first things first : Happy New Year....!!! Maybe you noticed the question mark and wondering what do I want again posting over and over about the same subject. Well I will explain everything First of all I want to congratulate the winners from the animation contest ( especially the ones the where very good ) since all I am about to write is not directed to them Secondly I must say that I wasnt about to write anything because since I was in that contest this message can be taken as frustration or something similar ( ex inner anger, hatred and so on which is not the case) ; so I will help you make the things a little more clear by stating from the beginning that I am NOT talking about my crappy animation ( which by the way I would be an hypocrite if I would say that I think is not better than the one form dreampaint) I will talk in general as an observer, and by the way kind of the same thing happened in the greeting card contest but that is over so I wont go over it again; one last thing before I start : I am writing this as my own opinion and because I am not the kind of person who wont speak up his opinion and express a point of view. If anyone will take this message personally then what can I say??? sorry. I must say that I am very surprised with the judges choices in both the competitions (animations and stills) - with 1-2 exceptions maybe especially the second place amazingly in both contests the second place was better in any way then the first one but however this is just a matter of artistic taste. What I would like to know is how come animations like the one from Roriel come out in front of many other animations way much better, with a way better technique? And if the Judging Criteria is your answer, lets take a look at this up close shall we? quote: Each animation or image will be awarded a score from one (1) to ten (10) points in each of the following four (4) areas, for a maximum of fourty (40) possible points. 1 Originality 2 Quality of the imagery; presenting the highest overall quality of visual imagery 3 Lighting and perspective: the best use of creative lighting and camera perspective to set the mood. 4 Theme; adherence to the contest theme. Ok, now were getting somewhere Maybe one of the judges can explain to me how this animation was rated.originality oh, yeah Ill give it that; i always wanted to see some weird animals that look like chicken "fighting" and after that become friends again ...what a peacefull dream...but see I end up short on this one because I had a different perception on what originality means.. Quality of the imagery????? Where is that in this particular animation?.so I supposed that it received 0 right? Yeah, I doubt about that Lighting???? Perspective???? Yeah right.. And theme.now this is a tricky one because obviously many people that choosed not to write peace on earth on some background or ball or anything else that you can spin around did not received enough points to come out as winners.. I am not even going to talk about other ones like the ones from pappy411( which by the way not only that is good but also I will never understand what he ment with that text which by the way half is from spinoza and the other half is from some Sunday church meeting - either way dosent make any sense unless you have totally ignored philosophy and religion for a long long time), micaclark, dreampaint (again an animation that probably received lots of points for imagery and perspective, and lighting also) which I will never understand how can be better than ric535s animation or pollywoggles just to name a couple Like a week ago you people locked a topic about a guy that did not understand how come images with no artistic quality receive so many good ratings.well in that post someone said this is something we work on.believe me this is not the way to work on it. Bad ratings and such will stop when you people will start making an example and reward what is truly artistic and what truly has value. I was talking to some friends on some other forum and I was telling them about this contest and how I was thinking that the first two prizes will probably not be awarded because wasnt that much quality..hehe how wrong I was.to be honest tho after I saw the results from greeting cards ( stills) my bet for the winner was the animation from m_daniel; I wonder how you guys missed to reward all that hard work.. So again, if you think all this is caused by frustration and anger what can I say??? Happy new year. But maybe, just maybe, some of you guys will stop, listen and think for a second leave your big egos aside for a moment and listen I will stop here because I think I said almost all I wanted to. And yes I do feel better now that I said everything I think.and I also think anyone with a little artistic foundation got the point I am trying to make. Hmm I guess I have to buy xfrog after all. You can go ahead and lock this one too now, I have nothing to add and even if I would have something to add would be useless since who did not got the point will never get it.. and now the real question that i bet everyone is a ashame to answer : How much time did the judging process took???? (i am really curious about this one)