Animators! We are hosting a Summer Animation Jams event and it starts in one week: MONDAY, JUNE 13th.

At 3PM EST on Monday the 13th, you will be given a theme to create an animation around.

You will have until 3PM EST on Monday, June 27th, to finish your piece (two weeks).

You may work with a team but each team should specify the LEAD ANIMATOR, who will get the points. Support members may include background art (bg animation is fine), coloring, in-betweens, voice actors, musicians and sound editors. We will have honorable mentions for notable support players at the end of the event.

ROUND 2 will be announced at 3PM EST on Monday, June 27th and it will have a ROBOT theme.

The deadline for ROUND 2 will be 11:59PM on Sunday, July 10th, aka ROBOT DAY on Newgrounds.

NOTE: Your animation will have a shot at the $100 Best Animation Prize on Robot Day. Artists, Game Developers and Musicians - you also have Robot Day prize categories!

ROUND 3 will be announced at 3PM EST on Monday, July 11th. Further details to come.

The entire event will be 4-5 rounds. There are no eliminations and you are not required to participate in every round.

Winners for each round will be announced within a week of each round conclusion. Points will be awarded as such:

1st: 10 pts
2nd: 9 pts
3rd: 8 pts
4th: 7 pts
5th: 6 pts
6th: 5 pts
7th: 4 pts
8th: 3 pts
9th: 2 pts
10th: 1 pt

Whoever has the most points at the end of the event will be crowned the winner! The grand prize for the entire event is starting at $300 and may stay there but we'll see if we can make it better in the upcoming weeks.

The Newgrounds Annual Tournament of Animation is on hiatus this summer so this series of jams is the stand-in. Like NATA, it is an especially good opportunity for upcoming animators to push themselves and see a lot of improvement over the summer, while also building out a portfolio of work!

A strong showing for the opening round will build buzz and excitment around this event so it would be awesome to see as many animators as possible in attendance, both newcomers and pros!

Questions / suggestions welcome.

You don't need to formally sign up in advance but you can reply to this thread saying you intend to participate - it will get everyone excited to see who might turn up!

To enter, all you need to do is create an animation at any point during the event. You could miss Round 1 and still enter with Round 2 but you'll have the best odds of accumulating points if you participate in every round.

Cool! And for once, I'm the first one (other than Tom) to reply to a TomFulp post too.

Sad there won't be any NATA this summer :/

I might join one of the jams but we'll see.

ROBOTS?
ANIMATION JAM?

YOU HAVE MY ATTENTION MR. FULP.

Sweet.

Sounds fancy...

At 6/6/16 03:30 PM, TopSpinThefuzzy wrote: ROBOTS?
ANIMATION JAM?

YOU HAVE MY ATTENTION MR. FULP.

Would be super cool to see you in there!

sounds fun

I'm so happy to see this happening! Time to prepare!

At 6/6/16 03:36 PM, ManuelTacoface wrote: hey @tomfulp, mind filling us in on some of the potential themes for the upcoming game jams?

Do you mean the animation jams? Themes will be a surprise.

Game jams we still need to revisit.

At 6/6/16 03:34 PM, TomFulp wrote:

At 6/6/16 03:30 PM, TopSpinThefuzzy wrote: ROBOTS?
ANIMATION JAM?

YOU HAVE MY ATTENTION MR. FULP.

Would be super cool to see you in there!

YES so uh. how exactly does one sign up, or will we just need to upload something by the deadline with a specific tag?

At 6/6/16 03:41 PM, DuDuL wrote: I'm so happy to see this happening! Time to prepare!

w0000t

At 6/6/16 03:45 PM, TopSpinThefuzzy wrote: YES so uh. how exactly does one sign up, or will we just need to upload something by the deadline with a specific tag?

I just updated the post to address this - no official sign-up, you just gotta upload something to enter. Each round will have a tag you include with your submission to make it easy to find - that will be announced with the theme.

I'm excited to see the submissions!

