Over the past month my friend Andrew and I were involved with a Canada-wide competition called skills. We started with the provincials "Skills Manitoba" and took gold, moving us to Skills Canada.
We took gold there too ;)
During skills we are given a certain time limit, and a theme; to create a flash movie based on that theme. We are marked on our animation skills in many ways by professional animators. (the guy that made "Doodlez" (viewed on ytv and teletoon i think) Judged ours.
I encourage everyone to check out skills in their local areas, as there is a skills for america and all over europe. Unfortunately there is no "Skills World" For 2D/3D animation, but if your a carpenter or something you can look into that :P Regardless, winning the nationals for Skills is quite prestigious.
Some other stuff:
-While animating, for the most part I would do chararacter animation, while Andrew would do backgrounds and colouring, this allowed me to make the character animations look nicer.
-Skills Canada took place over 2 days of work, while the provincials was in 1 day.
-All were animated at 24 FPS, even though I prefer 30
-The computers we used at nationals were really nice :D They even provided intuos 3 6x8 tablets.
-With the exception of the alien sounds, Credits song (for national flash) and a few sound effects, i did most of the voices and sounds.
Lastly, i want to thank Newgrounds for everything its done for me in the last 5 years since i've been coming here. You've taught me how to become the animator that i am today and I thank you for that.
-Duchednier
