Long Gif Contest Winners
If you’ve visited the Fanart page recently, you may have noticed a multitude of little stick figure animations like the above. This is because of the Long Gif Contest! In a depressing world of short, looping gifs, this tedious contest required entrants to make to make a gif animation that was over five seconds long. Not only that, but they had to do it only using the small selection of sprites and backgrounds provided to them.
Everyone made some pretty neat things, but sadly, the judges (me and the flash programmer) had to choose only four winners. The categories were “Most Humorous For Bethesda Game Reasons”, “Most Creative Use of Given Resources”, “Best Story”, and “Best Action Sequence”. Note that there was no category for “funniest”, or “best animation”, so don’t take the following four entries as a “best of the best”. There’s still a lot of amazing stuff on the Fanart page – these guys just hit the very specific judging criteria a bit better than everyone else.
1.) Most Humorous For Bethesda Reasons
Winner: Stankloid
There were a couple entries making jokes about pickpocketing the clothes off enemies. In retrospect I think it was somewhat predestined, given that it’s one of the better-known funny Skyrim mechanics, and the sprite sheet had naked and clothed versions for all of the characters. I initially wanted to give the prize to a more obscure game reference, but my co-judge reminded me that the category specified most humorous, not most obscure or creative.
In other entries, the joke only went as far as the fact you can pickpocket clothes off enemies in Skyrim. Stankloid captured the funnier part: that these enemies will completely shrug this off and casually go back about their business if they can’t find the culprit. He also provided a faithful reproduction of all the goofy poses involved in this process, which nets him some bonus points.
Runner up: Pyrakra’s commentary on Skyrim physics. Pyrakra’s concept was more original, but it didn’t quite have the same number of jokes and visual humor. Still more than worth a watch!
2.) Most Creative Use of Given Resources
Winner: Ja_Jarsha_Rovandi
Lots of people repurposed the sprites in unusual ways, using them to make bizarre monsters, elaborate contraptions, and, in one case, the entire climax to Revenge of the Sith. Ja Rasha went the opposite way: using the individual sprites for their intended purposes, but organizing it all into a Doom-style first person shooter.
I was really on the fence between this one and the ones that used the sprites for weird things, but in the end, I kind of expected sprites to be cropped used in weird ways like that. None of the judges really expected this.
Runner up: Cube-Robertman’s aforementioned recreation of Revenge of the Sith. I think that’s all that needs to be said. The maker even remembered Anakin’s robot hand. Why do I recognize this? Because I follow the “Prequel” tag on social media sites, unfortunately meaning I see basically every discussion of every prequel.
3.) Best Story
Winner: SoarFlyer
A good story has character development, and it can be hard to fit that into a couple seconds of animation. Somehow, though, SoarFlyer managed to concoct a coherent story about Katia refereeing a fighting tournament between Quill-Weave and an enchanter who doesn’t know how to walk. This animation has a ton of details I love, from Quill-Weave’s changing expressions as she grows more confident, to the Katia transition swipes swipes, to the fact that conical hats have somehow become a measure of victories. And the best part is, SolarFlyer even made a sequel showing Quill-Weave’s continued success. The enchanter’s homemade victory hat is adorable.
Runner up: Sofox’s depiction of a rock-paper-scissors game. It’s not much of a story, but it is well-paced and has a solid punchline.
4.) Best Action Sequence
Winner: SuperVaderMan
Not only is this animation a very faithful recreation of its chosen source material, but it’s a very well-animated battle in its own right. It won because of the action, but it also deserves credit for the solid combination of Mario and Prequel humor, with pineapple hammers, “platonic attacks”, and both characters actually using their favored weapons.
Runner up: PlaceHolder’s tribute to the Souls series. It’s very well animated, though I’d say it only marginally qualifies as an action sequence.
Anyway, congratulations to everyone who won! And thank you to everyone who entered. You helped distract people for a couple weeks while I worked on an extremely late update. Now I guess I’ll go do that more.