We’re looking for the games industry’s next generation of leading games VFX artists!
Now in its tenth year, Search For A Star has helped to showcase some of the best student game developers around. We expanded to include games VFX in 2016 and have already introduced studios to several exceptional VFX artists!
Our aim with Search for a Star has always been to help you make the leap from 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. Search for a Star can take you to fantastic places, with VFX artists from previous years ending up at great studios across the UK including nDreams, Cloud Imperium and more!
The games VFX challenge is split up into two stages, with the project stage being open to all entrants.
- 6 Week Game VFX Development Project
- Industry Panel Interview
Development Project
Develop and present a VFX sequence over 6 weeks! Starting from an industry-approved project brief that we’ll provide, you’ll be asked to create a set of sequenced effects that really shows your artistic knowledge, technical ability, and understanding of how to prepare your work for use in games.
A team of animators from across the industry will review your projects, assessing them based on a mix of creative and technical criteria including research, documentation, your production process and all the way to the final in-engine presentation.
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 & creative knowledge and career motivations.
Following the interviews, an overall winner from each challenge tier will be decided and will receive a number of prizes donated from industry alongside an exclusive chance of a job interview (for Search for a Star winners) or internship (for Sumo Digital Rising Star winners).
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.
Games VFX 2019 Entries
Want to see what some of last year’s students created for their animation projects? Take a look below!
Search For A Star 2019 VFX Winner
Search For A Star 2019 VFX Finalist