Medieval: Back and Forth Community Challenge

By Daniel Wade - March 7, 2023

ArtStation Community Challenges help you to improve your skills, connect with and learn from fellow artists, create new material for your portfolio and show the ArtStation Community what you’re capable of. We hope you’re ready because an exciting new ArtStation Community Challenge begins now.

The theme of the eleventh ArtStation Community Challenge is Medieval: Back and Forth. We’re challenging artists to not only imagine the middle ages, but to see it as a destination for modern travellers. A place where old meets the new. A collab with our ancestors. How would fashion, customs, architecture and transport look if we could visit our ancestors or they could visit us?

Join the Challenge

What we’re looking for is your ability to breathe life into medieval characters and locations and see life through their eyes as they encounter a magical new world.

The Challenge starts with five Concept Art categories (Keyframe Design, Character Design, Environment Design, Prop Design and VFX Design) running for four weeks. We will then open up five Production categories (Game Character Art, Game Environment/Level Art, Film/VFX Character Art, Prop Art and Game VFX Art) which will start on Monday 10th April, 2023.

Enter Phase 1

You can now register for the Concept art categories and begin the challenge.

Learning from the best

ArtStation Learning is a free learning resource with amazing videos from industry artists on many aspects of creativity and production. We’ve highlighted videos for each category of the challenge to get you started which you can find on ArtStation Learning.

A new feedback system

An important part of ArtStation Challenges is posting WIPs so that the judges, hosts and recruiters can follow your process can give you feedback along the way. To streamline the process we’ve added a new Feedback Request feature to the challenge platform so that you can request feedback when you need it. Every artist will receive three (3) feedback requests per submission.

Deliverables

Each challenge category has its own set of requirements, so we’ve improved the way deliverables are managed to reduce the chance of incomplete entries which don’t get judged.

Challenge Hosts

In order to help you push your submission to the next level, each category has hosts to give constructive feedback on your submissions and general tips along the way. As always, we have a talented team of working artists to share their knowledge:

Bogna Gawrońska (CD PROJEKT RED): Keyframe Design
Rembert Montald (Riot Games): Keyframe Design
Suzanne Helmigh (Ghostfire Gaming): Character Design
Jeanne Plounevez (Amplitude Studios): Character Design
Randall Mackey (Freelance): Environment Design
Marina Ortega (Freelance): Prop Design
Elodie Mondoloni (Umeshu Lovers): Prop Design
Jason Keyser (VFX Apprentice): VFX Design
Kees Klop (VFX Apprentice): VFX Design

Challenge Judges

The judging panel for the Medieval: Back and Forth Challenge is fantastic!

Share your Progress

The official challenge hashtag is #ArtStationMedievalChallenge. Share your progress with us and others using the hashtag when you post updates on your other social media.

Deadlines

The concept art challenges begin on Monday 13th March 2023 and close on Monday 10th April 2023. The production challenges will begin on Monday 10th April 2023 and the entry deadlines will be Monday 29th May 2023. The deadline to register for the production challenges is Monday 22nd May 2023.

Eligibility

We’re happy to welcome Quebec residents to ArtStation Community Challenges. A number of countries have competition/contest legislation that makes it impractical to run our contest in its current form (Italy, Brazil). We’ll continue to investigate solutions for future challenges, but right now it’s not possible to include these locations.

Good luck!

Finally, huge thanks go to Pierre Deschamps for his inspirational Lancore and Chroma line series for the main challenge banner artwork.