THE JUDGES
IMAGE CATEGORY: 3D IMAGE CATEGORY:
2D Illustration & Cartoon (Comic) Style Category
(in alphabetical order):
Albert Garafutdinov
Albert started to work as an artist, illustrator and cartoonist in 1988. Year later he'd organized the animation studio Animatograf. In parallel he worked on comic magazine Mr Ufik Pictures. From 1993 to 2006, he was an art director on animated film Golden Gate, the artist on Brothers pilots. The case of a serial maniac cartoon, art director on Brothers pilots. Another side of Earth and Faberge Eggs - adventures videogames. Albert is currently an Art Director at CAPTAIN studio, which specializes in the production of animation films and advertisements.
Andrei Riabovitchev
Andrew was born in the city of Apsheronsk in Krasnodar region in 1968. After graduating from the high school he enrolled at the Moscow Forestry Institute. He started in animation industry working as inbetweener at the animation studio Classica on Snow Queen cartoon. Later he worked on a number of projects, finally landed as an Art Director on Prince Vladimir (2006) and Rollin sydan (2007), developing look and feel and designing characters for the film. Recently he's also designed characters in 3D animated movie Adventures of Alenushka and Erema (2008). Currently Andrew is living in England, working as a freelancer on various film projects.
Blog: http://andreiriabovitchev.blogspot.com
Armand Serrano
Born in Manila, Philippines, Armand studied engineering at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila and received his Bachelor of Science Degree in Civil Engineering in 1989. Armand started in animation in 1990 as an inbetweener for FilCartoons, Inc., a subsidiary studio of Hanna-Barbera Studios California. He worked on projects like The New Adventures of Johnny Quest, Young Robin Hood and Pirates of Dark Water. Years later, he joined Philippine Animation Studio (PASI), supervising layout for Marvel TV animation like X-Men and Fantastic Four. Then it was on to 7th Level, Inc, a multimedia and gaming company and then to Walt Disney Feature Animation Studio, where he worked on Mulan (1998), Tarzan (1999), Lilo & Stitch (2002), and Brother Bear (2003).
Armand Serrano is currently an Art Director at Sony Pictures Animation in Culver City, California. His film credits for Sony include recently completed work as Visual Development / Environmental Designer on Surf's Up (2007), Open Season 2 (2009), Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs (2010), Hotel T. and Arthur Christmas (Sony/Aardman).
Web: http://armandserrano.com
Blog: http://armandserrano.blogspot.com
Bobby Chiu
Bobby is an independent digital artist, illustrator, and the Creative Director of Imaginism Studios. He studied painting, classical animation and computer animation at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario. His professional career began at age 17, designing Pixar, Disney, and Star Wars toys. He currently teaches digital painting on Schoolism.com, publishes art books, and does concept design for TV and movies. Some of his most recent clients include Sony Imageworks, Walt Disney, and the Playtone Company. Bobby currently lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Web: http://www.imaginismstudios.com
Web: http://www.schoolism.com
Christophe Vacher
Christophe Vacher is a French artist who has provided backgrounds and concept artwork for the movie and television industry since 1989, and Walt Disney Feature Animation since 1993. Christophe worked at Disney's Paris-based animation studio for three years, where he painted backgrounds for such animated films as Runaway Brain (1995), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), and served as head of background for the 1995 feature, A Goofy Movie.
Relocating to California in 1996, he continued his association with Disney, where his credits have included painting backgrounds and concept artwork for Hercules (1997), Tarzan (1999), the Stravinsky Firebird finale for Fantasia 2000 (1999), the computer-animated feature Dinosaur (2000), and finally, Treasure Planet (2002). He has also worked on Dreamworks' Shark Tale (2004) doing concept artwork and paintings.
Christophe shares his time between personal artwork for galleries, covers for books, CDs and video game, and movie studios work. In 2004, he got into Art Direction, first on a CG animated short movie for Studio Arts in Los Angeles, then for the animated segment of Disney's live action movie Enchanted (2007), and is currently Art directing the CG feature film 9, produced by Tim Burton and directed by Shane Acker.
Don Seegmiller
Don graduated from Brigham Young University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. Since the spring of 1995, he has been teaching figure drawing at Brigham Young University for both the Fine Art Department and the Graphics Department where he continues to teach senior level Illustration courses, traditional head painting, figure drawing, and digital painting for the Department of Visual Design.
