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The FIRST Robotics Competition & FIRST Tech Challenge Digital Animation Award!

Sponsored by: AutomationDirect.com

This award, sponsored by AutomationDirect.com, celebrates the art of digital animation and its close relationship to STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics).This award celebrates the art of digital animation and its close relationship to STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics).

NEW FOR 2025: There will be separate competitions for both FIRST Robotics Competition & FIRST Tech Challenge teams..

The Digital Animation Award is offered to help encourage students to cultivate skills in design and creation of animation including, but not limited to, storytelling, creativity, use of computer software, and an understanding of different techniques and forms of animation. This award is open to all FIRST Robotics Competition teams and FIRST Tech Challenge teams and is optional.

This Year's Theme: Dive

Whether it is an aquatic dive or an approach to other endeavors, we all dive into various opportunities as we go through life.

The 2024 - 2025 challenge: Create an animation of “Dive” that celebrates your FIRST experience.

You can interpret “Dive” in any way you wish:

• Diving into the water
• Diving into a new experience
• Scuba diving
• Diving into a project
• Etc.

What you choose isn’t nearly as important as how you use your Digital Animation skills to show your innovative concept.

Hints:

• Animations that use the theme and provide a positive inspiring message will be prioritized over animations that don’t.
• Animations that use humor tend to do better.
• Keep it simple! A well-executed, simple animation will perform better than the alternative.

2025 Winners

Special thanks to Theory Studios for doing the judging again this year!
Theory is an international team of animators and special effects artists.

The judges asked us to pass the following comments along for some of their favorite animations because they all started where you are and remember how much they valued constructive critique (these are team number order, not ranking order):

• FIRST Robotics Competition Team 339: Great use of composition and camera moves to tell a compelling story with an adorable fish. Well done!
• FIRST Robotics Competition Team 589: Very cool use of mixed media for the style, and we loved the unique story!
• FIRST Robotics Competition Team 1317: We fell in love with the beautiful hand-drawn style and heartwarming story. 
• FIRST Robotics Competition Team 1671: We thought it was a really nice touch that the birds are in the shape of the FIRST logo. Very stylish animation with effective storytelling.
• FIRST Robotics Competition Team 3604: We were impressed with the stylish use of color, 2D animation, and pacing of the story.
• FIRST Robotics Competition Team 5026: Incredible motion design! We loved the journey this animation took us on from start to finish with a great message at the end.
• FIRST Robotics Competition Team 9162: Very polished lighting and set-building. The whole animation felt incredibly cohesive.
• FIRST Tech Challenge Team 6282: Very nice 2D animation - we were blown away by how fluid it was!
• FIRST Tech Challenge Team 24622: Cute 2D animation - we really liked the strong, stylistic use of color

JUDGING

Judging is purely subjective. We are looking for excellence in animation skills and in the use of animation to tell a story. The Judges will be a diverse panel of Technical Marketing, Visual Effects and Animation experts from around the world from Theory Animation. We will be specifically looking for:

1. Mastery of Animation
   1. Quality of Animation
   2. Complexity and Presentation of Images
   3. Expertise in Medium
2. Ingenuity
   1. Originality of ideas
   2. Effectiveness and efficiency in execution
   3. Use of original 3D models and modeling technique
3. Clarity
   1. Comprehensibility and organization of ideas within the animation
   2. Pacing
4. Artistry
   1. Aesthetic Appeal
   2. Implementation of Artistic Elements
   3. Use of Medium

AWARDS

Official FIRST Trophy will be sent to the winner from FIRST. There will be one winner and trophy for the FIRST Robotics Competition winner and another winner and trophy for FIRST Tech Challenge.

SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS

The following requirements must be met for an animation to be submitted to the judges and displayed for other teams to watch. THERE ARE SIGNIFICANT CHANGES VS PREVIOUS YEAR'S REQUIREMENTS.

