11 Second Club

Every month, an elite club of animators known as the 11 Second Club gather on the internet to battle in a competition of skill, talent, and wit.  They are given an 11-second sound clip and a month to animate the hell out of life into it.  Once the deadline has passed, club members cast their votes to determine the winners.

I'm usually a little disappointed by the high ratio of CG compared to traditional Disney-style animation. It's even more rare to see something in a style other than these two. But the top ten entries for November held a few surprises:

The Second Place winner (out of 295 entries) was not only traditionally animated, but was done by VFS classmate Aniket Natekar. I was impressed by the animation he did back in school, but he just gets better and better. Structural figures, clear poses, variety in timing, smooth action with subtle moving holds... just beautiful:



The Sixth Place entry, by Chris O'Hara, is really funny and is drawn in a flat, graphic style that is rarely seen on the 11 Second Club. I love the character design of the lion! It's not one that lends itself to a head rotation, but maybe that's part of its appeal. Using this snappy style of animation, it doesn't matter how you get from one pose to another. Great stuff:



I had never seen an 11 Second Club entry animated in clay. Last month we had two, the Fifth Place entry by Stuart Coutts, and the Eight Place entry by Michael Parks. Oddly enough, both of them feature bananas, which I wholeheartedly approve of.


http://www.11secondclub.com/competitions/november10/entry/48OK8c

http://www.11secondclub.com/competitions/november10/entry/w6Iecn

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Simmon Keith Barney is an animator living in Fort Collins, Colorado.