Over the last 20 years, Don has completed more than 600 paintings. For six years, he was the art director at Saffire Corporation, a local game developer. Don is a regular speaker at the Game Developers Conference, where he teaches full-day tutorials on character design and digital painting. In 2003, he wrote a book entitled Digital Character Design and Painting for Charles River Media. His work is featured in The Painter 6 Wow Book, The Painter 7 Wow Book, Electronic Step by Step Design, Spectrum 7 and Spectrum 8. His traditional oil painting work has been represented by many major art galleries in the United States.
Web: http://www.seegmillerart.com
Blog:
seegmillerart.blogspot.com
Donato Giancola
Donato Giancola was born in 1967 and raised in Colchester, Vermont, near Burlington, Vermont. His childhood were peppered with memories of making models, toys, drawing in the afternoons, reading comics, painting lead figurines, creating maps for role-playing and producing art projects for school. At first, Donato majored in electrical engineering at the University of Vermont, but left for Syracuse University to seriously pursue painting in 1989. After graduating from college in 1992, he moved to New York City to be closer to the arts scene.
His professional career started in 1993 with commissions to produce covers for the classic science fiction books The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain, and Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne. His commissions begin to grow including companies such as LucasArts, National Geographic, Microsoft, DC Comics, HarperCollins Publishers, Hasbro, Playboy, Penguin Books, Sony, Tor Books, The Franklin Mint, Milton-Bradley and Wizards of the Coast. His illustrations have won numerous awards, including six nominations for the Artist Hugo Award, eight Chesley Awards from the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists, and Gold and Silver Awards from Spectrum: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art. In addition, his work has been exhibited in dozens of shows at New York's Society of Illustrators and various galleries around the country. Donato appears as a guest lecturer at various colleges, institutions, Magic tournaments and science fiction conventions around the globe, where he interacts with fans, performs painting demonstrations and displays original artworks.
In his free time, he mostly works on non-commissioned pieces related to science and scientists of the past and present. When he's not painting, he likes to play soccer and Magic and other role-playing games with his friends. Donato currently resides with his wife and two daughters in Brooklyn, New York.
Jim Murray
Jim was born in England in 1972 and enjoyed drawing and painting from an early age. After attending a visual media college course in Bournemouth he began illustrating for the comics 2000AD and Judge Dredd Megazine, working on various stories with characters including Holocaust 12, Slaine and Judge Dredd. In 1998 he illustrated a fully painted Judge Dredd Batman crossover graphic novel called Die Laughing, and followed this with an Elseworlds book for DC Comics, Batman Demon published in 1999. Other work in this period notably included illustrational props and promotional pieces for the Channel 4 TV series Spaced and a 25 x 50 foot canvas backdrop for the Prodigy.
Since 2000 Jim has worked for various companies as a concept artist for videogames. He also freelances for Wizards of the Coast, Blizzard and Upperdeck, amongst other clients, producing illustrations for Magic: The Gathering cards and World of Warcraft TGC. In the last five years he has produced more than 80 card and packaging illustrations. His work can be seen most recently in Spectrum 14, World of Warcraft - the art of the TCG, Erotic Fantasy Art and the upcoming Fantasy Art Now - Volume 2. Jim currently works for Eidos-Montreal on Deus-Ex III.
Web: http://www.jimmurrayart.com
Ron Lemen
Ron Lemen is very dedicated artist and instructor who has worked in several different arenas of art, from representational and fine art to illustration and entertainment art. He worked as freelance artist and commissioned painter and has a strong and extensive background in art instruction as well. Currently his wife Vanessa and he are teaching a number of drawing and painting classes, both traditional and digital, and a certificate(graduating) program at Studio 2nd Street. He is also participating in various events and workshops. His goal is to provide a solid foundation in the fundamentals of art that gives way to an open-minded notion of the wonderfully broad spectrum that the world of art has to offer.
Web: http://studio2ndstreet.com
Blog:
ronlemen.blogspot.com
Ruan Jia
Ruan Jia was born in China in 1983. He completed his education in junior high school. He's a self-taught artist mastering digital painting, conceptual art and even 3d modeling. Currently Ruan working as digital artist in Chinese game developer NetDragon Websoft Inc, headquartered in Fuzhou, the capital city of Fujian Province, China.
