Academy of Art University Student Wins Top Rookies Honors

Who hasn’t imagined other worlds filled with unique challenges and strange people? Modern movies and digital games spur our imagination to create otherworldly creatures and beings in faraway exotic places of which we can only dream. But dreams can become reality, and in the case of Academy of Art University student Hyun Lee, our dreams become reality by our own hand.

Lee is the recent winner of a contest for amateur Visual Development / Concept Art / Illustration developers sponsored by the Rookies website and community. The Rookies “is a platform to help digital artists get discovered without having to compete with professionals for attention.” Founded in 2009 by Andrew McDonald (CG supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic) and Alwyn Hunt (credits include the Harry Potter films, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, plus his work for Sony Imageworks and Weta Digital), the visual effects artists wanted to give students a global platform to launch their careers.

The Rookies annual awards celebrate young creatives exhibiting excellence in film, animation, games, virtual reality, motion graphics, and architecture visualization. Sponsored by Autodesk, Rookies winners can win an array of prizes, including gadgets, software and hardware and media.

In 2018, Ligang Zheng, another student at the Academy of Art University, won “Rookie of the Year” in the Digital Illustration bracket.

Concept Art & Illustration Rookie Award

Concept art renderings and Illustrations are created for motion pictures, digital games, storyboards, theme parks, advertising, and even fan-art purposes. So, this is a highly-competitive career niche to choose, and entrants into this Rookie Award contest could choose from a wide range of work, including matte painting, digital painting, character and environment design. Judges were looking past finished products to discover the process each artist took to reach their final deliverables. If an entrant was able to discuss how they overcame challenges to the work that was presented, judges took note.

Hyun Lee captured the Rookie Award for Visual Development / Concept Art / Illustration by creating a complete set of visual development for a dark fantasy game entitled “Fallen Garden.” In Lee’s game, “The protagonist ‘Free will’ is a humanoid created by father of sins. She has to choose goodness or evilness. Based on her choice, she becomes a savior or destroyer. The mysterious boy ‘Hope’ could be a motivation helping Free will choose goodness.”

Preparing for an Exciting Future

Hyun Lee shared, “I want to work at game companies. After that I wanna be an art instructor in university. Since I was in high school, I was interested in game industry especially, concept art.”

Lee will graduate with his degree from Academy of Art University in 2019. As his contest work shows, he is fully prepared for a career in his chosen field of pursuit. In fact, the opportunity to showcase his work and win top honors will help Lee with pitching his talents to prospective employers. By clicking a link, they can inspect the different aspects, characters, and settings of his work, and witness firsthand his talent and skill.

Academy of Art University in San Francisco, CA, has been equipping creatives to pursue exciting futures in the arts since 1929. They offer various degrees in Animation & Visual Effects, Game Development, Graphic Design, Illustration, and Visual Development. A degree in any of these top-tier programs prepares a student for an exhilarating career in gaming, illustration, motion pictures, graphic design, and other important fields.

In each degree program at The Academy, instructors are active creatives, currently working and contributing to major projects in their chosen field. These leaders are able to guide and teach students from their own up-to-date experience and provide industry insider connections when students graduate and are ready to pursue a career. Plus, all equipment and learning environments are state-of-the-art, featuring only the most modern technology.

Academy graduates regularly find employment with such notable companies as Pixar Studios, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Blizzard Entertainment, Cartoon Network, Marvel, Random House, The New York Times, Crystal Dynamics, Sledgehammer Games, ArenaNet, Nickelodeon Animation Studio, and DreamWorks Animation SKG.

Academy of Art University is able to connect students with a number of grant and scholarship opportunities to assist with tuition, housing, lab costs, and more. Different aid programs offer different benefits.