The #Christmas2020 Winners!

With about 30 entries and many soon-to-be-crushed dreams, the first annual Stick Nodes #Christmas2020 animation contest has concluded! Thank you to all who entered, it was actually a very pleasant little contests and I everyone did very well following instructions, mostly! But alright, let’s see who won – in no particular order.

The Winners ($100 each, and the #Christmas2020 Winner badge)

VariousPond – Visually stunning, and not actually sure if Stick Nodes. We may have to expose him.

Saibroz Animation – Great character designs, and a lot of action packed into a quick, fun video.

Squi – Captured the warmness of Christmas with a unique style and solid voice acting, with humor!

Runners-Up ($50 each)

Just choosing three winners was tough, even choosing seven wasn’t too much easier, but I felt a few more entries deserved some reward.

Aaron Austin – Quick little “music video” but legitimately funny.

Sm1le_Guy – My guy actually broke out his pipes and sang for us. Very funny.

Neon Anims – Excellent evil-snowman vs Santa (kinda) animation, great character structures as well.

JackFly Studios – Quality enough for television, with top notch voice acting. But went way over the 2-minute max time.

Honorable Mentions

I was almost going to award everyone else who entered $10 but then I regained my senses after a moment of weakness from to too much vodka. So here are some worthy shout outs!

Conclusion

And that’s that. Thanks again to everyone who participated, it was fun! I will iron out details in any future competitions like this. Aka strict deadline and make time limits absolutely clear. Also I may do more of a tier-system of some sort to allow those who aren’t necessarily animation savants to get some spotlight.

A quick note, I do not have the badge ready yet due to the upcoming site redesign. So @ the winners, you will have your shiny new badge very soon. And maybe a little something for Jack as well…as his entry truly was amazing. To be fair to all entries however, while a “little” play is allowed, the runtime was far over the 2-minute maximum.

(Shouts out to Tastylemon for designing the #Christmas2020 Winner badge!)

The #Christmas2020 Animation Contest

Update January 1st – The contest is over and thank you to all who entered. Winners will be announced later today!


Update Dec 16 – New due date is Dec 30 due to a few people wanting an extension.

Typically, past contests were just for stickfigure creators, and also – they were only for Halloween. But now we’re going to change things up with a good ol’ fashion Holidays-themed animation free-for-all.

Rules and stuff

  • Enter by creating a proper animation, uploading to Youtube, and making a post about it in the #Christmas2020 Animation Contest Group.
  • Submissions must be animated with Stick Nodes.
  • Post-processing is allowed. For example, adding music, adding extra effects/color correction, etc. As long as all actual animation is done with Stick Nodes.
  • Animations should be no longer than 90 seconds. Absolute maximum of 120 seconds (2 minutes). No longer, no exceptions. Short and sweet.
  • One entry per person. If you want to make a new entry, declare that you’re submitting a replacement in your group post.
  • Animations can be about anything (action, humor, a side-story of your existing lore, a parody, etc) as long as it is Holidays-related. Christmas, Hannukah, Santa – or even New Year’s-related (2020 vs 2021?). Things like Halloween vs Christmas or similar themes are okay too. Be creative.
  • Theme is vague to allow for creativity, but anything  that strays too far from the point will be disregarded. For example, an RHG-style fight where the characters are wearing Santa hats – and nothing else – will not be considered “Christmassy”-enough for entry. However, maybe they are battling Santa? Or stealing presents/climbing a Christmas tree? That would be better.
  • Criteria for judging: Number one, entertainment value. Action, humor – it’s up to you, just make it entertaining. Think and plan before animating. Second criteria will be quality of animation/visuals.
  • Due Date: Your post in the #Christmas2020 Animation Contest Group must be made by December 30th.

Winning and Prizes

Winners will be chosen by the Three Admins plus two extra honorary judges, who will deliberate for hours, again, on who deserves to win.

The winners should be announced on Christmas Eve, there will be a new post made on the homepage here.

The three chosen winners will all receive $100 via payment of their choosing. Some runner’s-up may be selected for smaller prizes as well.

Payments could be via Paypal, Steam, or any gift card that I can purchase for you from the USA.

Alright, that’s everything. Go animate something.

The #Halloween2020 Winners!

That was a solid October full of a huge variety of super spooky stickfigures.

Well, there were actually like two or three actually spooky submissions but, you get the idea – let’s just say it was very Halloweeny. With about 60 submissions across three separate categories, here are the winners!

Stick Nodes Halloween Characters Stick Nodes Halloween Backgrounds Stick Nodes Halloween Others

Characters

  1. JackFly’s Mr Calaca Pack
  2. X-Ray Anim’s Soul Trader Pack
  3. MilkyMurderer’s Spooky Milk Pack
  4. TØXIC‘s Robert the Pumpkin Pack

Backgrounds

  1. VariousPond’s Spooky Mansion Pack
  2. Vi_Hack20’s Haunted Park Background Pack
  3. Regoma’s Vampire Castle Background Pack
  4. TriAnim’s Graveyard Forest Background Pack

Other

  1. HiddenTheStickman’s Halloween Props Pack 2
  2. FireDino32’s Halloween Toys Pack
  3. That Guy’s Doot Doot
  4. DZcon’s Perfect Smart Stretch Brutal Blood Pack

First place of each category receives $50 and the #Halloween2020 website badge! Second place receives $25, and third/fourth place will receive $10. I will be contacting all winners via email shortly.

There were a lot of good submissions, and the Character category was particularly tough to judge (the judges were the three admins whom each picked their top 4 favorite from each category, results were combined to form the winners).

Fun fact, only two users have both #Halloween2018 and #Halloween2020 badges (JackFly and VariousPond – poor Regoma came close but alas). A fight to the death? Or maybe we’ll wait until the Christmas competition. Stay tuned for more info on that very shortly!

Happy Hallow’s Ween!