Sergey Kondratovich
Sergey studied drawing and painting from the artist Tigran Manakyan from 1995 to 1997. The next six years, he has attended art and graphics department in the Kuban State University. From 2002 to 2004, he worked at a game studio X-Bow as conceptual artist and art director. Since 2005, Sergey keep working at Ino-co studio as Conceptual Artist and Art Director while doing some freelance work aside. He participated in such projects as Fantasy Wars, Star Wolves, Star Heritage, New Amazons, Majesty 2, THE PREHISTORIC HERO and DEM.
Steve Gordon
Steve Gordon has been working in the animation industry for over 30 years and have worked at almost every studio in one way or another. He was an animator, a layout artist, a storyboard artist, a character designer, a director and everything inbetween. His professional career began in 1977 when he was hired by Ralph Bakshi Productions to work on the feature film Lord of the Rings as a photo-rotoscoper drawing Orc eyes and teeth on Photostats. In 1983 he filled the role of Animation Director and Key Animator on the Bakshi / Frazetta feature Fire and Ice.
Later on Steve worked for a variety of studios free-lancing doing animation, storyboards and development for most of the major studios including Disney Pictures, Marvel, Hanna-Barbera, Warner Bros TV, Disney TV, DIC and Saban. His recent film credits include work on X-Men: Evolution (character design and direction), Shrek 2 (2004), Madagascar (2005) and Over the Hedge (2006) as a storyboard artist, director on the new series Wolverine and the X-Men and the direct-to DVD sequel to happily N'Ever After. Now he is working as story artist on several animated features, living in Southern California with his family and expects to work with a pencil in his hand until the day he drops.
Web: http://stevenegordon.com
Blog:
http://stevenegordon.blogspot.com
Steve Marino
Visual FX/Live Action Director
There's no Director out there quite like Steve Marino.
Directors with his extensive, diversified background in visual effects - digital stop-motion, FX and traditional animation -- aren't exactly hanging out on every corner. Couple that with Steve's genius 'outside the box' approach for marrying live action with visual effects and you got yourself something special. Steve doesn't just throw a bunch of CG stations at a job. He thrives on building upon clients' creative with unique ideas and solutions that add up to exciting, powerful advertising.
"I feel my versatility to move between the mediums of animation, practical/props and live action is rare. By getting involved in the early planning stages, I can provide the most original, efficient way of accomplishing spots that stand out." Steve Marino
Clients include: Absolut, Wheat Thins, Wishbone, Cheerios, Doritos, Ikea, Fruit of the Loom, 7-UP, Pizza Hut, Bell Atlantic, MTV, Fox, CNN, Sci-Fi Channel, Tawuniya, Beastie Boys, Bouncing Souls, Flogging Molly and Michael Jackson.
Steve can be reached at: steveandamym@optonline.net
Timur Mutsaev
Timur was born and raised in the city of Orel, graduated from the Orel Art School and later got his major in design at the Orel Art Colledge. Since 1997 concepts' drawn for Mercury 8 project, Timur has worked for many major Russian, Ukrainian and German based game developing studios on projects like Sanitary, Hired Team, Soldiers, Death Track: Resurrection, Crysis and many others. Timur currently works at Crytek, Germany as a Concept Artist.
Todd Lockwood
Todd Lockwood was born in Boulder, Colorado in 1957. He started drawing before he was two years old, and it was his main recreation in childhood. Todd received his education at The Art Institute of Colorado, in Denver, graduating in 1981 with the award for "portfolio par excellence", and went to work immediately in the design and advertising world.
In 1994, he attended Worldcon, his first science fiction convention, in Winnipeg, Manitoba. In 1996 he joined TSR, the publisher of the popular role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. In 1997, Wizards of the Coast acquired the TSR properties and moved Lockwood and his family to Washington state, where he continued to work on the D&D line and on Magic: The Gathering. In 1999, he helped to redefine the look of the Dungeons and Dragons game for the Third Edition release. In 2002, after Hasbro bought Wizards of the Coast, he returned to freelancing.
