Sounds great I love like the idea of animation comp's=). Textureing is still my weak point but hey practise makes perfect heheh=). Was thinking you can combine challenges, ever month or two. For example, Taking the elemental creature of this month and a challenge for next month would be rig and animate a 10 second clip showing the characteristics of that creature.

Animation Comp's can be judge on weight, and timming primarly. Rigging and skining will not be as important in the judging due to the fact it a bit of a science to get it done perfect and is very time consuming

I dont know just on a bit of a tangent heheh=)

Kurt