Page 86 - 3D Artist 110 - 2017 UK

COMMUNITY NEWS

Fishing For Happiness is based
on Seongmin Park’s concept
art and was created by Allan
Bernardo in his last term at
Gnomon School

The Rookies unveils winners

for its biggest awards yet

After reviewing the largest amount of entries that the Awards has received to date, the
panel of judges have released a winner’s roster packed with talent and creativity

his year’s Rookies – the international student awards Martin Nabelek’s Off was awarded VFX Film of the Year.
sponsored by Autodesk – has received 8,725 digital “Off was my bachelor’s graduation ilm,” says Martin, who’s
T projects from 2,752 students in over 80 countries. studying a master’s degree in Animation at Tomas Bata
“The task of selecting winners hit a new level of complexity University, Zlín, Czech Republic. “I spent many months
this year,” says Andrew McDonald, co-founder of The besides work and school doing research on my favourite
Rookies. “Not only did our judges review our largest amount topics: space and philosophy. After many concepts I still
of entries to date, but they also reviewed full portfolios of wasn’t happy with the ideas, until I heard Lorn’s fantastic
work, not just individual projects like other awards.” track ‘Anvil’, which inally struck me with enough inspiration
Visual Effects Rookie of the Year winner Kevin Decatoire to move forward.” From that moment the production went
is a graduate from the ArtFx school in France and is now to four intensive months of full-time work. The astronaut
working on environments for Thor: Ragnarok at Framestore was sculpted in high detail using ZBrush, then retopologised
London. At ArtFx he specialised in environments, letting him in TopoGun for an animation-ready low-poly asset.
work on different projects simultaneously. “I helped the Next-Gen Games Rookie of the Year winner Robert Tran
team to deine a mood, the artistic recently inished his second year
direction, doing storyboards, light People are genuinely as a games artist at The Game
boards and concept art,“ he says. “Then shocked when they Assembly. “I had multiple projects:
I was in charge of doing the full shots, discover how amazing a combination of 3D environments
from concept to compositing. For the and 2D concepts focusing on my
full VFX shots, I needed to be lexible. the student work is knowledge of design, mood and
That’s why everything was built in 3D; these days composition, so each theme could
this also gives me a good base for a Alwyn Hunt, complement each other. I approached
future matte painting.” co-founder of The Rookies all my projects with different
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