I'm an electronic music producer. One of my biggest weaknesses is synthesis, I've never been able to wrap my head around creating complex, original sounds out of waveforms and filters. It goes hand-in-hand with music production but it's far too technical to be enjoyable for me.

Thankfully I have a library of literally hundreds of thousands of synth patches, so that weakness isn't holding me back in my personal goals as an artist. Whereas, say, my unfamiliarity with compression when I was starting out definitely did hold me back until I worked on improving it.

Real artists have to choose what is and isn't important to them. No one can be perfect at everything. If realistic movement isn't a priority for an animator, your ranking criteria is literally worthless to them. You have nothing to offer them because you as an artist have completely different priorities. But you would probably still attempt to rank them without realizing this fact, as would everyone else.


Rankings are an artificial goal which no one benefits from achieving. The only people who give a shit about the fact that some forum labelled you a "mid beginner" or whatever are all within that forum. Outside of it, nobody gives a fuck and the ranking does not open any new opportunities for the animator. It does not indicate improvement outside of the opinions of a couple of animators who may or may not know what they're even talking about.

The common goal should be improvement, and constructive criticism is more than enough to meet that goal. These rankings are little more than a distraction for people who think they're important for some reason or another.

Quote from Exilement

this is ridiculous, why wouldn't someone accentuate their strengths and hide their weaknesses?

Because we're humans. This really happens all the time.

Quote from Exilement

Rankings are an artificial goal which no one benefits from achieving.

They work for some people. The use of rankings motivates me to try and create my best work instead of being lazy. They might be an artificial goal, but they are a goal nonetheless and work for motivation. Ranks make improving in animation into a game, and there are a lot of people who love games.

Lets take pre-schoolers. When they do something good, their teacher gives them a sticker. No one gives a fuck about that sticker outside of their class and their parents, so one might say that it is a pointless, artificial goal. But from their motivation to do good things, they learn a life skill that people do care about.

Quote from Arch-Angel

So instead of ranking someone on how well they animate now we have to rank them on how well they draw too? If you have a sexy background but you can't animate a walk cycle to save your life, guess what, you're still a beginner.

I'll be wandering off the on going topic a bit. Here's what I think.

From the start, "Ranking" someone is stupid. Also, I don't believe that you have to be so general about animation if you're actually great at an aspect of it. Taking your example, it seems as though you're basing it off that we can't collaborate with each other to create a single piece of animation.

If ever you are great with backgrounds but crap with movements, that doesn't mean you're a "Beginner" as a whole but rather, you're still new to animating "movements". I get it, you're looking at the end result, but let's not be confined of the idea that we have to solo everything. It's good if you're average in everything but it's better if you specialize in at least 1 aspect.

That is the reason why the "Community Projects" section is there. So that we can all come together and help each other out. Take a look at Miccool. By all means I don't find his movements that amazing(Back at 2011) but it's in the effects where he shines. Generalizing an animator's skills is fine but let's not forget his/her specialties.

Quote from WafflesMgee

I like to rank based on animation skill, not flashy wow effects or a ton of camera movements to compensate for what you can't animate.

You see, that's the thing. Flash cannot be summed up with just "How great is your movements?" unlike in Pivot. I'll say it again, Flash is diverse making it harder to actually "Rank" someone base from there end product. The movements might be horrid but what if the effects are great? That just means he's bad at movements but great at effects. He may focus on his movements and improve that aspect of his or he may collaborate with others and continue to refine his current skill in effects.

Animation isn't all about movements, you have to remember that. There is just so many things that animation can do.

I feel like it would be possible to give someone an overall rank to their animations if you simplify things and just think about how high quality their animation feels without trying to bring out specific areas or anything. I also think that doing this would help to produce well rounded animators because an animation with terrible movements but good effects would still look fairly low quality and unprofessional overall.

Quote from Root

I feel like it would be possible to give someone an overall rank to their animations if you simplify things and just think about how high quality their animation feels without trying to bring out specific areas or anything. I also think that doing this would help to produce well rounded animators because an animation with terrible movements but good effects would still look fairly low quality and unprofessional overall.

Looking at it objectively(End result), you can pretty much conclude everything by saying "That was fun to watch" or "That was horrible!" but remember DK? That guy who had horrible movements, BG's, and everything else but had great effects? His works made it to the front page of Stickpage(Although, later he was accused of rotoscoping). This just goes to show you that even if overall it's shit, it still has the potential to make it up the front page just because of a single aspect.

Now, I'm not here to argue that we should base it on an overall result but I'm trying to shed some light and new ideas here that animation isn't that linear.

The point that I'm trying to make is that I think ranks could be decided in part just by gut feeling from the average or overall quality. I see what you are saying, though.

Quote from Root

The point that I'm trying to make is that I think ranks could be decided in part just by gut feeling from the average or overall quality. I see what you are saying, though.

I can't really give out much on how "ranks" can be decided as I for one disapprove of the idea.

Sorry.

If Dark Demon wishes to turn animation into a forum game, that's fine and they are free to do so. Please do not attempt to establish this unofficially on SP. You are individually free to make up what ever arbitrary ranks you want, and assign those to whoever you want. That's your prerogative. Attempting to establish and impose that upon others is not how we officially prefer to handle things for this community, and I hope you can all respect that. The only reason our official competitions are ranked is to introduce balance especially when it comes to winning prizes. We do not divide members up before hand based on how we think their skill is, authors decide for themselves what level they feel comfortable competing at. Someone who is new to animation is welcome to join the experts in competition, but realistically they wouldn't stand a chance, that's why they can choose a lesser category and have a better shot at winning. Without this system competitions would only be won by a handful of people and amateurs would feel discouraged. Outside of competitions these ranks become a detriment, so we discourage their use. If you really feel strongly about ranks, you're more than welcome to head over to Dark Demon and participate in their system. I would prefer if this kind of discussion is kept there, since we are two separate communities and "we're doing this for you" seems like an indication that they wish to apply this standard to everyone instead of just those in their community, which I am vehemently against. Thank you for understanding.