Rookie Awards 2023 Winners Announced With 5517 entries from 106 countries, this year’s Rookie Award competition for aspiring artists attracted more talent than ever before.

Aspiring artists from around the world once again took a chance to launch their careers by submitting their work to the Rookie Awards in 2023. With an impressive 25 percent increase in participation, the competition showcased unparalleled talent across diverse creative industries ranging from visual effects and games to digital fashion and architectural visualization.

Many past participants have transformed their passion into successful careers, cementing the Rookie Award’s legacy as a launchpad for creative leaders.

Winners of the 13^th annual event were selected by a jury of 152 industry professionals from companies like Adobe, Industrial Light and Magic and Epic Games.

We were proud to expand our sponsorship of the event this year to a total of 10 categories, and we want to congratulate all of this year's Rookie Award participants and winners on their outstanding work! First-place winners in each category sponsored by Maxon received a one-year subscription to Maxon One and runners-up received six-month subscriptions. We wish you all success as you pursue your wide-ranging creative paths.

Winners who used Maxon One for their projects are:

Alena graduated recently from the Gnomon School of Visual Effects, Games and Animation, where she learned more about the entire film and animation pipeline to become a 3D generalist with a focus on modeling and texturing. Her favorite part of the pipeline is look development with an emphasis on grooming, lighting and compositing. Alena used ZBrush for all her beautiful projects that included charming characters from a meditating llama and a napping tiger to a monkey playing with its kin.

George used Unreal Engine and ZBrush to create a short film called “Lamentation” to pay tribute to his late father. The short is set in his family home and revolves around a pair of shoes that remind him of his father: “He wore these gold Crocs everywhere, from lounging around at home to cutting the grass. These shoes have been with my family throughout my entire childhood and they have great sentimental value to me,” George explains.

Steven’s experimental piece “The Mara Project” features an impressive VFX shot of a woman with a robotic hand. The project was inspired by the science fiction movie “Ex Machina,” which made Steven think about how robotic anatomy could be used to express oneself as opposed to being purely utilitarian. Steven used ZBrush to clean up a photogrammetry scan of the actor’s real hand so he could attach the robotic hand to it later.

Mari is a Belgian concept artist, currently studying at Digital Arts and Entertainment, Kortrijk. She is passionate about designing characters, creatures and props, and has an extensive portfolio that contains various concepts and character designs from animal-like characters that could serve as enemies in a game to characters for a dating simulator project and a frog-themed witch designed in ZBrush.

Aaron submitted several projects that range from fantasy to gritty realism. His real-time environment “Woodsman’s Grove” was created with Unreal Engine 5, ZBrush and numerous other tools. He even did his own photogrammetry process to create materials for the award-winning scene.

Josh Young used C4D and Redshift for a collection of work created at Ringling College’s Motion Design department. His thesis film about dissociation and overstimulation in a cyberpunk world combined everything he learned throughout his four years to create an engaging piece that explores new methods, such as point clouds mixed with realistic rendering.

Steven Dvornik was a digital painter who eventually began incorporating 3D into his paintings. Once he started working in Cinema 4D, he realized he wanted to work in the creative media and entertainment industry, so in his senior year of high school, he switched from illustration to motion design and is now enrolled in Ringling College of Art and Design’s Motion Design program.

A complete list of all the winners of this year’s Rookie Awards can be found on the Rookie Awards 2023 website.