Face-2-Face Contest

In our ongoing effort to support the growing community of 3D artists, we would like to extend a special invitation to you to participate in Animation Magazine’s Face-2-Face Contest, sponsored by Dell and Image Metrics. This competition will award 3D artists for creating outstanding facial models in two main categories: Film and Game.

The Face-2-Face Contest features nearly $10,000 worth of prizes to help you in your creative craft. Each main category – Film and Game – will offer a First, Second and Third place prize sponsored by Dell and Image Metrics. In addition, all entrants will enjoy great exposure to the entertainment industry in general, and more specifically, to some of the best creative’s in the business, our judges.

Deadlines:
Act fast. The contest ends December 5, 2008.

Details:
You are asked to create and submit up to two (2) of your best facial models in the following main categories:
- Game resolution head model
- Film resolution head model

In addition, those entries must fall within one of the following subcategories:
- Realistic Male
- Realistic Female
- Realistic Child
- Non-human humanoid (orc, goblin, etc)
- Non-human (reptile, insect, etc)
- Cartoon or stylized character
For example, you can submit a realistic male facial model for the film category, and a non-human humanoid facial model for the game category.

Prizes:
To help you in your ongoing creative endeavors, we have assembled some great prizes in each of the main categories:
First Place – Dell’s latest powerhouse - the m6400 workstation – featuring a 17” monitor, 16GB of memory, a Core 2 Duo Quad Core Extreme processor, up to 1TB of data, and up to 1GB of NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700M Graphics.
Second Place – Wacom’s Cintiq 20WSX tablet
Third Place - $500 in cash
We will also provide all contestants with exposure to our judges, and all winners with exposure to the games and film markets through our marketing and sales efforts. Credits for your work will be used in all cases.

Specifications:

Model resolution - The resolution requirements will be determined by the resolution of the head mesh only. All the auxiliary meshes, such as the eyeballs and teeth, could be any resolution. However, the auxiliary meshes should still be the "appropriate resolution" for the model and category; "Low polygon" for games, "High polygon" for film.
The game resolution head mesh must be under 2500 polygons.
The film resolution head mesh must be from 2500 to 10000 polygon maximum.

Model components:

Head — The head mesh must have a full neck, ears and mouth bag. You will be judged on good facial topology. Your most important considerations when modeling should be: How well will the model deform? Can your model emote a wide range of facial expressions? Is there enough geometry for a blink? For a smile? For speech?
Always consider the underlying anatomy of the model, especially if it's a creature. Would this anatomy "work" in the real world?

Eye Geometry — Any style eyes will be accepted. The eyeballs could be as simple as two spheres or as complex as multiple pieces of geometry for the inner and outer eye anatomy. Additional eye geometry, such as eyelashes or eyelash cards, caruncle and eye-wet pieces will also help. Obviously, the more effort you put into the eyes, the more chance you have of winning.

Mouth Geometry — The upper teeth, lower teeth and the tongue should all be separate pieces. The gums could be separate pieces as well, but this is entirely up to you. The placement of the teeth and tongue should be "anatomically accurate" for your character.
Original Topology - All geometry, including the head and teeth, must have your own original topology. That is, do not just take meshes that are not your own and sculpt them into a different shape.

UVs - All meshes must have UVs laid out. One UV set per mesh.

Textures - Color, specular, bump, normal, displacement maps are NOT required, but will help you win if you have them.

Submission guidelines:
Please upload your entries to the following ftp address: http://dropbox.yousendit.com/Face2FaceDropBox

All entries should include the following:
- Your model in the file format of your choice (maya, max, xsi, obj)
- Four renders of your model:
- One from the front
- One from the front showing the wireframe
- One from 3/4 view
- One from 3/4 view showing the wireframe

The renders should be at least 1k resolution.

The better your model looks in the renders, the more chance you have of winning.
Each character should be accompanied with a Word doc that includes a brief character description of your model (character's name, occupation, etc) and what category you are entering, as well as your name and contact information (e-mail and phone number).
Any questions, you can e-mail contest@www.animationmagazine.net

Judges:
Our distinguished judges include:

Rob Coleman, Lightstream Pictures
Rob Coleman is a Director / Producer at Lightstream Pictures where he is currently in development on the animated feature film, The Fourth Magi.