Todd is specializing in fantasy and science fiction illustration. Besides the work on the popular role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons and covers for the books of R.A. Salvatore, his art has also appeared in books from Tor Books, DAW, and on magazine covers, including Asimov's Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, Dragon Magazine and Dungeon Magazine.
Web: http://www.toddlockwood.com
Vincent Dutrait
Vincent Dutrait is a French illustrator born in 1976 in Provence. He has been studying illustration and graphics design in Ecole Emile Cohl from 1994 to 1997, where he later on taught between 1999 and 2003. After graduation he has worked as independent children book illustrator while doing illustrations for various fantasy, adventure and science fiction publishes including J'aiLuSF (les Chroniques de Krondor), Paizo (Dragon Magazine and Dungeons & Dragons), Fanpro (L'?il Noir), Green Ronin (Warhammer RPG) etc.
Best known for his prolific work in the role playing industry, he has also produced a huge amount of various illustrations, artbooks and comics for both European and Asian clients. His book illustrations are also featured in classic titles like The Knights of the Round Table, Robinson Caruso, Treasure Island, Alexander the Great, and The Count of Monte Cristo. Now he is living in North of Seoul, South Korea.
Web: http://www.vincentdutrait.com
3D Image Category (in alphabetical order):
Alessandro Baldasseroni
Alessandro Baldasseroni was born in 1973 in Milan, Italy. He always enjoyed drawing as a child and his first experiments in CG were with an Amiga 500. After a computer science diploma in 1989, he has started working as a CAD operator in a telecommunications company. Meanwhile he self-taught the fundamentals of 3D graphics and began to experiment with 3D Studio Max. The results were encouraging, so Alessandro was later hired by a local Italian videogame company in 2001 as generalist.
Later on, he began freelancing for various well-known and respected studios, from Flagship Studios, to Massive Black to Blur Studio. In 2007 he has joined Blur Studio full time, specializing in character modeling and texturing. In his spare time, Alessandro still loves to make digital illustrations and his artworks have been featured as covers and articles in several international 3D magazines and artbooks.
Web: http://www.eklettica.com
CGPortfolio:
http://baldasseroni.cgsociety.org
David Giraud
Born in Paris France in 1975, David spent the last 10 years working in the video game industry. He originally began as a traditional artist before specializing in computer graphics. He worked at various positions from concept artist to level artist to animator and finally became a character artist. The first big project he worked on at Ubisoft was the original Splinter Cell, then Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time videogames. Later he moved to Denmark to work on Hitman Contracts and became lead on Hitman blood money from Eidos.
He's been back at Ubisoft Montreal for the last two years and just finished working on Assassin's creed as a senior character artist. David's focus is on High-Res and Low-Res characters including modeling, texturing, shaders, lights and posing, he is also involved in other areas of expertise from cinematic characters to marketing images and recently 3d printing.
DeviantART Portfolio: http://mojette.deviantart.com
Eric Hanson
Eric Hanson is a visual effects designer specializing in the creation of digital environments and effects for feature films. Having worked with leading effects houses such as Digital Domain, Sony Imageworks, Dream Quest Images, and Walt Disney Feature Animation, his work can be seen in The Day After Tomorrow, Cast Away, Hollow Man, Mission to Mars, Bicentennial Man, Atlantis, Fantasia 2000 and The Fifth Element, as well as many special-venue films. Eric specializes in 3D work with Maya, Renderman and Shake and is also an active instructor, leading courses on effects techniques at Gnomon School of VFX and the USC School of Cinema/TV. He has spoken and held workshops at many conventions and universities. Eric is a member of the Visual Effects Society and attended the University of Texas at Austin. He recently published the second edition of his book on Maya techniques for Peachpit Press entitled, Maya 6 Killer Tips. He wishes he could sleep more.
Web: http://www.visuraimaging.com
Francisco Cortina
Francisco's digital career began soon after earning his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the Maryland Institute of Art. He got his start working at Johns Hopkins University's Madlab as a medical animator. In 1996 he joined the Japanese video game giant, Square USA, where he worked on several game titles including Parasite Eve and Final Fantasy IX, the animated feature film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and the animated short Animatrix: Final Flight of the Osiris.
