Join the Multianimator Project (MAP Animators!)

Hi all! This is a topic near and dear to my heart, for someone who herself has not got much done in the way of animation...! xD Multianimator Projects are when multiple animators slice up a song, script, or concept and each animate a "part", collaborating to combine the end result into a montage of awesome art styles and interpretations of the agreed upon idea!! This is a relatively new concept, not really being a thing until ~2013, and seeing people in the age 13-29 demographic KILLIN IT with sometimes professional level 2D, or unique experiments that will make your head turn, is so, so inspiring!!

These MAPs made me jealous and inspired me for sure!! Or they just made me feel enthusiastic! ^w^ : RAIEB , Roxanne , 5G , Dope , Marshal Dear , Christmas , Summer Solstice , + I could list like 150 more!!

This community inspired me to the agonizing, masochist practice of leaving your friends and family behind to sell your soul and draw the same coyote 500 times in slightly unnoticeably different ways to string together as animation. You can barely manage making three seconds worth. You brave computer crashes, your injured ego, missed deadlines, rejections, awkward silences from you fans, yet your only reward for surviving MAP Hell is an invitation to MAP Hell. A never ending cycle, it is. Slowly, you lose a sense of work-life balance and the characters come for you in your sleep, waking you up in the midst of the night just so you can finish in 72 hours, when really, all you want is to go outside again, to see daylight, the clouds, the sun, the wild turtles, your neighbor's dog. But all you see is a never ending ether of incomplete parts to animate! It's a really amazing way to collaborate with other artists and see your characters or art come to life.

There's not a whole lot out there yet in the way of making MAP Parts specifically, but I'd like to start keeping track of information when I can (feel free to help add to this list!) The community is mostly on YouTube, but I'd like to see more tutorials & stuff to encourage newbie animators (like yours truly) to rise to the elite animators' echelon! 

HISTORY, INTERVIEWS, DISCUSSION

Scribble Kibble: What is a MAP?

Multi Animator Project Wikia , Scratch Wikia

TV Tropes - Multi Animator Project

5 Reasons to Introduce Students to MAPs

deviantArt Groups: MAP-Quest , MAP-Central , MAP-Mania

Northflower: How to Participate in a MAP

Draikinator: How to Host a MAP

AlliKatNya: Early Days of Warriors Animation

(This published book briefly mentions MAPs!! Is that weird or what?)

ANIMATION (AMV, MAP, PMV) TUTORIALS

Finchwing's 2D Photoshop Animation , Part 2 , Part 3

TennelleFlowers's 12 Principles & Toon Boom Animation

Anik8tion: Animating in Free Drawing Software (FireAlpaca)

Icebreaker questions for the thread here ♥

♥ What is your favorite MAP part? What is your favorite YouTube/online animation in general?

♥ Are you an artist or animator of this community? What are you making/have you made?

♥ Do you talk to people about MAPs outside of YouTube/the Internet?

My answers ♥

♥ I'm a huge Nightrizer fan! Their style is so clean and fluid, and this person paints vistas on commission and cranks out webcomic pages like it's second nature! But Raptorkil has seriously caught my attention with their storytelling and character animation. Some MAP parts I'll never forget, like Rea's, Sahara's, Bloodpus's ... ahhh so much talent I must stop myself from listing animators all night ~~

♥ I'm such a newb, it hurts my soul!! (Especially since I've been following this type of art since 2009!) But I have participated in some MAPs, in fact I have a Warriors part going up soon which I could use as a talking point on here. This is all I have so far, I'm still getting started for sure: Solarizing's YouTube Channel

♥ My professors, funny enough. I got to screen parts of Marshal Dear and Dear Fellow Traveler for my animation history project which was to choose any animation you could think of, write about it, and talk about how it relates to what we learned in class. So I used the MAPs to talk about how independent filmmaking, which started with people buying cheaper video recorders, is now happening in the animation community since animation software is now free or inexpensive, making it available to consumers and not just pros. You could read my homework on it, I'd be honored XD 

 My professors didn't know MAPs existed until I told them, but then they encouraged it as a way to practice and get better. I also have a handful of friends who talk about MAPs with me, back in high school I had one friend who was a total sweetheart and LOVED MAPs so we would get together and freak out watching some, and she was always super supportive of me and pestered me to animate or draw more, which I miss. MAPs mean more to me than "professional" animations because of the collaborative, enthusiastic spirit around it.