The PopSci staff and our contributing troubadour, Jonathan Coulton, have spent today combing through the remarkable array of "I Feel Fantastic" videos sent in by loyal readers and podcast fans. After much deliberation and humming of that annoyingly catchy refrain that just won't get out of our heads, we arrived at a winner. This stick-figure animation, by YouTube member AnnieKate76 made us laugh our collective butts off. Says JoCo himself, "I like AnnieKate's video because it's got this very simple visual look, but it's deep, man. I keep noticing new stuff every time I watch it, all these quick cuts to funny things. It's like an episode of Lost, but funny, and with stick figures." Right, what he said. So without further ado:
For her hard work and hilarity, AnnieKate76 will receive the grand prize of one 80 GB iPod, custom-engraved with Jonathan Coulton's autograph. Congrats!
But there were so many excellent entries that we decided to name five honorable mentions who put tons of work into creating really excellent animations, machinima and live-action music videos. Each of the five co-winners listed below will receive a free subscription to Popular Science. Great job, everyone!
First runner-up goes to YouTube member Demetrius3d, using Lightwave 3D animation:
Second runner-up goes to YouTube member ThrowingBricks, using The Sims 2 machinima:
Third runner-up goes to YouTube member theshirtevent, using Flash:
Fourth runner-up goes to YouTube member Zeedoos, using World of Warcraft machinima:
And fifth runner-up goes to YouTube member team blackcatbonafide, for their live-action music video:
Many thanks to everyone who submitted a video! If you're one of the winners mentioned here, please contact us again via YouTube with your name and address, so we can send you prizes. Look for more PopSci contests in coming months (hint: if you like making stuff, you'll want to check out our "green tech" challenge beginning July 10. —The PopSci Editors
You guys should have contests for all "Future of the Body" songs.
Posted by: Rae | June 19, 2007 at 08:00 PM
THANK YOU, judges and JoCo!!! I'm so glad people are enjoying my video! :) And I'm so honored to have won out of all the amazing entries that were submitted.
Of course, I couldn't have done it without the great song, and the article that inspired the song talked about a pill for spirituality that inspired the "yoganox" concept, so thanks for all the inspiration.
-Andrea
Posted by: AnnieKate76 | June 20, 2007 at 02:15 PM
I loved the live-action one, especially the Calminex part.
Posted by: Christopher Finke | June 20, 2007 at 03:01 PM
Thanks for the honorable mention, and a big congrats to Andrea and the other winners! There were a number of great entries that didn't get mentioned- everyone should check out the playlist of entries thoughtfully put together by Andrea: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=49E2A02DDD5DF4C8 .
Also thanks to popsci for hosting the contest, which finally got me and blackcatbon to make a video instead of just talking about it :)
Posted by: sporksmith | June 20, 2007 at 05:12 PM
Oops- forgot to thank Jonathan Coulton for creating awesome music and putting it on the internets for all of us to play with and enjoy :)
Posted by: sporksmith | June 20, 2007 at 05:43 PM
With all do respect, I don't feel the World of Warcraft or Sims entries are valid, because there's very little work involved. You don't have to animate anything, you don't have to act, it's just record footage and go. Personally I think it comes down to the two animated ones. The one with Litewave 3D was cool looking, except I wonder about how much of the stuff in the video was made already. I would put it between theshirtevent and AnnieKate76.
Posted by: Ro | June 20, 2007 at 06:14 PM
Hi, Ro. I created the Lightwave animation. It occupied virtually every waking hour of my last week. My wife can attest to that! I can assure you that I, personally, choreographed all of the animation in this video. And, I modelled most of the objects and environments myself. Some of the objects *were* stock data, though (the phone, the car...). And, a lot of the objects (buildings, furniture...) were re-purposed from other projects (that I did) for this video. But, that's the glory of 3D animation. If I had to build all of the data from scratch specifically for this animation it *wouldn't* have happened. It certainly wouldn't have had the depth or quality it has. This week I'm re-rendering it (approx 60 hours of rendering squeezed into my schedule) with more bells and whistles, and some visual effects turned on to make it look better. And, I will upload a cleaner version as soon as it is done. ...just because I think it's a great song and deserves the best video I can put up for it.
