Grads in Games Search for a Star 2017 winners announced

The Grads in Games Search for a Star competition from Aardvark Swift has announced its 2017 winners at two events at UK universities.

In the code category, Kyle Hobdey of the University of Central Lancashire won the Search for a Star code competition whilst Alfred Norton won the Sumo Digital Rising Star code competition.

In the art category, Michael Starovoytov from the University of Huddersfield won the Character and Environment Art categrty, whilst Niels Dewitte from Howest won the Animation and VFX category. The winners of the Sumo Digital Rising Star for Character and Enivronment art was Dorota Sekula from Abertay University and Alexander Gray from Buckinghamshire New Univeristy.

Winners of the art competition will receive an interview with a leading UK studio for a job or internship, alongside additional prizes donated by members of the industry, including a personal studio tour donated by Creative Assembly and creative licences of Allegorithmic software. Winners of code get the same and also win prizes donated by the industry including a high-performance Radeon R9 Nano graphics card donated by AMD. 

During the two days, students from the UK and Europe were interviewed by a panel of judges for both code and art disciplines, after a practical project in the second round. The interviews were held by a panel of judges involved in each track (code and art) and both were judged on seperate days. The code finals were at the Staffordshire University and the art finals were held at the University of Hertfordshire.

On both days, all students were able to attend a number of talks from industry professionals about getting employment as well as the opportunity to speak to representitives from UK studios like Playground Games, Boss Alien, Sumo Digital and many more, about what employers are looking for in graduates.

All of the winners, their projects and all the news from the Search for a Star finals days can be found on the Grads in Games website.