7 posts tagged “competition”
So, our MOOvie competition has come to a close and the judging begins! We've had some great entries, from stop-frame to live action, informative to fun. Many thanks to everyone who entered - either by making a MOOvie, or starring in one!
These are the entries we've received:
Andy Piper kicked things off with his Making a Mosaic Frame tutorial. (For those who don't know, we're making some exciting changes to the frame, which should be in final production in a few months time!) Andy then went on to produce two more MOOvies, MiniCards in Stop Motion and a super speedy look at Ordering MOO Cards in Three Minutes!
Marina created a film about, Life as a Graphic Designer, with help from friends large and small. This resonated well with our own graphics team - although of course, we've never experienced those frustrations here ;o)
Shahab Zargari hunted high and low for a MOO Sticker with a little help from her high pitched (cute!) friend, Mahtab Zargari, while James Alliban wowed everyone with this Augmented Reality Business Card.
John Arnold impressed us all with his neat idea for Decorating a netbook with your own photograph using MOO stickers - we've rarely come across a more patient man!
The three , different songs by Mark Bethune took us a little by surprise, but we danced our way back down to earth with Vincent Lee's catchy little video,MOOving Around The World.
Mo Riza entered twice, once with this great MOO Cards in NYC underground clip, taking photographic MiniCards back to their original location, and once with a very relaxing MiniCards on the beach video.
Nine year old Anna Dale made this wonderful Moo Shoo stop frame animation featuring some rather cute typography, while The McIntyre's also went for stop frame animation of epic proportions! (We loved the music on this one too).
Alchemation Studios produced the only computer animated entry, while Marty Dunlop managed to convince his very understanding friends to star in his film First Impressions.
Last but not least, Geoff made us all smile with his film One Million Moo's, based around the many uses for a MiniCard holder! (We loved the icecream substitution for the wine in MOO's own MiniCard holder video!)
All together, much fun has been had by all - now we just need to find a winner. It's over to our judges for now, but stay tuned, and we'll let you know asap.
Thanks again to all who entered - we hope you had a s much fun making, as we've had watching.
We wanted to share one of the first entries made in to MOO's MOOvie Mania Competition because it really spoke to us. It's entitled: Life as a Graphic Designer by Marina. Given we have a few graphic designers on the team and a few of us have worked in agencies in the past, we particularly related to this tell-it-like-it-is account of a day in the life of a graphic designer. You'll note the nod to MOO's MiniCards at about 2 min 24sec in. The logo created by the client is worth highlighting. Don't you agree, it's just brilliant?
If you are submitting a MOOvie, don't forget to include the tags "moovie mania" and "business cards" when you post your video to either YouTube, Flickr or Dailymotion. That'll help us group them together later on. If you need them, all the rules (written in plain English) can be found here.
Adding Music to Your MOOvie
As we all know movies can be 100x better with music and sound effects. Think of Jaws without the famous Na-Na. Na-Na. Na-Na. But, where do you find all those great effects and music? We have few suggestions that might come in handy. If you have more, please leave in the comments.
Our friends at iStockphoto have an entire library of royalty-free music and every sort of sound effect submitted by their contributors. They are an inexpensive source and have offered any MOOvie Maker a 15% discount on 26 credits or more until the end of July. Just include the the code MOOvie on checkout for your discount.
There’s also lots of great music available with a Creative Commons license that won't get you in trouble for copyright infringement. If you do use background music, per CC licensing requirements, you'll need to attribute the music you use by mentioning and linking to the artist, or the CC page you found it on.
Here are some online resources (thanks to ccmixter
Or an original piece is always nice. Happy Composing!
At last - the moment you've all been waiting for - the winners of the MiniCard Box Mini-Competition! The competition closed on Sunday night, and we've been deliberating ever since. There was a great range of entries, from the theatrical to the practical, the lavatorial to the botanical. Thanks so much to everyone who entered and joined in the fun.
And now, without further ado:
The funniest photo of the new MiniCard box
We were just the tiniest bit gobsmacked by this. And when I say 'tinest' what I mean is 'completely'. But, if the new MiniCard box can give a girl a grand day out, who are we to argue? Congrats to Sweet Peas Photography!
The most interesting re-use of the new MiniCard box
A beautiful set of photos, we thought this re-use was imaginative, inventive - and stylish to boot! It's the MiniCard box as jelly mould:
Ta da!
Now we're wondering if we could squeeze a whole 'Cooking with MOO' book (cmook?) out of this. Congratulations to ocook
The photo of the new MiniCard box in the most unusual location
How on earth tony_the_bald_eagle got a shot of our MiniCard box-making-process we'll never know - but it seems he's at last documented the fact our new boxes are hatched, not made*! Wrapped in foil our rare-breed eggs are carefully incubated for a total of seven weeks, before their furious wriggling cracks the shells. Congratulations to Tony for this action shot, of a new MiniCard box emerging!
*This might not be 100% true.
Special Award for Culture
The judges felt we should also give a prize to itchy_fingers for her dramatic production of Shakespeare's classic, Macbeth. Congrats for making us smile - we're looking forward to the full stop-frame animated feature, which we're sure is coming soon!
