SPH Engineering‘s Drone Show Software (DSS) team initiated the 1st International Drone Show Choreography Competition – and now we have a winner! Angelito D. Jadormeo of the Philippines took 1st place, and you can see his amazing animation below. “Entries were evaluated by an internationally influential jury panel composed of EU, North and Latin American and Australian drone show professionals and experienced entrepreneurs,” says a press release.

The competition task was to create a 50 drone New Year animation with a maximum length of 5 minutes using Blender animation software. Participants were allowed to make any shapes and use any colours. Angelito D. Jadormeo, the winner, estimates the task as challenging: he had to think about the concept which would involve not only a beautiful design ‘as is’ but be applicable once in flight. ‘You have to plan things like if you need to rig your design in your 3D application of choice, will it be a rotating object, a titling one, or something with more than one articulation. Will your design require dynamics and some sort of procedural animation, what light colors should it display  etc’, he explains.

A 9 person jury scored each submission from 1 to 10 in 4 areas: “technical correctness of the animation, artistic value, following the “Winter Holidays / New Year” theme, visual impact.”

“I am delighted to get new names of animation designers out to companies operating in the rapidly developing drone show industry. We have received 153 registrations from over 50 countries. Keeping in mind the high quality of submissions we have selected 3 winners as planned and added a few jury’s favorites,” Alexey Dobrovolskiy, CTO at SPH Engineering, comments.

Marc Loosli, CTO & Co-Founder, Swiss Drone Show Ltd., adds: “I am excited about the number of participants in the competition and especially about the creative and exciting shows that were entered. I am  happy that there were many participants who created a drone show for the first time and hopefully we could inspire them for further creative shows.”

In addition to Angelito D. Jadormeo, other top-5 designers are Isabel Caballero Fernández (Mexico, 2d place), Fu Chongyang (China, 3d place), Julien James Davis (United Kingdom), Hein Htet Zaw (Myanmar), Oscar Stefanini (France). All designers are granted with certificates, free Drone Show Software training (worth EUR 12’000 each) and marketing support. The first and second prize winners will also receive complimentary iPhone 12 and Apple Watch Series 6 accordingly.

More information about the competition is available at https://www.droneshowsoftware.com/competition#winners.

See the winner’s full animation below!!