Modding The winner of Mod of the Year 2012

Great job by the winners and all those who participated, however I do have one serious problem with the winner, whose design truly is beautiful to LOOK at: the four fans in front.

For all appearances, it looks like the fans are positioned right in front of where a person would be sitting, which means that either those fans are blowing hot air on the user, or sucking in air from him. There is also the likely issue of noise, since they are very close to where the person would be hearing, meaning even if all four fans are very silent, they will be heard loud and clear.

 

Not sure about your idea Waynio (or actually, I am not convinced...at all.. ), but I do appreciate constructive Feedback. Only thing that comes to mind with your suggestion is time. Bit-tech staff mentioned time is tight, your solution is not good on that. At least the part about the community (medals, awards..) would require some extensive recoding, probably. Also, I believe your idea is too random.

IMHO, MOTY's should NOT be like playing the lottery, it should be an appraisal of the best mod of the year, determined by various factors - that should preferably all be taken into consideration. Sure, if you have a cnc-mill you can do awesome things, but none other than Attila proves you don't need fancy tools to produce modding-wizardry. I think if you take the various 'categories' into consideration, everybody has a fair chance, given they are dedicated. I think bit-tech is on the right track - combining a majority public vote with a small expert panel was a fantastic idea. Also keeping the panel-members anonymous was a very good decision. I just think that this system has some room for improvement

@SubtleOne: interesting observation, did not notice that!

 

And that right there is why I will never, ever see a MOTY (or a top 5!). It's the attitude that simply because I use a different set of tools than Attila, that my skills are somehow inferior or less meaningful.

I didn't do this for anyone but myself, so I don't really care either way. And I do want to thank Attila for the post that he wrote on it being a shame that Gnu wasn't in the top 5 either (seriously people?).

You guys and gals out there need to recognize that no matter what way someone builds something, a lot of time and effort went into designing and tweaking and making the thing work. Could I do what Attila does? Sure. Could he do what I do? Of course. We each have our own preferences when it comes to building. It really is sad and deflating when it feels like the only way people will appreciate what I do is if I do it by hand.

P.S. I don't mean for anything to be directed at you personally, faxiij. A lot of people feel the way I'm describing.

 

Well said Achron!

 

Gratz guys.

Bummer for me though. Guess I need to do better next year.

 

Long before I knew of how Attila built his cases or bit-tech I was familiar with his case Cygnus X1, to this day it remains my all time favorite case. I discovered how he produced this case and bit-tech by following the worklog link on mdpc. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't amazed with his process, but that doesn't change why I love the case so much and it has nothing to do with the fact it's 'hand built'.

Of course much time and effort went into your case, the fact that it was nominated for MOTY indicates that. But this is a popularity contest, not a 'how deserving' of a win or top 5 placement are you contest - perhaps it should be?

To be honest I very much doubt that, if it was that easy to do what he does everyone would be doing it but how many do? Also and it would be interesting to hear Attilas thoughts on this but I would be very doubtful if the quality of his end results would be as good with a cnc, why? Not because there's anything wrong with cnc but he seems to do a lot of his design work on the fly as he's building rather than nutting out a design before hand in CAD then assembling - basically designing whilst making approach, it often seems like cardboard and scissors are his pencil and paper of choice. I have to wonder if Attila looks at the way other people work and wishes he could work like that.

Whilst I don't doubt there's a few people that will judge or at least take into account how a case was built when casting their vote, but I'd be very surprised if the majority of the 2000+ voters could care less how a case was built so long as they like the look of it.

 

Grats to the winners and to all for that matter, All the mod where very well done and showed some fantastic skill and imagination/vision.

 

I really can't believe, after all that's been said and argued about, that we're still having this conversation. I've seen hundreds of projects. Lots of hand built works are very ordinary, many are downright terrible and some are outstanding. I've also seen many projects using CNC gear, laser or water cut parts etc. Most are very ordinary (just like the hand built projects) but some are outstanding. How you choose to build your project does not have a direct relationship to how well it will turn out. This is not just my opinion either, if you take the time to have a look at many many works built using both methods, you will clearly see that good work is very difficult. It just doesn't matter how you are trying to build something, the same prerequisites apply. Namely, a coherent vision, extreme attention to detail and an objective view of the quality you are achieving. The last quality is very important. I can't believe some of the shoddy work people will post up on their logs. I can only conclude that they don't 'see' what they have done.

As someone has pointed out in a previous post, I would have great difficulty building something like Achron has done. I do build and plan on the run, often completely changing large parts of already built work. But I can see how this could still be accomplished using automated machinery. And yes I am missing the faculty of being able to plan in great detail and am jealous of those that can.

If I had easy access to automated machinery, and could take my time with them, then I would be using them right now.

 

Totally forgot about this until I just listened to the latest podcast from The Mod Zoo, lol. Grats to the winners.

 

Grats to all the winners ! All incredible builds.