Another idea I had just before I passed out: something like the annual hex pixel thing but with animation, an iterative pass it along game where we start with a concept and have people animate 10 or so frames of it and try and get it to a full x-minutes length or so.
It sounds like a fun way to get some people in animation and would get an interesting collaborative result out
I like this general idea, but something like this has to be done serially, by one person at a time, doesn't it? The great thing about the hexquisite corpse and most other collabs is that parts of those can be done simultaneously. And with animation, the wait times are probably going to be quite a bit longer, and later participants are likely to feel more pressure and restrictions to continue the style/story/mood set by the earlier animations.
I'd love to see an animation collab, but I think these are issues that need to be addressed for it to be more accessible and fun.
Perhaps it could be done like an animation version of PJ's ISO collabs: there is a fixed number of animation slots along the timeline, N frames each, and the first few participants can pick any slots they want, as long as they're non-adjacent. Once about 1/4~1/3 of the slots have been taken up this way and a few finished ones have been posted, later participants have to select a slot that's adjacent to a finished one (i.e. right before or after), and animate it so that their animation flows into the other. As the project gets closer to completion, people will have to fill slots that have animations just before and after them, and they might have to "blend" between two very different animations.
In this way, multiple people can work on entries at the same time, and the eventual "story" can be some hexquisite corpse-like nonsense because the animation is seeded by a larger number of animations by people who haven't yet seen each other's entries, rather than just one. Each of the three "stages" of this project (1. creating bits of animation in isolation, 2. flowing into/out from one existing animation, 3. filling in the gap between two finished animations) provides a different sort of challenge as well, which might encourage repeat entries (if those are allowed) and different stages might appeal to different people.