2020 - 1st Place

“Catch”

by Tim Hendrix - pasadea, usa

Description: 

The theme inspired me to make a simple short about Blaze, my family’s Border Collie - Playing catch with her between renders was my favorite aspect of visiting my folks during quarantine.  I wanted to capture her expressive face, particularly how she indicates objects using her eyes and ears.

My part time faculty status at Art Center would normally give me access to a machine, but campus is shut down, and my laptop is an ancient 2012 MacBook with extremely modest specs.  So it’s fair to say I’m entering this contest partially in the hopes of getting a better home workstation!

I knew I couldn’t push Flame’s 3D capabilities, so I had to get creative.   I’ve always doodled and animated as a hobby, so I aimed at a style of 2D animation specifically designed around Flame’s strengths - Extremely detailed painted joints and rigs that are squashed and stretched at 12fps as Extended Bicubics in Action.

The entire project is an interesting study in using Flame as a traditional animation pipeline - Like any other 2D animation, this began life as a detailed animatic for audio sync/feedback purposes.   Then the backgrounds, rigs, and other pieces were prepared separately and combined all within the same batch.   I’ve included the animatic as a separate deliverable for fun, and it’s still in the batches for those who wanna poke around.

There were def compromises - I had to build a different rig of the boy for every shot, and his design is pretty inconsistent, and maaaaybe that walk cycle could’ve used an extra day - But hey, that’s the biz.  For something I started storyboarding on September 4th and delivered on September 30th, I don’t think it’s bad!  I’m not much of an animator, but I hope this short can be a fun little ray of light in a depressing time.

Special thanks to Alex Winkler and Christina Gonzales for making it sound cool as hell, and the pals Eric Bradford, Julia Kaye, and Mike Litwak for their feedback on the animatic.  And of course the mighty Ivar Beer for all his wild shaders - Crok_Snow_Texture was the MVP of this project.

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2020 - 2nd Place

“Beyond the Sea”

by Gabriel garrido Figueroa - Madrid, Spain

Synopsis:  

A cute girl takes us into a fantastic underwater world, where she lives one of her many adventures, however this time she will face her greatest fear ... All this happening in the amazing imagination of my goddaughter.  

Inspiration: 

When this contest was launched, I thought about various ideas on the topic "Joy", but none of them convinced me, so I decided not to participate in it. However, a few days later I took a different approach from a more personal point of view and then everything started to make sense. I asked myself ... What place gives me joy, enjoyment, fun and disconnection? The answer ... The Sea. 

I remembered that years ago, the great Ivar Beer, shared the Mandelbox shaders. I did a couple of tests and I sent him a frame called “Diving with Ivar”, so I already had my main background quite resolved. 

The idea of the character came from a drawing that I saw in the library. A kid plunging into the sea from a book, making a call to dive into books ... that was great! 

 The process: 

 I made a storyboard and then an animatic to size the project, establish a length for each shot making sure that it was within the 30 second limit. The challenge was to create and bring the character to life, which took me a few days to define. While I sketched and went back to study the movements of the cartoon characters I moved forward with the fish, the backgrounds, the shark, the final look, etc. 

When the girl and her expressions were created the next step was to do a setup for her in order to have a quick way to animate. I was always careful to keep the batch as light as possible. 

I would like to thank my dear friend @thebongman for his magnificent soundtrack. 

During the last month, I learned a lot of things and technics but above all in these difficult times, imagination is the best tool to escape from the reality we live in. 

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 2020 - 3rd Place

“Joyride”

by patrick munoz - Los Angeles, usa

Description:

I live in LA and make the trip to San Diego pretty frequently to visit family. I drive late a night to avoid the traffic. I’m usually blasting deep house/ techno/ synth wave, you get the idea. There’s something about driving at night which makes me happy, seeing the lights pass you by.. I also have a manual GTI so its actually kinda fun for me. It gives me joy! Thats where I got the idea for my entry. 

In Joyride I modeled the car after a Ferrari F40 (late 1980’s-early 1990’s) in flame. I wanted to create a digital world that basically comes to life when you get into the car and start driving. I chose a tunnel because I felt it would be the most fun with passing lights and reflections. My goal here was to reach a final destination. I felt a high vantage point would really tie it all together. I’m really into the synth wave aesthetic so I tried to emulate that throughout. This was a fun and challenging project. I hope to do it again next year.

I used the song Restablized by Punchdeck. He posted his music online for free use, so there shouldn’t be any copyright issue on YouTube. https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/i6i44m/i_make_orchestral_electronic_music_that_im_giving/

-Patrick

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2020 - 4th Place

“ReJOYce in Nature”

by dave stern - venice, usa

Description: Inspired by what is happening on the west coast these days.

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2020 - 5th Place

“Ode to Joy”

by tim farrell - New York, usa

Description: In an old turn-of-the-century Vaudeville theater a troupe of cats performs a tribute to the finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, "The Ode to Joy."  

