VideoCopilot.net Forum Seems to be down (28/08/08)

After browsing the forums at videocopilot last night (a really helpful forum with tutorials and help with after effects etc), I was hoping to return to the forum this morning to see if a question I asked relating to After Effects had been answered, as I need to know so I can finish post production on a shot I was working on. However it seems I cannot access the forums, is it just me? Or is anyone else having trouble accessing the forums? I really need to get on as I am working to a deadline that I am hoping to meet.

So yeah is anyone else experiencing problems with the videocopilot forum?

Cheers

Richard

http://www.rsteenoven.co.uk

How to make money from animating?

It is certainly possible to make money from animating. There is always a contest going on that you can enter your animations into, and many are giving away money and lego (brickfilming) as prizes for the winners. An example of a really good contest, is the Marillion Whatever is wrong with you? contest, which is a music video contest in which people have to make any video for their track, and post it on youtube. Whichever video gets the most youtube views wins. The video doesn't have to be an animation, which is why animators have an advantage here, because not many people have seen animations before, so they find it more interesting and unique, and your video would stand out from the rest of the entries, considering most other entries are just attempts to rack up the views with pictures of half naked hot women in the middle of their video. The marillion contest can be found at http://whateveriswrongwithyou.com , the prize money for the winner is £5000, and there is also a prize for the entry that they think is the best one, that way it isnt entirely based on who has the most views, but you don't know what this prize is, its likely to be a CD or something, which is mediocre compared to £5000.

There is always a contest going on that you can enter your film into, not all give alot of money, but if it is a contest based on your type of animation (eg brickfilming) they often give prizes that help you with future animations or something you can use in animations, brickfilming is the animation of lego, and most brickfilming contests give lego as prizes, such as sets like cafe corner etc which is a really good prize for a contest like this, as many are funded by one person, the user. http://www.bricksinmotion.com is a brickfilming site, and there was recently a TEC (Technical Excellence Competition) in which brickfilmers had to make an animation in one shot, to show excellence in animation. This contest has not yet been judged, but as an example here is the 1st and 2nd prize pictures so you can see what sort of stuff you win.



As you can see, rather nice sets that would be very useful to a brickfilmer in future films to help develop sets and improve.

All you need to do is find a contest yourself is research, use Google and look for contests that you desire, or join a community relating to animation as these often host contests that you can enter.

Another new way to earn from your animations is advertisements, Google adsense is a good one as you can now put adverts on your youtube videos, and if people click the ads, you get money from them so if you have a really popular animation, it is wise to put ads on it as you will definitely receive clicks, and if you have a website, put your films on there then put some adverts around so that they may be clicked.

I was wondering what you thought about this, how do you make money from animating? Any ideas on how you could possibly make money from animating?

I'm also taking suggestions on articles to write about, so just post your comments and subscribe to my feed for future posts.

Thanks

Richard

http://www.rsteenoven.co.uk

Free Axogon Composer Download

I had Axogon Composer lying around, and some people were trying to download it, so here you go.

DOWNLOAD HERE (mediafire)

This is a pretty good special effects program, but can be some what difficult to use.

The Olympics - In LEGO!

Olympic and lego enthusiasts from the Hong Kong Lego User Group have created the olympics, from lego. You can see more from this here.

It seems around 300,000 bricks were used in this creation, and around 4500 minifigures.

Now imagine animating on this, it would either be a nightmare, or a dream to animate on it. Imagine the possibilities. The detail from the creations are outstanding and very similar to the real thing.

Chef's salty balls lost thier sweet taste - Issac Hayes

The great issac hayes, famously known from southpark, playing the voice of the chef, has died. Such a shame, he was great, I loved the "Suck on my chocolate salty balls" song. Pure genious by southpark. And he will surely be missed.

Southpark is a great animated tv programme, it is very funny and never fails to suprise me or make me laugh. The chef was one of my favourite characters, as well as butters and timmy. They are such origonal characters and should just be loved.

Brickfilming contest BRAWL ended

The First official BRAWL (Brickfilm rapidly all week long), created by Munzapoppa, has now ended. The theme was "Negotiation", and each film had to have a certain mod element, either a blue and yellow brick together, or the letter C, just to make sure the film was actually made for this contest. With 11 entries taken in, its not bad for the first one. I managed to enter, with my film, Pigeon negotiator which is around 3:00 minutes. You can find it at my website.
I'd appreciate it if you checked it out, or comment on my youtube video.

This film, unlike many of my other films, doesn't actually feature any adult related content, which is good, as people are less likely to complain, which usually happens.

The picture isn't really related to this, other than the fact that it says brawl, so yeah. And apparently Super smash bros brawl is a good game.


I also recently came across toontube, which seems like a nice friendly website where people post animations, so you should really check this out.