At Lucasfilm Animation, Rob directed several episodes of the animated Star Wars: Clone Wars television series and spent two years developing an animated feature film project with George Lucas. Rob was at Industrial Light & Magic for 12 years where he was Animation Director on Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, a role he fulfilled on the two previous Star Wars films. He was chosen as one of the most creative people in the entertainment industry when he was added to Entertainment Weekly’s “It List” in 2002 as their “It CG-Creature Crafter” for his work on the digital Yoda. He has been nominated for two Oscars for his work on Attack of the Clones and The Phantom Menace and two British Academy Awards (BAFTAs) for his work on Men In Black and The Phantom Menace. He has received two MTV Movie Awards and two Saturn Awards for best visual effects on the Star Wars films.

Cesar Dacol Jr., A freelance character designer with 20 years of industry experience
Cesar Dacol Jr. has worked in the film industry for nearly 20 years, having started his career in the makeup effects industry and transitioning to computers effects in the mid 90’s. With a background in anatomy and traditional sculpting, he quickly adapted to the 3D world of computers. For the past 5 years Cesar has worked primarily as Lead and Modeling Supervisor, contributing to many feature films such as Journey to the center of the earth 3D, 300, Barnyard and Fantastic Four. As well as having a vast film credit list, Cesar’s credits also extend to gaming, where he worked as the character modeler in Circus Maximus: Chariot Wars (2002), Encore, Inc. for Playstation 2 and Xbox. Between October 2004 and January 2005, Cesar was appointed Adjunct Professor in Advanced Polygonal Character Modeling at Sheridan College where he enjoyed sharing his years of modeling experience to teach character modeling for the Computer Animation Program. He is presently freelancing CHARACTER DESIGNS and DEVELOPMENT for the entertainment industry, and is also a beta team member for Pixologic’s Zbrush.

Richard Taylor, One of the founders of Weta
Richard Taylor is the owner, co-founding director and creative lead at Weta Workshop which he runs with his partner Tania Rodger. Weta Workshop has an international reputation as one of the film industries most successful special effects studios. It has won numerous Academy Awards for its work on large-scale movies including King Kong, The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Chronicles of Narnia.

Paul Debevec, University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies
Paul Debevec is a research associate professor at the University of Southern California and the associate director of graphics research at USC's Institute for Creative Technologies. Debevec's Ph.D. thesis (UC Berkeley, 1996) presented Façade, an image-based modeling and rendering system for creating photoreal architectural models from photographs. Using Facade he led the creation of virtual cinematography of the Berkeley campus for his 1997 film The Campanile Movie whose techniques were used to create virtual backgrounds in the 1999 film The Matrix. Subsequently, Debevec developed techniques for illuminating computer-generated scenes with real-world lighting captured through high dynamic range photography, demonstrating new image-based lighting techniques in his films Rendering with Natural Light (1998), Fiat Lux (1999), and The Parthenon (2004); he also led the design of HDR Shop, the first high dynamic range image editing program. At USC ICT, Debevec has led the development of a series of Light Stage devices for capturing and simulating how objects and people reflect light, recently used to create realistic digital actors in films such as Spider Man 2 and Superman Returns. He is the recipient of ACM SIGGRAPH's first Significant New Researcher Award and a co-author of the 2005 book High Dynamic Range Imaging from Morgan Kaufmann.

Rules

1. Entrants must be 18 years or older.

2. Individual entrants only.

3. Entrants are not permitted to enter works on behalf of any other individual or entity.

4. Entries do not have to be original works but must meet the specifications as outlined in the guidelines.

5. All entrants must agree to abide by the Terms and Conditions as described here.

6. Multiple entries are permitted up to a maximum of two (2). The entries can be in any category.

7. Entries should remain unpublished outside of Animation Magazine prior to the close of the challenge.

8. Images must conform to nominal decency guidelines. Any image deemed to contain content that depicts violence, racial, political, religious, and sexual or any other inflammatory material in an inappropriate manner will be disqualified and removed. Interpretation of what is, and is not, appropriate material is at the sole discretion of Animation Magazine.