The soundtrack was created with internally generated 400 Hz tone.  There is a read me in the batch for rendering details.

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 2020 - 6th Place

“Joy of Finding Worth from the Worthless”

by parag jambhekar - mumbai, india

Description:

Nature is a source of Joy as it gives us everlasting happiness and leaves a big impact in our mind.  We are refreshed,  everytime we think about it. The feeling never fades; in fact, its loveliness increases with each passing moment. I really enjoyed working with the tools like G-mask,  3D-shape,  3D Geometry, Bfx, Particles. 

I put my best efforts to complete the story with the theme "JOY" in the short time available. Hope you liked it.

A big thank you to the LOGIK Group which has many talented yet humble people. I am really happy to be a part of it.

Stay Safe and Stay Healthy... 

-Parag

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2020 - 7th Place

“Sketches”

by iuri tampolski - sao paolo, brazil

Description:

First of all, this is one of those things which I think the idea is great but I'm not sure I'm all that happy with the execution, but if I'm embarrassing myself, it would probably be worse if I don't send anything, so here it is.

I really like the idea of starting with one frame of white plane and simple, so I did something that is not technically too challenging but is also far from being simple considering my skills. I animated frame by frame sketches that represent a very joyful daily routine for me. Going to work on my bicycle, listening to loud music while working, swimming, and relaxing on the couch watching something I really enjoy on tv. I would love to represent a lot more for joy, like traveling with my wife, having fun with my pets, but once again my drawing abilities limited me.

So I used paint to sketch a few frames for each shot and looped with mux, and played around with timewarp in a few of them. To give some texture and some paper feel I used 3 very basic matchboxes, PageCurl_3vis, crok_flicker and crok_vignette.

As I said it, I'm sure I'm very pleased with the result, but sure was a lot of fun to do this so I think is worth to share. 

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 2020 - 8th Place

“Joyflow”

by dan mccarthy - toronto, canada

Description:

I approached this project with the intent to always use an alternative method than the first thing that came to mind to try and push me into new areas, tools or techniques. On the positive side of the rona I've spent a lot of time up north and got back into photography. I've also recently been fascinated by docs or videos on space. So I let those three things be my inspiration for my ofow submission. 

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2020 - 9th Place

“Daydream”

by Sunny Mahour - Mumbai, India

This small film was a real joyful challenge and a break for me. Stressful but I enjoyed; last full month worked very hard,

From the registration to submission; multiple changes in story, visuals and edit till I got satisfactory results. I think 30sec is more than enough to tell your story because all form factors are getting smaller day by day.

I learned too many things and possibilities from both years' entries.

Storyline - After finding the flaw in all dreams the boy played sympathy card. 

Workflow-  Used FBX & 3d shapes, Deformation, Diffuse, Displacement & IBL Maps, Lighting, Shadows, camera lens and FOV, Particles. Wasn't easy to manage layers, animation and changes then render again & again and again....

Thanks to the Logik Team for giving a chance to all Flame Artist’s to try something for themselves.

Best Regards,

Sunny

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 2020 - 10th Place

“Doublestops”

by jorge febrero - madrid, spain

Description: It's amazing how vibrations can suggest places, feelings, colors and shapes, and how they can change our state of mind just in a second :-)

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2020 - Honorable Mention

“Ba1100n”

by james emmerich - New York, usa

Description:

"Ba1100n" is a fun little experiment for me in bringing a basic idea to fruition and building upon it. I started with an idea that balloons are a good representation of joy.Then I proceed to create from there; how would I create a balloon in Flame, what would the balloon do? etc.

It's a fun process because you never really know where you'll end up. The process is identical to how I would draw when I was younger. 

Joy is something more innate in children so I created a world like a child's drawing but I also made it more fun for me as an adult by using digital, psychedelic effects. Another element that I incorporated was resolve. The video goes from being chaotic to a serene night time scene. I think that kind of resolve brings joy to the viewer.

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 2020 - Honorable Mention

“Joy”

by Stephen Miller - london, uk

Description:

My name is Stephen Miller. I work for Gramercy Park Studios in London, and the version of Flame that I used was 2020.2.

My film is called “Joy”. We see a bland looking robot, no smile heading to the 100th floor of a building, and for one brief moment it hears something played on a tape machine which brings a smile to this machines face. Then our robot is sent to be terminated.

I guess the message is, enjoy it while you can. All built over two days off of what has been a hectic working month, and the music I quickly composed in about 20 mins. Didn’t have much time to bring it all together, but apart from the frequent crashes, it was lots of fun!

-Stephen

 2020 - Honorable Mention

“Fill Your Life With Joy”

by jola kudela - london, uk

Description:

You're immortal as long as you live. Fill your life with joy.

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