Art: Dragon Rock, Maciej Drabik.

ArtStation’s tenth Community Challenge, Dragon’s Rise: The Forgotten Realms, launched in July 2022 with more industry-based challenge hosts, new VFX categories and a completely redesigned challenge platform with new feedback features. Like all our community challenges, the submission process was entirely open, and close to 6,600 artists took up the challenge to imagine the Dragon Age. Submissions across all categories approached the levels of quality you’d expect in game or film projects, with hosts and fellow entrants providing the encouragement and feedback to push artists to create their best work.

An all-star judging panel took on the difficult task to sort through the very strong entries in all categories. Huge thanks to: Yekaterina Bourykina (Riot Games), David Nakabayashi (Industrial Light & Magic), Virginie Bourdin (Art of Direction), Devon Fay (Riot Games), Sandra Duchiewicz (Freelance), Conar Cross (Playground Games), Tyler Smith (Probably Monsters), Finnian MacManus (Terraform Studios), Greg Rutkowski (Freelance), David Shovlin (Riot Games), Sjors de Laat (Tuatara Games), Grace Liu (Monomi Park) and our amazing challenge hosts Bogna Gawrońska (CD PROJEKT RED), Rembert Montald (Riot Games), Suzanne Helmigh (Ghostfire Gaming), Thomas Chamberlain-Keen (Playground Games), Randall Mackey (Freelance), Marina Ortega (Freelance), Elodie Mondoloni (Freelance), Gavin Goulden (Insomniac Games), Karen Stanley (PlayStation Visual Arts), Javier Perez (PlayStation Visual Arts), Dorine Laplanche (Cyanide), and new hosts Jason Keyser (VFX Apprentice), Kees Klop (VFX Apprentice) and Dmitry Parkin (Cold Symmetry).

The challenge winners each receive a virtual ArtStation Challenge trophy, designed with meticulous attention to detail by industrial designer Ivan Šantić (check out the process of designing the Awards).

We’re very pleased to present to you the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners in each of the categories along with the Honourable Mentions. 80 amazing artists received awards in the Dragon’s Rise: The Forgotten Realms challenge! Congratulations to everyone who entered!

VIZ DEV

Dragon’s Rise: The Forgotten Realms – Keyframe Design

Dragon’s Rise: The Forgotten Realms – Character Design

Dragon’s Rise: The Forgotten Realms – Environment Design

Dragon’s Rise: The Forgotten Realms – Prop Design

Dragon’s Rise: The Forgotten Realms – VFX Art

PRODUCTION

Dragon’s Rise: The Forgotten Realms – Game Character (real-time)

Dragon’s Rise: The Forgotten Realms – Film/VFX Character (rendered)

Dragon’s Rise: The Forgotten Realms – Game Environment Art (real-time)

Dragon’s Rise: The Forgotten Realms – Prop Art (rendered)

Dragon’s Rise: The Forgotten Realms – VFX Art (real-time)

Check out the submissions!

You can see all of the entries for the Dragon’s Rise: The Forgotten Realms Challenge here:

• Keyframe Concept Art
• Character Design
• Environment Design
• Prop Design
• VFX Art
• Game Character Art (real-time)
• Game Environment Art (real-time)
• Film/VFX Character Art (rendered)
• Prop Art (rendered)
• VFX Art (real-time)

Huge thanks to Maciej Drabik for his Dragon Rock challenge banner.