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The Atomhawk
Art Competition! Test your craft
and the bounds
of your ideas.

COMPETITION CLOSED: SEE THIS YEAR’S WINNERS!

“The world to me was a secret, which I desired to discover; to her it was a vacancy, which she sought to people with imaginations of her own.”
– Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

It’s that time of year again! We’re proud to launch the 6th Annual Atomhawk Art Competition, inviting you to show us your storytelling ability with a piece of art! You will design a character, environment or key moment inspired by the concept: Forgotten Creation. The final artwork will the best single image with a mixture of storytelling, creativity and technical skill. The winners will take us on a creative journey.

We’re hiring! Check out our vacancies in Vancouver and Gateshead, UK on our brand new careers page.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

Strong composition, rendering, lighting and attention to detail are crucial components to an entry’s success. The competition will be judged by a panel of senior members of the Atomhawk creative team and guest judges, Glenn Brace and Ben Blethyn from nDreams Elevation.

➡ COMPETITION CLOSED: SEE THIS YEAR’S WINNERS! ⬅

Submission Deadline: August 7th 2022
Winners Announced: August 23rd 2022

THE PRIZES

This year the competition will have six winners. There will be a guaranteed winner from each category (character, environment and key moment), as well as an overall grand prize winner.

The Hawks’ Choice Award will be decided by the entire Atomhawk team, who will pick their favourite piece from the full list of submissions. Unlike the other prizes, the Hawks’ Choice Award will be judged more on storytelling and the interpretation of the competition concept, with less of a focus on technical skill.

RISING STAR MENTORSHIP

The Rising Star Mentorship is returning for a second year! Aimed at upcoming talents, the mentorship is designed to enable one artist to hone their skills under the watchful eye of an industry professional. Everyone is welcome to nominate themselves for the Rising Star Mentorship during the submission form process.

The winner will receive four 1-on-1 sessions with a Senior Atomhawk artist. The session structure takes inspiration from Atomhawk’s internship Awesome Image project, which you can learn more about here.

Prizes

GRAND WINNER

  • XBOX Series S (thanks to Sumo Digital)
  • Choice of Portfolio Review or Paintover by Atomhawk Lead Artist
  • £100 3dtotal store voucher (thanks to 3dtotal)
  • $100 store discount (thanks to Proko)
  • $100 Photobash.co store voucher (thanks to Photobash)
  • 1 Year ArtStation Pro (thanks to ArtStation)
  • Art of Atomhawk, Volume 3 book & Atomhawk Goodie Bag

3 CATEGORY WINNERS (1 x Character, Environment & Key Moment)

  • Choice of Portfolio Review or Paintover by Atomhawk Senior Artist
  • £50 3dtotal store voucher (thanks to 3dtotal)
  • $50 Proko store discount (thanks to Proko)
  • $50 Photobash.co store voucher (thanks to Photobash)
  • 1 Year ArtStation Pro (thanks to ArtStation)
  • Art of Atomhawk, Volume 3 book & Atomhawk Goodie Bag

RISING STAR MENTORSHIP

Our judges panel will choose one promising artist to receive an exclusive mentorship with a Senior Atomhawk Artist. The mentorship will include 4 x 1 hour Zoom sessions to help you create an awesome image and level up your skills.

  • 4 x 1 hour mentorship sessions with Senior Atomhawk Artist
  • Wacom Cintiq 22 (thanks to Wacom and Escape Technology)
  • £50 3dtotal store voucher (thanks to 3dtotal)
  • $50 Proko store discount (thanks to Proko)
  • 1 Year ArtStation Pro (thanks to ArtStation)
  • Art of Atomhawk, Volume 3 book & Atomhawk Goodie Bag

HAWK’S CHOICE AWARD (as voted on by Atomhawk artists)

  • Choice of Portfolio Review or Paintover by an Atomhawk Senior Artist
  • 1 Year ArtStation Pro (thanks to ArtStation)
  • Art of Atomhawk, Volume 3 book

Community Engagement

We love to see how your work is progressing throughout the course of the competition so please share your sketches, silhouettes and sources of inspiration using #atomhawkcreation on Instagram, ArtStation and Twitter.

If you would like to incorporate the Forgotten Creation logo as a watermark, download it here.

Remember to check the hashtag yourself send encouragement to your fellow artists!

Tips for Success

“Focus on storytelling and creating a scene, or character, that really is the result of iteration and exploration. It’s important to create a background to your story as well so that the world it’s set in is rich with details that push the narrative.” – Leonardo Ambrosini, 2021 Rising Star Mentorship Winner

“Focus on what you’re good at — don’t submit an environment if you’re a character artist!”

“Let your individual style shine through, don’t feel like you need to edit your style by what you think the judges want to see.”