1. A single animation may be submitted by any registered FIRST Robotics Competition team or FIRST Tech Challenge team. Submissions may be 2D, 3D, mixed media, stop motion or anything else you can use to animate a story.
2. The submitted animation must be no more than 30 seconds long (does not include title screen or credits). Animations more than 30 seconds long will not be judged.
   1. It must be relevant to the Challenge stated above.
   2. 30 seconds is only an upper limit. Teams may submit an animation of any length up to that limit, and the duration will have no impact on how the animation is scored.
3. It is recommended that animations be submitted with:
   1. Format: H.264 codec in mp4 file
   2. Resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels (720p) minimum. 1920 x 1080 (1080p) is optimal.
   3. Frame Rate: 24 frames per second.
   4. But any format and resolution that has been uploaded to YouTube (or similar public online repository) by the deadline below will be accepted.
4. Title Screen & Credits
   1. The animation must begin with a title screen displayed for a 2-second duration followed by a one-second black slate, leading into the primary work.
   2. The title screen display will not be included in the total duration limit.
   3. The title screen must include your program (FIRST Robotics Competition or FIRST Tech Challenge), team number, team name, school/organization, title of the animation, and animation duration.
   4. Credits should follow a one-second black slate at the end of the animation and be no longer than 5 seconds total in length. Length of the credits will not be included in the total duration limit.
   5. Make sure to include team members, mentors, software used, list of public domain sources, and licensed sources in credits.
   6. Total length of work should be no longer than: 2 second title screen + 1 second black slate + (up to) 30 second animation + 1 second black slate + (up to) 5 seconds credits = 39 seconds total (max length). 
5. Content
   1. Animation should be supportive of the FIRST Core Values.
   2. Animation must be free of copyright issues. Do not use copyrighted characters, music, or other elements, unless you have the legal right to do so.
6. Submission
   • Upload the animation to YouTube (or a similar video streaming service) by 11:59 p.m. ET on Thursday, Jan 16, 2025. THEN YOU MUST ALSO SEND A LINK to the video to AnimationAwardSubmission@AutomationDirect.com – by that same deadline. If the email is not sent – the video will NOT be entered into the contest. DO NOT use a file transfer service (ie Dropbox, etc) – the video should be viewable on the platform without prior download. YouTube is strongly preferred.
   • You are welcome/encouraged to upload the video early and to set the video to “unlisted” until the deadline. The video must be viewable by anyone with the link by the deadline shown above.
   • NOTE: if you chose a streaming platform other than YouTube for posting your video – please consider providing a “download link” and permission to repost your video on YouTube. While not required (and will NOT affect judging), this may give your video increased publicity when the playlist is published.
7. **DEADLINE**
   • All video uploads AND the email submission must be completed by 11:59 p.m. ET on Thursday, Jan 16, 2025. Any entries after this deadline will not be judged. Winners will be announced Mid-February.
8. Public Viewing - A playlist of all the videos will be published for public viewing when the winners are announced. Keep an eye on official FIRST channels as well as unofficial channels such as Chief Delphi for the announcement. 

If there are any questions, please feel free to contact us at AnimationAwardSubmission@AutomationDirect.com.

Please Note: If you are looking for Information for the Safety Animation Award, please visit the safety webpage for submission information. 

REFERENCE:

• Behind the Scenes Game Animation - In this video, AutomationDirect.com will take you behind the scenes and show how the FIRST Robotics Competition Game Animations are made, start to finish, in partnership with AutomationDirect.com.

• 2025 FIRST Robotics Competition Winner (Team 5468)
  • All 2025 FIRST Robotics Competition Submissions
• 2025 FIRST Tech Challenge Winner (Team 21460)
  • All 2024 FIRST Tech Challenge Submissions
• 2024 Winner (Team 3100)
  • All 2024 Submissions (91 videos)
• 2023 Winner (Team 836)
  • All 2023 Submissions (100 videos)
• 2022 Winner (Team 8334)
  • All 2022 Submissions (76 videos)
• 2021 Winner (Team 8592)
  • All 2021 Submissions (45 videos)
• 2020 Winner (Team 1317)
  • All 2020 Submissions (112 Videos)
• 2019 Winner (Team 846)
  • 2019 Judge Feedback
  • All 2019 Submissions (101 videos)
• 2018 Winner (Team 1317) 
  • 2018 Judges Picks
  • All 2018 Submissions (98 videos) 
• 2017 Winner (Team 1317)
  • 2017 Judges Pick: Top Ten (no particular order)
    • Team 6184  Team 0503  Team0246    Team 2521   Team 1676  
    • Team 0192  Team 4191  Team 0008   Team 2587   Team 5804
  • All 2017 Submissions (103 videos)

COPYRIGHT

By making a submission, the Submitter irrevocably grants to FIRST and FIRST's designees the right to use any or all of the submission in any and all media for the purpose of describing the submission, describing the Award, and/or otherwise promoting FIRST and FIRST's programs.