

Ouch.
Test better get his game on.

Turkey better change his icon and signature.

Okay at first I was like :| ..geezz.... All that comes to mind is sonic the hedgehog..
But now after doing some brainstorming and breaking the theme up into its individual words and branching off different interpretations of each like "true" could = reality / deception etc. I'm feeling more comfortable about this theme.

Story outline's done!

Now for some concepts (still dunno what my characters will look like).

My two cents about NATA

NATA have a really high level this yeah, it's too bad that some of the entries didn't get more views or...Frontpage. Just my opinion.

...I mean some people has made some great entries and has been totally ignored. I won't teach them theirs job, afterall it's not my site but it's sad to see some good stuff with only 2 k views.

True companion... hmm... I've got 10 days busy for university... i think i can get many sketches, concepts and polish the story.
Now i really like this theme

Yay, just wrote a ton of irrelevant stuff! Assum! Anyone bored? :D

At 6/11/12 02:16 PM, Hikarian wrote: Yay, just wrote a ton of irrelevant stuff! Assum! Anyone bored? :D

yes 'n no. I'm roughing out ideas for how my characters will look. I want to make them more realistic than usual, but I dunno how well I can keep up real human form in an animation. It's just a bunch of tedious ground work...

Man, I had a cool idea for a dark twist on the good ol' boy and his dog scene.

but the more i think about this, the more i'm sure someone else is doing the exact same thing.

At 6/11/12 02:53 PM, Emrox wrote:

At 6/11/12 01:34 PM, DuDuL wrote: True companion... hmm... I've got 10 days busy for university... i think i can get many sketches, concepts and polish the story.

More like... "and English the story"

THIS

At 6/11/12 03:03 PM, Luwano wrote: Congrats to all the animators so far. I love the match-ups, it looks like there will be some close decisions.

How did you decide who is paired against each other? Random? Based on the points of the previous round? Or a combination of both?

Oh I remember! After the open round, judges decided on their top 32 favorite submissions and each artist got points accordingly (Whoever got ranked number one got 32 points, number two got 31, and so on). At first, the idea was to pin up the one who ranked number 1 agains rank number 32 and such, but that would've been unfair and not that entertaining, so instead it was split on the middle so that the highest score came up against the middle score, number 2 went up against number 17, number 3 against 18 etc.

The rest is just based upon this setup: http://nata.munchymedia.com/

Sooo many numbers ~ I have no idea if any of what I just wrote made sense ~