9. Neither Animation Magazine nor its sponsor will be held responsible for late entries for any reason whatsoever. It is the sole responsibility of the entrants to make reasonable allowances for upload times and to plan accordingly.

10. Entries will be judged on artistic and technical merit within the scope of the competition theme. The interpretation of these rules, the theme, artistic or technical merit of the work and any other consideration made by the judges is at the sole discretion of the judges.

11. Judges' decisions are final and no correspondence will be entered into.

12. To be eligible for prizes, all winning entrants must provide accurate and reliable contact details. Animation Magazine will make all reasonable efforts to contact winners for a period of 7 calendar days after the completion of Judging. If a winner cannot be contacted within this period then they can be disqualified at the sole discretion of Animation Magazine.

13. Any import taxes or duties on prizes must be paid by the prize winner. It is neither practically possible nor ethically reasonable for Animation Magazine or any of the sponsors to pay duties and taxes on behalf of a winner. Animation Magazine and sponsors will not make false valuation claims to assist winners from illegally evading any applicable duties and taxes.

14. By entering the competition the entrant warrants that they are the sole copyright holder and indemnifies Animation Magazine and sponsor(s) from any subsequent claims that may arise regarding ownership, or any other claims that may impact upon the entered work.

15. The entrant grants Animation Magazine rights to use all entered works, in any media for sales, marketing and merchandising, provided full and correct credit for the artist clearly appears with said materials.

16. The entrant grants the sponsor rights to use all entered works on sponsors web sites in the form of free public galleries, in any form of media, including, but not limited to, web galleries, physical galleries, downloadable form, wallpaper collections and screensavers, provided full and correct credit for the artist clearly appears with said materials.

17. The entrant grants Animation Magazine and sponsor(s) rights to use the entrant’s name, imprimatur and likeness in conjunction with the use of their entered works in any media.

18. The entrant grants Animation Magazine and sponsor(s) first right to publish their submitted work in any media.

19. Entrants commit to notify Animation Magazine in writing at least one week prior to the publication of their work in any media.

20. Other than the rights assigned in the preceding clauses entrants retain copyright
of all entered materials and are free to use said materials for personal promotions.

21. The entrant indemnifies Animation Magazine and sponsor(s) against any claims or indirect, special, incidental, or consequential damages from any party that may arise from any use, including but not limited to, publication of entry materials submitted as a part of, or in association with the competition.

22. All artwork that is entered by the deadline is final; it cannot be removed or
changed after this point. Animation Magazine will not return any material submitted or alter any entry.

23. The judges have sole discretion in the interpretation and enforcement of rules, including but not limited to suspension of categories and entrants.

24. It is the entrant's responsibility to ensure compliance with all rules. Disqualification of any entrant is not reflected in any public change of status or alteration of their entry.

25. There is no agreement or contract between the artist and Animation Magazine. The artist assumes all responsibility and costs for delivering images and other required information to the Publisher for consideration in the competition.

26. Animation Magazine does not require any payment for entry of images nor does
Animation Magazine offer any form of payment, actual or implied, to any entrants.

27. There is no chance component in the selection of winning entries. Winning entries will be chosen solely on the skill exhibited by the entrants as determined by the judges.

28. Animation Magazine will take reasonable measures to ensure the security of entries and information supplied to them. In no event shall Animation Magazine be liable to any party, for indirect, special, incidental, or consequential damages arising out of the loss of images and data supplied, even if Animation Magazine has been advised of the possibility of such loss and damages.

29. Employees and relatives of Animation Magazine staff, sponsors and judges cannot compete in the competition.

30. Animation Magazine reserves the right to suspend, shorten, modify or cancel the competition at its sole discretion.

31. This list of terms and conditions constitutes the complete and exclusive statement of the terms and conditions and supersedes any prior terms and conditions, oral or written, and any other communications relating to these terms and conditions.