Congratulations to Alvin Oblitey from Staffordshire University, our winner of the Games Animation category in Search For A Star 2023!

Although often underrepresented at universities and colleges, games animation is always one of the more naturally dynamic and exciting categories each year and we were pleased to see nearly 50 students sign up from across the UK and Europe. Students were given a project brief co-developed with games studios across the UK, to develop a themed, game-ready character animation sequence. Each had 4 weeks to create, document and present their projects to our assessment teams.

After reaching the Rising Star finals last year with another impressive project, Alvin returned this year with an excellent character transformation sequence in the ‘Beast Mode’ theme (you can check out Alvin’s head-rattling project video below). At the final interview, the judges loved Alvin’s enthusiasm for animation, technical ability and clear understanding of his work, earning him the winning place!

“I was not expecting this, but I’m so glad after all the hard work I’ve been doing for the past two years. It’s amazing to finally win this competition, since I’ve been here before – last year I was in the top 5 as well, now this year I’ve actually won and I’m super happy about it!”

This year’s Search For A Star Animation challenge was created alongside our studio partners as a way of helping technical game art & animation students to create a portfolio piece that showed exactly the type of skills that studios want to see from graduates starting a games career. Thank you also to our judging panel for the SFAS Games Animation challenge, Alex Korakitis and Mark Pinney from Bulkhead, and Jordan Langley from Aardvark Swift.

After Alvin’s interview, the judges shared with us the reasons behind their decision:

“Alvin created a very polished animation with incredible flair that took into consideration the essential aspect of momentum and used it to their advantage. When asked about his project, he already had a list of improvements that he would make which showed passion and a deep understanding of the work they had created.”

Congratulations once again to Alvin, and we look forward to seeing a whole lot more from him in future 💚