I presume the mini comps were designed with limited creativity but with the focus on the technical side of getting the right work flow/pipelines in place and with important emphasis on real time captures; with the competition completed in a fairly short time. (You're also exposed to working on something with tight restrictions which is always good to get used to)
This is so that when the time come to the main big comp people entering would be sufficiently skilled enough to complete it and can happily afford to shift the focus on the creativity/concept stage that didn't exist in the mini comps.
Anyway that's how I see things and yeah I agree with everyone that it's a bit quiet now. Hopefully with more time/new staff, what would be great to see here is something like 6 mini comps and 2 main comps per year
