Dailymotion Blog

Below is a message from Loren Bouchard, judge of the animation contest….

Dear MotionMakers:

Well done. And thank you for sharing your work. In a contest with as modest a prize as this one, I wouldn’t have been surprised if entries were few and far between, but that’s not the case here at all. Besides the quantity, I’m impressed with the high level of originality. This is not a bunch of knock-offs - there are people taking real creative risks here. I’d like to recognize a few people/pieces for honorable mentions: stecker_show, happyfatties, MovingBoxStudio, and todd_spicer – thank you, great job.

jkenwks - “Mick the Mighty Miner” is really something. Keep doing stuff like that.

PSSTpassiton is a collective. So points right there, just for teaming up. That is key in this industry. I especially liked “Sparkle Esperantumor Stimulation”. Love 2D/3D mixed together.

And fugazi77: “Sunny Day All is Well” - another trippy piece, and another example of INCREDIBLY high quality animation and execution.

And now the winner…

The winner is Slothvision, who entered “The Sloth Life, It Can Changes”, “John Wolfington:Shotgun” and “PlanetX”. They all appealed to me immediately, but “The Sloth Life”, in particular, felt approachable and funny. The voice of the character came through (even though it was written), and there was a mature storytelling ability at work, with ups and downs and a bittersweet final beat that tied the whole thing together. A great short.

Thanks again everyone, for entering and for checking out each other’s work. I had a great time looking at all of these, and I had a great time working on our own little call-for-upload pieces. (Thank you, Nora.)
- Loren BouchardP.S. I can’t resist also sharing this - If you’re in the mood to hear a completely different (mean, nasty) perspective about this contest, check out this guy’s blogpost:
http://www.cartoonbrew.com/internet-blogs/a-new-low-for-online-animation-contests

We recently added an “Avatar Webcam Upload” function to the site, which lets you take a photo with your webcam and use it as your profile avatar.

All you have to do is:

• plug in your webcam
• strike a pose
• click “Shoot”, and
• click “Save” to publish your new avatar

You can access the new function by clicking the “my account” tab on the navigation bar within “my profile”, and then accessing the “Avatar” section from the account settings sidebar.

Enjoy!

The videoroll has enjoyed great success since its launch. As you’ll recall, it is a small tool which let you post a set of mini video players on any external site. Following its months of faithful service, we decided it was time give it a bit of a facelift, and are pleased to roll-out Dailymotion’s new Videowall!

Overview
The videowall is an evolution of the Videoroll. Whereas the old version only allowed you to post one column or row of videos, the Videowall lets you post not only a column or row, but and animated “wall” of up to 81 (9×9) videos. The mini-players within the wall will pull the most recent videos from any video list available on Dailymotion: featured videos, most commented, most viewed, your channels, your videos, etc. - the possibilities are endless.

The tool, moreover, is fully configurable: you can add drop shadows, control spacing, show or hide video info with mouseovers, auto-play previews with the “zapping” mode (try it, it’s fun), and define the position of the logo. Don’t hesitate to play with all these options to create your ideal Videowall!

I love it, but where can I find it and how do I put it on my site?
You can see the Videowall on this page, and you can get to the factory by clicking the “Videowall” link under “Tools” in the footer at the bottom of any Dailymotion page. To put a Videowall on your site, select your options on the Videowall factory page, click “Generate Videowall”, and then copy the code and paste it where you want it to appear on your site.

What’s going to happen with the old Videorolls?
The Videorolls already in place will not be affected by the launch of the Videowall, but don’t hesitate to replace your Videorolls with Videowalls! As always, we invite your feedback on and opinion of this new tool. Please leave any praise - or let us know of any bugs - in the comments of this post. All your input will be reviewed.