“Don’t forget your fundamentals! In your WIP image, show us that you understand why you made visual decisions you did in your artwork. Include things like your research, vanishing points, pose practice, 3D blocking; we want to see it!”

Submissions

➡ COMPETITION CLOSED: SEE THIS YEAR’S WINNERS! ⬅

Submissions Open:
July 7th 2022

Submission Deadline:
August 7th 2022 23:59 AoE (Anywhere on Earth)

Winners Announced:
August 23rd 2022

To submit your entry you will need to prepare:

  • One high resolution image of your final artwork (character, environment or key moment) – JPG preferred, 4MB max
  • One image of work-in-progress artwork to show the development of your entry including thumbnails and progress shots – JPG preferred, 4MB max

Submission Examples

Our Amazing Sponsors

We want to extend a huge thank you to our sponsors, who have kindly provided us with an amazing selection of prizes for this year’s competition.

WACOM is the global leader in the pen display and tablet market for creative users. As a technology company, they provide cutting-edge digital ink solutions for a wide range of partners using and producing smartphones, tablets and digital stationery.

ESCAPE TECHNOLOGY is a reseller and technical support company based in the UK and Germany. For over ten years they’ve been working with computer graphics artists and studios to bring them the best hardware, software, and infrastructure to deliver their work.

SUMO DIGITAL was founded in 2003 and is an award-winning video game developer which employs over 600 staff across its seven studios in the UK and India. They make games for the world’s leading publishers, including Microsoft, Sony, Sega and Apple.

3DTOTAL had humble beginnings, starting out as a resource website. The site has evolved into a comprehensive platform for online artists, offering a variety of free tutorials, informative interviews, and an inspirational gallery. Learn from fellow artists, create your own masterpieces, and share them with the art community.

PROKO is a hub for artists to improve their skills and connect with a community of like minded peers and talented mentors. They also help produce and monetize instructional videos for artists that want to start teaching online.

We would also like to thank Photobash and ArtStation and for their support of the 2022 Atomhawk Art Competition.

RULES AND TERMS OF ENTRY

TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF ENTRY TO THE ATOMHAWK ART COMPETITION

This competition is operated by Atomhawk Design Ltd, a private limited company incorporated in England and Wales with company number 06968171 and registered office address Unit 32 Jessops Riverside, Brightside Lane, Sheffield, England, S9 2RX.

1. How to participate
a. In order to enter this competition, please use the Submission Form (hosted by Typeform) available through the Atomhawk website.
b. b. All entries must include your name and email address. Postal addresses (including postcode), and telephone numbers will be collected from the winners via email. Please see our privacy policy at https://atomhawk.com/privacy-policy for confirmation of how we will treat your personal information. In addition, we may also share your personal information internally with our recruitment team, to notify you of the timings of next years Atomhawk art competition and to allow the sponsors to send to the winners their prizes. The winners full name with their winning submission will be published on this webpage (https://atomhawk.com/resources/art-competition-2022-winners/) for three years. If you do not want your name included on the list of winners or object to your personal information being used for any of the purposes stated above or in the Atomhawk privacy policy, you must notify Atomhawk a reasonable period of time before the closing date of the competition.
c. Entries that do not comply with these terms and conditions will be disqualified and will not be entered into this competition.
d. Entry is free and the competition is open to everyone of all skill levels in all locations.
e. You may only submit one entry to this competition. Any additional entries will be void and will not be entered into this competition.
f. The competition is open to individuals (not groups) and, by submitting an entry, you are confirming that the entry is your own, original work and created entirely by you alone.

2. Deadline
Entries may not be submitted before 11:59pm on 6th July 2022 AoE (Anywhere on Earth).
The deadline for submissions is 11:59pm on 7th August 2022 AoE (Anywhere on Earth). Entries received by Atomhawk after this time will be void and will not be entered into this competition.

3. Winners announcement
Winners will be announced and posted on this webpage on the 23rd August 2022 at 10am BST. If you are a winner, you will also receive a confirmation email. You can review our previous years’ winner announcements here: 2021, 2020, 2019.
There will be six winners in total, across a number of categories.

4. Prize
The prizes are as follows:

1 x GRAND WINNER PRIZE:

  • XBOX Series S (thanks to Sumo Digital)
  • Choice of Portfolio Review or Paintover by Atomhawk Lead Artist
  • £100 3dtotal store voucher (thanks to 3dtotal)
  • $100 Proko store discount (thanks to Proko)
  • 1 Year ArtStation Pro subscription (thanks to ArtStation)
  • $100 Photobash.co store voucher (thanks to Photobash)
  • Art of Atomhawk Volume 3 book, & Atomhawk Goodie Bag

CATEGORY WINNERS (1 x Character winner, 1 x Environment winner & 1 x Key Moment winner)