I don't begrudge AnnieKate76 her win. She worked hard and made a great video with a lot of heart and a cool ending. And, she had my son cracking up all afternoon. PopSci staff and JoCo made their judgement and I have no problem with it. I appreciate that there is a wide range of creative expression and a wide range of tools with which to express one's self. I would hesitate (to the point of not doing it at all) to dismiss the effort that went into, or to question the value of *anyone's* submission based on the tools they used. Tools don't *do* creative. People do.
Posted by: Demetrius | June 20, 2007 at 08:53 PM
Ro: First off, "what Demetrius said", but second, I think you should try making a video like this in a game program before you dismiss the effort involved.
Just as with shooting a live action movie, you have to figure out story and camera angles and lighting and wardrobe and editing it all together, and then on top of that you have to deal with the limitations of the game. There are only so many things you can get a game character to do, and it can be hard to get them all doing the right thing at the right time. I tried a few months ago to do a Millionaire Girlfriend video in Sims 2 and I got so frustrated with the limited range of actions and facial expressions! I finally gave up when it became clear I didn't even have a good enough graphics card to save smooth movie files.
Anyway, I can see how you would think that if you haven't tried it, but it really is tougher than it looks. And I can't even fathom Demetrius' mad rendering skillz. You should check out the demo reel on his website. It's gorgeous; he's a pro.
Posted by: AnnieKate76 | June 20, 2007 at 11:40 PM
I would like to say that it takes a great deal of time and effort to make the warcraft and sims 2 videos. Being an avid warcraft player I am constantly amazed at the standard of videos that people like Zeedoos (and Spiff, who's videos are also amazing) can produce. The fact that Ro thought it was easy just shows how good they really are.
The standard was a lot higher that I expected. These are amazing, all of them.
Posted by: Kerrin | June 22, 2007 at 07:10 AM
Great job AnnieKate76 - congratulations! Love the video - very original ending. My husband and I love all the names of the drugs (we found our selves stopping and starting your video a lot to catch all the neat things you added).
And thank you JoCo and PopSci for the music, contest and honorable mention :)
Also, thanks to everyone for the compliments and sticking up for video game machinima. Spiff was my original inspiration to start making these things, and I love making them. It can be very difficult. Not just with the challenges already mention, but if you are using strictly in-game footage like I do (and not the model viewer to capture footage) you are also limited by what you can make or buy in-game and where you can get to. For the scene where he runs up the stairs, we had to: travel from one continent to the next by boat, gryphon and mount; fight our way through and instance full of evil trolls (which we could thankfully do with 2 high level characters instead of the normal 5 required); clear the area, change into wardrobe, experiment with film angles and wala! 1.5 hours of work for 2 seconds of film! But totally worth it - it's our favorit part - you can barely see him lift his arms ala Rocky at the top. (I've recently looked into trying the model viewer, which is presenting me with a whole new host of problems to overcome - maybe I will come to like it too).
Posted by: zeedoos | June 22, 2007 at 11:33 PM
This is just a note for Spiff:
This is only a guess, but you didn't win because you had made lots of good videos so they wanted someone 'fresh'.
Posted by: Mike | June 24, 2007 at 06:16 AM
Thanks to the judges for choosing our video as one of the runners up. I've been putting off making a JC music video for so long, this contest was just what we needed to jump in and just do it! I hope all the entries had as much fun as we did making our video.
Thanks PopSci for the movtivation!!!
Posted by: blackcatbonifide | June 26, 2007 at 03:01 PM
I can vouch for Demetrius. The guy has MAJOR skills. He has done work for me in the past, and I have a copy of his demo dvd which is excellent. YouTube doesn't even capture it as well. His work is amazing. I haven't been in touch for a long time, but his wife told me about this contest and how well he did so I thought I would stop by. Congratulations, Demetrius!
Posted by: CR | July 01, 2007 at 07:50 PM
okay why did first place get first place i think number 5 the realtime one was way the heck better!!! heack even the WoW one was better... not that my opinion matters but bad job judging....
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Posted by: video videos | July 09, 2007 at 01:53 PM
Congratulations to the winner and all the runner-ups!!!! I thought ALL of the videos were awesome--The judges had to have had a terrible time choosing which one would win. Thanks for putting out so much time and effort to entertain!!!
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Posted by: nell | December 17, 2007 at 10:53 AM
Haha. I agree with you. AnnieKate76's video is awesome.
Posted by: Bruno | January 15, 2008 at 09:43 PM
The videos are all good, but I definitely enjoy blackcatbonafide's best. I've been watching it over and over and over.
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Congrats for the blog.
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