I have a LONG history with Blender - I wrote some of the earliest Blender tutorials, worked for Not a Number and helped run the crowdfunding campaign that open sourced Blender (the first one on the internet!). I founded BlenderNation in 2006 and have been editing it every single day since then ;-) I also run the Blender Artists forum and I'm Community Lead at n8n.
The second place winner looked more real than the first place winner! I think the judge had to have been Big Buck Bunny though.
I also think the first place has nothing special i it… There were a lot more interesting well-done entries.