Rookie Awards 2023 - Starts in 30 Days

The Rookie Awards 2023 kicks off in 30 days, so it's the perfect time to get your students ready.

Andrew McDonald

Feb 6, 2023 • 5 min read

The Rookie Awards 2023 kicks off in 30 days, so it's the perfect time to get your students ready. For those of you new to this, the Awards is an annual contest open to young creatives in film, animation, games, virtual reality, motion graphics and 3d visualisation. Entrants can win weekly prizes and studio internships by simply sharing their best creative media work.

Who can enter the Rookie Awards?

The Rookie Awards is open to all aspiring young artists. This includes your students and recent alumni.

Please note that they are not eligible to enter if they have more than 12 months professional experience in any related field.

Why should your students enter?

The real question here is, why are your students not entering the Rookie Awards? Not only is this one of the biggest opportunities to help launch their students careers, it's also a chance for your school to rank in our Rookies World School Rankings®

The Rookies has been rankings creative media and entertainment schools since 2009 with a simple goal of helping aspiring artists find trusted schools to help them forge successful careers in games, visual effects, animation, arch viz and other creative fields.

With this simple goal, the Rookies World School Rankings® has become a trusted and industry respected system for showcasing the very best education facilities available to students today.

What sets us apart from other school and college rankings systems is that our rankings are based on the quality and performance of student work that is completed at school. To collect this data, each year we ask students to submit their best work to the Rookie Awards to be reviewed by our industry panel.

Prizes to help build confidence

We don't just give prizes to the best students. Every single entrant has a chance to win prizes in the Rookie Awards, this includes our very popular Creative Media Starter Kit prize jammed packed with hardware, software and training.

The goal of this incredible prize is to encourage your students to share their work, even if they don't think they can win a category prize. We understand that not everyone is ready for a job, and we want to make sure everyone has an incentive to share their work online - no matter what level it is.

We all know that students struggle with sharing work publicly, but it's a major part of improving their skills and growing confidence, so hopefully this epic prize will motivate them to get involved.

As always, we have far too many prizes to mention, so please use the link below to visit the contest prize page and check out what is on offer by our incredible sponsors.

View all Prizes

Helping students network with Industry Pros

The Rookie Awards is lucky to be supported by more than 150 high profile industry professionals. They all dedicate their time to help review and nominate their favourite entries.

Over the years, we've had countless students be head-hunted by our judging panel and been directly introduced to the recruitment teams.

Students also have access to their LinkedIn profiles and can talk directly with judges on our Discord channel which provides a common ground to network and make friends.

If your students are struggling to grow their network, this is their chance to start meeting industry professionals and other artists that they will work with during their careers.

Important Dates

Please refer to the following dates to make sure you don't miss out on this great opportunity.

March 7, 2022: Open for Entries
Eligible entrants are asked to create an entry page and upload their best work for the judges to review.

June 1, 2022: Closed for Entries
No extensions are ever allowed. This is a solid date, just like a production deadline. Don’t miss it!

July 9th, 2022: Finalists Announced
Our Judging panel reviews every entry, awarding them an industry ranking and selecting top people per category.

July 27th, 2022: Winners Announced
All judging completed and winners of jobs, internships, scholarships and People’s Choice are announced.

Contest Groups & Categories

Depending on your students career aspirations, they can enter a bunch of different categories into the following groups. The goal is to get them to choose the ones that best match their skills, and the industry they want to work in.

Rookie of the Year

Categories open to individual artists to showcase their skills.
2D Animation, 3D Animation, Visual Effects, Concept Art, Game Development, Immersive Media, Motion Graphics, Product Design, Architectural Visualisation, Virtual Fashion

Film of the Year

Categories open to individual artists and teams to show their films.
2D Animation, 3D Animation, Visual Effects.

Game of the Year

Categories open to individual artists and teams to show their games.
Immersive Media, Mobile, PC & Console

Career Opportunities

This category is open to individuals looking to launch their careers right now. Opportunities from studio internship, professional mentoring and more.

Specialty

Additional categories open to younger audience and schools.
Young Guns, School of the Year

*Schools don't actually enter, winners of this category are calculated based on the performance of entries submitted to Rookie of the Year Categories.

Join our Webinar Information Sessions

Thinking about getting your students involved? Good to hear. To help bring you up to speed we are running regular webinar information sessions that you can attend.

Alwyn Hunt will cover what the judges are looking for in an entry and run through how to create an entry. Why you should enter, even if you think you're not going to win. All the benefits of entering and recent success stories.

There will be a Q&A session at the end so come prepared with your questions.

Select Webinar Session

Tips & Advice

Students should create an entry page that shows off all their best work for the selected category. They should treat it similar to how they would apply for a job.
Make sure your students explain how they created their projects by including extra images, video, and text to help.
Get your students to watch our introduction video to make sure they create the best entry possible.
Review entries from last year and use them as inspiration.
Read our F.A.Q article to clear up any common confusion.
Suggest they ask questions on our Discord Channel and network with pros and entrants.
Follow us @therookiesco
Stay updated with #rookieawards2022.