Also, this has been bothering me for awhile, how is your game that is featured in your sig going? If that's even any of my business.

Wow, great to see this going!
I should find the time to at least give it a shot on the first round; While I'm still going with my game it's great to have this sort of contests just to explore new ideas within a limited timeframe; I still remember NATA (specially '14) being quite a productive event for animation!

I was just thinking; if I remember correctly NATA submissions had to be a minimum of 1 minute; Will there be a restriction like that to keep submissions 'consistent' in some way? (still, NATA had 3 weeks per round; maybe a minimum of 30 seconds of animation length (not including title-screen/credits) could be a reasonable treshold)

At 6/6/16 04:04 PM, Butzbo wrote: Wow, great to see this going!
I should find the time to at least give it a shot on the first round; While I'm still going with my game it's great to have this sort of contests just to explore new ideas within a limited timeframe; I still remember NATA (specially '14) being quite a productive event for animation!

I was just thinking; if I remember correctly NATA submissions had to be a minimum of 1 minute; Will there be a restriction like that to keep submissions 'consistent' in some way? (still, NATA had 3 weeks per round; maybe a minimum of 30 seconds of animation length (not including title-screen/credits) could be a reasonable treshold)

Hmmm good question... Rules like that can even change per-round but maybe a minimum of 30 seconds would be good, to push people to do something more than a REALLY quick gag...

At 6/6/16 04:04 PM, poopmcfarts wrote: Also, this has been bothering me for awhile, how is your game that is featured in your sig going? If that's even any of my business.

It's going well, just taking a really long time. When it's done people will likely understand why.

At 6/6/16 03:49 PM, TomFulp wrote: I just updated the post to address this - no official sign-up, you just gotta upload something to enter. Each round will have a tag you include with your submission to make it easy to find - that will be announced with the theme.

SWEET DUDE thanks!

I'll certainly try to enter, but I've still got alotta school to get through before summer break. Hopin' I can at least have a crack at it.

Ummmm, YES! I should no doubt be able to get in on at least one of these, sounds super exciting

Great! I might jump in here and there... or I might just go all out. Who knows?

I'm not much of an animator but ill give it a shot.
How long should the animations be?

At 6/6/16 04:44 PM, MisMash wrote: I'm not much of an animator but ill give it a shot.
How long should the animations be?

Nevermind, the question was answered already.

At 6/6/16 03:17 PM, TomFulp wrote: You may work with a team but each team should have a single animator. Support members may include a background artist and multiple voice actors, musicians and sound editors.

Does inbetweeninig and coloring count as a support or it all falls to single animator duty?

At 6/6/16 04:51 PM, DuDuL wrote:

At 6/6/16 03:17 PM, TomFulp wrote: You may work with a team but each team should have a single animator. Support members may include a background artist and multiple voice actors, musicians and sound editors.

Does inbetweeninig and coloring count as a support or it all falls to single animator duty?

I didn't get the vibe people were too interested in having coloring / in-between support for this but this is still open for discussion... I suppose all along I've been looking at this like NATA, where people are competing to be top animator, which gets tricky when some people have animation support teams and others don't... Maybe it's fine as long as there is a clear lead animator though?

Anyone out there who likes the idea of having coloring and in-between support, now is the time to bring it up! We could still change it up this week before it starts.

I'm interested but I am really slow at drawing so I hope there's not too many 30 second minimum themes.

oh boy gang I'm friggin ready. if any y'all wanna sample my smooth creamy voice or need backgrounds I'd love to contribute.

I'm a really bad animator, but since I'm really bored these days I'm in need of something to challenge my brain. I may end up with some interesting results.
Count me on it!

At 6/6/16 05:04 PM, LuckyLightTitan wrote: Speaking of "Jams" isn't there going to be another Construct 2 jam this year? Construct 3 is coming out soon btw, would be cool to see a contest made for it.

Checking in on that.

Holy heck, yes!!! If any of you lovely animators need a voice actor, hit me up amigos! Here's my demo reel, give you a taste of what I can do :3