The first person to post a photo of the new MiniCard box
This has already been announced, but here's that photo by no5 Robsta again, in all its glory:
Well done for being so quick off the mark!
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So, congratulations to all our winners, we'll be contacting you tomorrow with details of your MiniCard prize. Thanks again to everyone who took part!
Guess what? We're doing lots of work behind the scenes at MOO, and changes are afoot. But don't be scared, we're starting off with little differences, to ease you in gently.
Earlier this week, the first shipment of new MiniCard boxes (seen above) went out to our customers around the world. They're just a little different (for now, wink wink) but we're still quite excited - they've got a little MOO ink drop on top!
To celebrate the loveliness of the little things in life, we're having a mini-competition, just for fun.
Win a FREE Pack of Minicards (& shipping!)
• The first person to post a photo of the new MiniCard box in the Flickr pool will win a pack of MiniCards.
Congrats to no5 Robsta for posting the first photo of the new MiniCard box!
• The person that posts the funniest photo of the new MiniCard box in the Flickr pool will win a pack of MiniCards.
• The person that posts the most interesting re-use of the new MiniCard box in the Flickr pool will win a pack of MiniCards.
• The person that posts a photo of the new MiniCard box in the most unusual location to the Flickr pool will win a pack of MiniCards.
To give you all a fair chance, no matter where you live, the competition will close at Mindnight GMT, Sunday 12th April.
Please tag your images: 'newminicardbox' - and add a link in the comments on this post.
Good luck - and have fun!
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Please note judging is by the MOO Crew, and our decisions will be final. (But not fatal.)
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In a the mood for more competitions? We're having a little scavenger hunt too!
It’s Monday - and we thought we'd help jump-start your brain with a brainteaser. Back at the beginning of October, we introduced the Mosaic Frame, which made it pretty easy to transform your MiniCards in to an art piece. Based on our Flickr pool, it looks like people have already started making some early Christmas gifts and are experimenting with the teaser, without even knowing it.
Jon Walters used the Frame for his wedding photos:
While Yaelfran has used it for her artwork:
Now, let's get back to the Brain Teaser. It all started when Paul (our product designer) first showed me the design, my brain started to hurt. Why? Well, I kept trying to calculate how many different ways I could put together a set of cards in a frame. I must admit my University Math class was ages ago. So, can you help me out?
The Challenge:
How many different ways can you arrange the cards in the frame given the following:
1. you have 20 different MiniCards
2. each MiniCard looks equally good vertically or horizontally
3. each MiniCard must be included in the frame arrangement only one time
Remember, the frame can also hang vertically or horizontally (perhaps that adds another 2 variations?) Here's a little video we made to show you how it works. It should give you an idea of how the little frames fit in to the bigger frame...
So, if you think you know the answer, leave your answer and calculations in our comments. Based on collective understanding here at MOO we will pick the winner from the selection of answers we receive by end of week. The winner will receive a Mosaic Frame for free. (Your answer doesn't have to be right but needs to be well thought out - remember 'Part Marks' ). We'll announce the winner next Monday.
Good Luck!
PS If you want tips on how to put together the frame Paul has provided his expert advice!
And so, our Caption Competition comes to a close. It's been great fun for us over the last 12 days, hunting down photos to use and reading your captions - some made us laugh, some were kinda sweet and a fair few made us think 'umm, what?!' We hope you've had as much fun as we have, and thanks very much to everyone who's taken part.
Next we're going through all the captions again, to pick out the winners. We'll be picking two captions per photo (hopefully) and announcing the winners in the blog by the end of the week. Good luck!
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In the midst of the excitement of the past few weeks, we've also launched a brand new product - Christmas and Holiday Cards! For those of you who haven't had the chance to check them out, take a look. This year we've added templates into the mix, so you can make up to 25 cards using the same template but use a different photo and text on each one.
These are really nice for families keeping in touch with relatives across the globe, or even for businesses, wanting to send a highly personalised message to a client. You can also add your own logo or photo to the reverse of the cards to personalise it even further. There's quite a range of templates - and you can even 'upgrade' your envelopes to red, brown, gold or silver!
At this time of year, as thoughts turns to gifts for friends and loved ones, it's also good to be able to give to those less fortunate than you. Last year we donated money to MSF, and this year we asked for your help in choosing a charity to support, via sales of Christmas and Holiday Cards. Our newsletter readers voted from a range of international charities, and while it was a close call, the World Society for the Protection of Animals won by a cats whisker. This means for every pack of cards you buy, WSPA will receive £1/$2. Thank to everyone who voted!
The MOO Holiday and Christmas Card Caption Competition is already off to a flying start!
We're thrilled to see so many brilliant captions submitted already. From the cute to the funny to the downright ridiculous. We love them all, and picking our winners is going to be pretty tough!
Remember, you can keep submitting captions for all the images until the close of the competition, so as we add more images, keep checking back to the old images too, in case it takes a couple of days to think of the perfect caption!
Our second photo was taken by Sappymoosetree.
Once you come up with your caption, remember to post it in the comments, to be in with a chance of winning!