From 2002-2005 he was at both Dreamworks Animation and Digital Domain, working on several feature films including Sharktale, Aeon Flux and My Super Ex-Girlfriend. He recently finished working on-site at Digital Domain as the Modeling supervisor for Mummy 3: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.
In 2005 he founded his company Cortina Digital that provides film-quality 3D character development, consulting and licensing to companies in the Games, Film and Medical industries.
Web: http://www.cortinadigital.com
Jinwoo Lee
After working as an industrial designer for LG Electronics in Korea, Jinwoo moved to US and studied 3D modeling at the Academy of Art University and got his master degree. After graduation he was hired by PDI Dreamworks as a 3D modeler. In PDI Dreamworks he worked on projects like Shrek the Third (2007), Bee Movie (2007), Madagascar 2 (2008) and animated TV special feature Shrek the Halls (2007).
Currently Jinwoo is a facial modeler at Weta Digital, New Zealand working on James Cameron's Avatar (2009) project.
Web: http://www.3dmodeler.wo.to
CGPortfolio:
http://jjcoolio.cgsociety.org
Richard Wright
Richard studied Graphic Design in college and first started at Games Workshop working on White Dwarf magazine, doing various layouts. After 4 years, Richard left the design job to work as a freelancer, painting figures and dabbling in illustration. A few years later he went back to Games Workshop as an illustrator, working on floorplans for games and cardboard model kits etc. as well as painting box art for all of their miniatures and kits.
Three years later Richard landed a job at a computer game company called Particle Systems doing hi-def models, 3D FMV sequences and some concept work for I-WAR, and then for Powerdrome. Later he setup ARK VFX with Steve Tappin, Greg Staples and Andy Turner, creating Music Videos, TV Commercials and Game FMV. He's still doing a bit of everything from concepts, production paintings, modeling and animating to rendering and compositing at ARK VFX. In his spare time he works on illustrations for Wizards of the Coast, Blizzard and Rackham.
Web: http://ark-vfx.cgsociety.org
CGPortfolio:
http://www.arkvfx.net
Steve Jubinville
Born in 1981, Steve was graduated from the NAD Centre and started his career at Skuad studios, then at CAE Electronics and later at Ubisoft where he worked in the Cut-scene Department as a character artist. His talent and sense of great detail has brought him to model the main characters of the company's licences such as Prince of Persia: Warrior Within (2004), Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones (2005), Rainbow Six: Lockdown (2005), Far Cry Instincts (2005) and Assassin's Creed (2007). His film credits also include work as digital sculptor on 300 (2006), Dinosaurs Alive (2007), Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure (2007), Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008) and more.
Currently he is working at Hybride Technologie in Montreal, Canada as Senior Digital Sculptor. He also teaches at the NAD Centre the Organic Modeling class and ZBrush for professionals since 2004.
Web: http://www.sjdigitalsculptor.com
Sze Jones
Sze Jones is originally from Hong Kong. At the age of 16, she left it to study abroad and completed a visual communications program at Northern Lights College in British Columbia, Canada. In 1993, she transferred to a 2 years college and majored in Graphic Design at Morris County College in United States. In 1997, she graduated from William Paterson University with a Masters of Art in Computer Animation. She was also attending art classes at Joe Kubert Art Center and comic art seminars at a school of Visual Arts.
Right after graduation, Sze got her first job as a character modeler at a local game company Hypnotix. Year later she was working as a character modeler at 3D online content creation company Viewpoint Corporation. And for the past 6 years she has been making female characters for Blur Studio's game cinematics filling the role of Character Modeling Supervisor. She has created such cg characters as Kitty Hunting for XSI|Face Robot, Rayne for Blood Rayne2, Keaira for Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, Tyris for Golden Axe: Beast Rider and recently Dark Elf Sorceress for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.
Web: http://www.szejones.com
CGPortfolio:
http://szejones.cgsociety.org
Valery Plaksin
Valery has come to computer graphics in 1994 and started a career in advertising, television and printing industry. He worked as freelancer for various studios doing high-poly and low-poly 3d models of vehicles, characters, environments as well as painting textures. Now Valery is working in the large industrial company on branding and package design while running his own interior design studio. He is also collaborating with several local videogame developers. In his free time he enjoys working on personal 2D/3D projects.
CGPortfolio: http://pichunter.cgsociety.org