  • Choice of Portfolio Review or Paintover by Atomhawk Senior Artist
  • £50 3dtotal store voucher (thanks to 3dtotal)
  • $50 Proko store discount (thanks to Proko)
  • 1 Year ArtStation Pro subscription (thanks to ArtStation)
  • $50 Photobash.co store voucher (thanks to Photobash)
  • Art of Atomhawk Volume 3 book & Atomhawk Goodie Bag

1 x RISING STAR MENTORSHIP WINNER – please see section 9 below for further details on this prize

  • 4 x 1 hour mentorship sessions with Senior Atomhawk Artist
  • Wacom Cintiq 22 (thanks to Wacom and Escape Technology)
  • £50 3dtotal store voucher (thanks to 3dtotal)
  • $50 Proko store discount (thanks to Proko)
  • 1 Year ArtStation Pro (thanks to ArtStation)
  • Art of Atomhawk Volume 3 book & Atomhawk Goodie Bag

1 x HAWK’S CHOICE (as voted on by Atomhawk artists)

  • Choice of Portfolio Review or Paintover by an Atomhawk Senior Artist
  • 1 Year ArtStation Pro subscription (thanks to ArtStation)
  • Art of Atomhawk Volume 3 book

There are no alternative prizes and the winner will receive their prizes on or before September 30th 2022.

5. Tools
Entries submitted must be predominantly 2D and 3D images. Software can be used to support the artwork process when creating your entry.

6. Original work
Entries must be entirely original, created solely by you and not be based on any intellectual property that does not either belong solely to you or for which you have a suitable licence to use for these purposes.

7. Judging
Entries will be assessed by a panel of senior members of the Atomhawk team and an independent judge and their group judgement will be final. The name of the judges are available on request.

8. Shipping
Our competition sponsors will deliver prizes directly to the winners, usually within 30 days of the closing date for the competition. Atomhawk are not responsible for any customs charges or import taxes arising from shipping of the winners’ prizes, which will be payable by the recipient.

9. Rising star mentorship
Based on the winner of this prize’s specialty (to be discussed with the winner), a Senior Atomhawk artist will be assigned to the winner as a mentor and will provide four, one hour mentoring sessions, to be arranged with the mentor. An intermediary at Atomhawk will assist in organising the date and times for each meeting, which will take place on Zoom and the mentee must make every effort to attend. 24 hours’ notice is required if the mentee cannot attend otherwise the session will be lost. Due to the short time of the meetings, the mentor will assign homework between each meeting which the mentee should make every effort to complete in order to get the most out of the mentoring.

10. Terms of publicity
The entrant grants Atomhawk and the competition’s sponsors rights to use all entered materials in any media for sales, marketing and merchandising material provided full and correct credit for the entrant clearly appears within the said materials.
Entrants retain copyright of all entered materials and are free to use said materials for personal promotion.
Entrants are encouraged to share their entry progress in social media networks throughout the competition with the #atomhawkcreation hashtag.

11. Disqualification
Any image that is deemed to contain content that is considered inflammatory or inappropriate will be disqualified, this includes material that is racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic and/or ableist. Interpretation of what is, and is not, appropriate material is at the sole discretion of Atomhawk.

12. General
While nothing in these terms and conditions will limit Atomhawk’s liability for death or personal injury caused by its negligence or for fraud, Atomhawk will not be legally responsible to entrants or winners for any losses that were not foreseeable to Atomhawk or to the entrant at the time of entry to the competition or which are caused by a third party.
The laws of England and Wales apply to these terms and conditions, although if you are resident elsewhere you will retain the benefit of any mandatory protections given to you by the laws of that country.
Any disputes will be subject to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.

Past Winners

Last year’s theme was ‘The Return’, which saw over 360 submissions from around the world, with six Atomhawk judges crowning Kat Talar as the grand winner for her mysterious and touching forest homecoming design. Check out some of the winners over the years below, or read our archive of winners announcements, all the way back to the first competition in 2017!

The Return, 2021 – Kat Talar

The Adventure Begins, 2020 – Baptiste Boutié

Solarpunk, 2019 – Jessica Woulfe

Into the Void, 2018 – Morten Solgaard Pederson 

Victory Day, 2017 – Liam Reagan (Key Moment) and Marby Kwong (Character)

"The competition keeps getting better each year. Love the option of Rising Star mentorship and the prizes are getting better as well. Thank you for doing this competition which allows artists to progress and build community."

The Return Participant

"It's great that the concept invites so many different interpretations, it's so inspiring to see what others create. Thank you, I really enjoyed participating!"

The Adventure Begins Participant

"I followed your competitions since two years now, and found themes and ambiance really great. It's a great pre-summer challenge with a good mood between artists."

The Return Participant

"I love your engagement with the participants on Twitter and the precise guidelines you provided, as well as the examples you shared, it really helped me when doing my piece."

The Adventure Begins Participant
LET’S MAKE THE
UNBELIEVABLE, BELIEVABLE