Watch the full collab: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDNo5XMMu3o

Ah yes, winter truly is a wonderful sight to behold. And also stacks of money.

With Christmas in the rear-view mirror, it’s time for everyone’s actual favorite part of the holiday season – collab winners announcement.

Choosing winners was nearly impossible. While there were less approved entries than with Treasure Trove, there were more top contenders for the top three prizes. As a result, I had to add an extra 4th place bonus to each category – and it’s still impossible to choose. Next collab there will be six or so distinct categories to make it easier to differentiate winners.

“Best Animated” winners

• Arcane Knight, an excellently-choreographed fight sequence squeezed into 60 seconds
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRU32DyNPi8
• Sir Isaac the 3rd, the intricate Transformer transformations and movements were very smooth and accurate
  https://twitter.com/AnimsIsaac/status/1607247508161560577
• Darkboy & Evla, even post-editing aside, the visual effects and quick super-powered Minecraft combat was fun to watch
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI8rYVLmIdk
  https://www.youtube.com/@IAmEvla/ (Evla)
• AnimAsians, very unique and inspired camera angles with a very fun Christmas-y theme
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl2I6PuO0_I

“Most Creative” winners

• JackFly, how The Grinch stole Stick Nodes, absolutely amazing character and set design
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrkiN6Sv8l0
• Darren Zcon, fun well-animated throwback to the popular Doors collab
  https://youtu.be/UDNo5XMMu3o?t=800
  https://www.youtube.com/@DZconAnims/videos
• Vincent, idk what game this is a homage to, but was truly a creative and unique take on the animation prompt
  https://youtu.be/UDNo5XMMu3o?t=1075
  https://sticknodes.com/members/erenbelmont/
• Coll, once again Coll pushes Stick Nodes to the limit, with another interstellar adventure to retrieve some shoddily-wrapped Christmas gift
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSfXusNJNU0

Winners will be contacted soon! Or you can DM me on Twitter now to get the ball rolling: http://twitter.com/FTLRalph

Honorable mentions

• Mei Yamazuki, once again, creating one of the more wholesome entries in about 3.5 hours to be used as the sample
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uw8Nvy12og
• Permadeath Studios & Moss, the best character design and a fun throwback to RWBY, very tough to not rank this somewhere above
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dkSZE80Plo
• Romelution, always fun to see Asura doing what she does best
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcWj-FBPl5Q
• Takito, a very cute and wholesome entry
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEYQy7jta3I
• And many more, including Aaron Austin, InfiniteGuess, Chillin with Chill, and others!

A lot of the honorable mentions were just as good as the winners. It was tough to not include them in the winners list. Upon extreme scrutiny, many of them were lacking just slightly in one department which gave the winners the edge – whether it be shortness, lack of action, repetitiveness, etc. Very nit-picky as they are still very good entries, but a winner had to be decided.

Many of the entries were absolutely great and all are worth mentioning. Thank you to all who entered, even if your entry was denied. The quality threshold was very high, hopefully you can take away some ideas after having seen the final product, and with some practice come back for the next collab!

Once again, shouts out to the Stick Nodes collab team, they really went above and beyond.

• Host: FTLRalph
  https://twitter.com/FTLRalph
• Presents / Template Assets: Evla
  https://youtube.com/channel/UCx6Rq4ZcxZKmEMdw1FaOZUg
• Sample Entry & Cutscenes Animator: Mei Yamazuki
  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEWVPBSGGZEHjjwzKnhQPnQ
• Lead Cutscenes Animator: Darkboy Animation
  https://youtube.com/c/DarkboyAnimation
• Voice Acting: Toxic911 Animations
  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYefXchFoJJKGEPHv7aKuOA
• Cutscenes Music: Rasvyet
  https://youtube.com/channel/UCiLJikC1AIq7L93YF0YD5_Q
• Editing, Management, Directing, & Suffering: SquiSN
  https://youtube.com/c/SquiSN

Stick Nodes News

Sprite Update still underway. I know, I too also want to bash my head in just as much as you do. All the Thanksgiving/Christmas traveling, website work for the Christmas decor, and general IRL stuff took up a lot of my time the past two months. I am pushing for a release date around my birthday, February 3rd.