Neo Tokyo: Exponential Reality Community Challenge

Art: Koi in Starry Night, Donglu Yu

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 twelfth ArtStation Community Challenge is Neo Tokyo: Exponential Reality. We’re challenging artists to imagine the future of humanity in the megatropolis of Neo Tokyo. A place where humanity and technology meld into new realities. How would fashion, customs, architecture and transport look when humanity gets an upgrade?

Join the Challenge

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 4th September, 2023.

Enter Phase 1

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

• Keyframe Design
• Character Design
• Environment Design
• Prop Design
• VFX Design

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.

• ArtStation Learning: Keyframe Design
• ArtStation Learning: Character Design
• ArtStation Learning: Environment Design
• ArtStation Learning: Prop Design
• YouTube (VFX Apprentice): VFX Design

Challenge 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 (Lightspeed LA): Keyframe Design
• Sang Nguyen (Freelance): Character Design
• Jeanne Plounevez (Amplitude Studios): Character Design
• Thomas Chamberlain-Keen (Freelance): Character Design
• Randall Mackey (Freelance): Environment Design
• Marina Ortega (Freelance): Prop Design
• Elodie Mondoloni (Umeshu Lovers): Prop Design
• Jason Keyser (VFX Apprentice): VFX Design
• David Hall (Worldspark Studios): VFX Design

Challenge Judges

The judging panel for the Neo Tokyo: Exponential Reality Challenge is fantastic!

• Virginie Bourdin
• Yekaterina Bourykina
• Raphael Lacoste
• Liz Kirby
• Donglu Yu
• Amy Sharpe
• Devon Fay
• Tyler Smith
• Sandra Duchiewicz
• Suzanne Helmigh

Share your Progress

The official challenge hashtag is #ArtStationNeoTokyoChallenge. 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 Tuesday 8th August 2023 and close on Monday 4th September 2023. The production challenges will begin on Monday 4th September 2023 and the entry deadlines will be Monday 30th October 2023. The deadline to register for the production challenges is Monday 23rd October 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 Donglu Yu for her inspirational Koi in Starry Night project for the main challenge banner artwork.