We’re looking for the games industry’s next generation of leading character artists!

Search For A Star has helped to showcase some of the best student game developers around. We expanded to include art disciplines for the first time in 2016 and have since introduced studios to hundreds of games artists in their first roles!

Our aim with Search for a Star has always been to help you make the leap from art student to professional games developer. We want to highlight your skills to the industry and help keep the UK at the forefront of innovation in games development.

The character art challenge is split up into two stages, with the project stage open to all entrants.

  • Character Development Project
  • Industry Panel Interview

Grads In Games is currently on a hiatus & unfortunately there will be no SFAS or RS challenges this academic year.


Development Project

Develop a game-ready character! Starting from an industry-approved project brief that we’ll provide, you’ll be asked to create a game-ready character model from concept to completion that really shows your artistic knowledge, technical ability, and understanding of how to prepare your art for use in games.

Projects are for solo student artists (no team-based projects) and are expected to take no more than around 60-70 hours total development time, spread over several weeks.

A team of artists from across the industry will review your projects, assessing them based on a mix of creative and technical criteria including research and concept development, documentation, your production process and all the way to the final in-engine render.

Panel Interview

After reviewing the projects, the highest achieving students will be invited to take part in an exclusive panel interview with leading industry professionals. Styled after a studio hiring interview, they’ll want to know all about you, your technical & artistic knowledge and career motivations.

Following the interviews, an overall winner from each challenge tier will be decided.

Grads In Games is currently on a hiatus & unfortunately there will be no SFAS or RS challenges this academic year.

How do you decide who reaches the final interview stage?

Reaching the final stage is decided by the combined scores from all criteria in the project stage.

  • Research & Concept Development (20%)
  • Creative Development (20%)
  • Technical / Workflow (20%)
  • Documentation (20%)
  • Final Presentation (20%)