I wish they still did animations for the reveals 
Cody’s were the bomb.
Wait! Those were Cody’s??
Cody where are the Anti-Gravity Motors
A lot of random questions suddenly got answered
Agreed. Cody. Is. Amaze. Ing. 0.o LOL
2007-2008 Bridge Battle - unsure who made this animation.
2008-2009 Elevation (they actually had a second, really slow fancy-looking animation) - unsure who made either of these.
2009-2010 Clean Sweep (this is actually the updated version, for some reason adding the crucial point that “robots are not allowed to touch the foam playing surface on the other side of the wall”) - Cody Smith made this, after winning the VRC Game Design Animation Challenge the previous year with Tetra Triad.
2010-2011 Round Up (later the video was also uploaded to the YouTube channel “VEX Robotics”, which is where all later animations would be uploaded to) - Cody Smith also made this animation, supposedly with limited time to complete it. He was actually planning on (and began) creating an HD version, but never got around to completing it.
2011-2012 Gateway - unsure who made this animation.
2012-2013 Sack Attack - this animation was made by Dr. David Lavery, known for making many of the FIRST Robotics Competition game animations.
2013-2014 Toss Up - unsure exactly who was behind making this, but most likely someone at VEX Robotics?
2014-2015 Skyrise - probably the same person who made the Toss Up animation.
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Wow this thread didn’t pop up on my radar until I did my random searches on the forum (I know it’s vain but I randomly search my name “Cody” from time to time typically with a 2 week filter because things like this happen).
Animation History
Um yeah, so I did Tetra Triad, Clean Sweep, Swept Away and Round Up. Chris Folea did Gateway, and as LegoMindstormsmaniac mentioned Dr. David Lavery did Sack Attack.
Toss Up and Skyrise changed formats from animations to videos + a little Adobe After Effects magic. It’s my understanding that IFI has a professional photographer who makes these videos using the demo field they have at their Texas headquarters.
Round Up Specifics
Thanks for the praise, as LegoMindstormsmaniac mentioned Round Up, my best work, was completed with me having less than 30 days with the game’s details. IE, I was given the manual with less than 30 days to the actual day I left of the World Championship that year.
The final video file was left encoding on my workstation as I flew to the world Championship, my little brother uploaded it to my FTP where I then downloaded it at the hotel, put it on a USB hard drive and personally handed it to Jason Morella who disappeared with it and that was that.
Future Animation Feelings
I have been unable to stop myself from mentally planning out how I would do a future animation, pretty much every year now. I regularly play song on my iPhone and try to see if that particular music would work out. Many don’t but some do, and from there I usually mentally add a voice track and start to play the scene out in my head over and over until I get bored.
I would pretty much require $10,000 to do an animation today (v/s the $2,500 I was paid for Round Up). I value myself at $60k/yr minimum at this point, an animation takes at least two months from start to end, 2/12 = 1/6, $60k / 6 = $10k. That’s what it costs, bottom line, and that’s not even including the money needed to power the render nodes or assets.
VEX will never pay me that much, and even though considerable effort was made by all parties to bridge the gap between IFI, the RECF and I, I don’t feel like the parties involved would be willing to work together on something like this in the near future.
Besides the videos work, can be done quickly and ultimately communicate the message decently well.
Animation Aftermath
In short, after losing the VEX animation gig I slowly but surely left the animation scene and focused my efforts on becoming a programmer. Programming was always in my blood, if anything the animation stuff was strange.
I was going to UCF for Computer Science but I quickly became disgusted by the quality or lack thereof that particular school’s program so I made a big BIG life change. I moved out to Colorado and “dropped out” of college.
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED, is I got stuck in a out of state tuition time period and decided to make the best of it. I’ll be out of state for the rest of this year, afterwards I may return to college, or I may not.
What I’m Doing Now
In the meantime, I’m doing three major things.
A. I co-run an eBay company that does better than you might think (those who know me, know that Camaron and I have a secret weapon and use it to flip high-end computer components regularly).
B. I’ve been working as a web developer for about a year now. I was working for a group out of Vegas, but quit after they proved to be extremely incompetent and unwilling to work with their own developers.
After that I started a much more serious effort to work for myself, Camaron and I are co-developing a web-app that works to help eBay buyers and sellers in some very specific ways. It’s called Seek & Bid. We don’t talk about it much because it’s very much so in development at the moment and it’s completely non-VEX so that discussion really doesn’t belong here.
Anyway this is the biggest thing for me atm, the app can make a lot of money and fills a neat business niche. I’d love to talk more about this if you guys are interested.
C. Robotics. Both with NAR and whoever happens to need help here on the forums, or via email or on Skype. It’s likely that I’ll be buying a 3D printer this year, and so I’m looking forward to designing a bunch of things this summer to print, for robotics, or the lolz or maybe for profits. Idk.
On the animation front, I still like to render things from time to time, like the field. I do favors for friends, and whatever really. I have a crap load of compute power at my disposal (a perk of owning a computer based eBay store) but I don’t have all the machines setup to render at this time because I’m lazy / don’t do that much 3D work anymore.
So yeah, that’s the deal. Going to the Toss Up Championship was great. I was happy to meet you guys, make up with IFI / RECF and catch up with old friends. Money and time permitting I’ll most likely be there again next year either once again with NAR or possibly as a volunteer.
Who knows really. Life has been nothing short of crazy for me. Some good, some bad, some extraordinary, some outright terrible.
I’m assuming you guys really just want more field renders right? 
-Cody
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Still wish you did animations
I’m sure we would all love the field renders