Masters of CG contest: winners revealed!

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Over the last few months, we've been running an exciting competition for creative professionals, in partnership with HP, Nvidia, and 2000 AD, a Rebellion company.

Masters of CG challenged you to create a new title sequence, film poster, main shot or ident for one of 2000 AD's most iconic characters: Rogue Trooper. Then we asked you to vote for your favourites to whittle the entries down to a shortlist. Finally, we sent the shortlist to an esteemed panel of judges, to select the winners. And now the results are in, and we can reveal the winning entries!

There were four category winners, which you can check out below. But do you agree with the judges' choice of overall winner? Share your views in the comments below or via the #MastersofCG hashtag on Twitter...

01. Title sequence

• The brief: This category was aimed at motion graphic professionals and enthusiasts. Expected to last around 30 seconds, contestants were encouraged to experiment with new motion graphics, lighting and rendering techniques, that aren't often possible for visual effects shots.
• Category winner: The Invokers
• Description: "Iconic shots from the Remembrance Day comic, put together in a unique style of 2D concept art projected onto 3D geometry. The art is based on the original comic, but redone to perfectly fit the title sequence and the raw vibe. Rather than following the chronological order of events in the comic, we used key events in non Non Sequential order, to convey a certain mood. The music was composed especially for this piece, made with samples of war sounds."
• Team: Tim van Helsdingen (captain), Joni van der Leeuw, Peter Klijn
• Hardware: Home build workstation, Wacom Intuos
• Software: Maxon Cinema 4D (+turbulenceFD for the smoke), Adobe After Effects (+trapcode suite), Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Photoshop, Crazybump - Native Instruments, Maschine - Ableton Live

02. Main shots (overall winner)

• The brief: Entries in this category needed to supply a series of main action shots. This would be the main action content of the piece. It could either be full CG animation or composited VFX with live action. It had to last between one and two minutes and could be comprised of as many shots as you wished to include.
• Category winner and overall winner: Kawan
• Description: "From the storyboard to the final cut we worked during more than 20 nights on our freetime to put images on our ideas. It was a blast working on it. We hope you will enjoy watching it as much as we enjoyed creating it."
• Team: Clement Lauricella (captain), Valentin Tuil, Florian Rihn, Clement Granjon
• Hardware: HP Z800
• Software: Maya,Vray ZBrush Nuke, Adobe Creative suite

03. Film poster

• The brief: "The challenge here was to create a movie poster. Traditional movie posters are mostly based on footage or characters from the film, and this should be no different. Entrants must create their posters using the same tools and techniques as the other categories; the only difference is that we expected a 3D still, rather than an animation. The poster had to include typography and a full list of credits."
• Category winner: The Invokers
• Description: "A poster of Rogue trooper. Look at it. NOW RESPECT IT."
• Team: Tim van Helsdingen (captain), Joni van der Leeuw, Peter Klijn
• Hardware: Home build workstation, Wacom
• Software: Photoshop for the art, Cinema 4D for logo, Zbrush reference model for overpaint

04. Idents

• The brief: Aimed at animators and motion graphics experts, this category was to create an identity for the project. These stings were limited to five seconds with a hold screen.
• Category winner: The Irish Rogues
• Description: "I liked this shot so I decided to to incorporate the live action into the ident. The ident contains facets from the short story. Namely, the opposing sides emblems are depicted, the blue poppy, the sole surviving Rogue Trooper and of course, war. The 5 seconds of ident is preceded by 3 seconds hold screen."
• Team: Chris Lodge (captain), Anton McCarthy, Oisin McDonald, Leonard ToneHardware: Canon 550D, Manfrotto Tripod and Head. Glideshot Dolly. AsusP6T WS Motherboard, Geforce GTX 680 Graphics Card, 12 Gb RAM
• Software: Adobe Premiere, Adobe After Effects, VCP Plugins

Do you think these teams deserved to win? Check out the other shortlisted entries and let us know your views in the comments or via the Twitter hashtag #MastersofCG!

Register for HP ZED today!

This content has been brought to you in association with HP ZED, a 'pop up shop' for creatives in London's Soho from 29 September – 10 October 2014.

With talks, tutorials and creativity sessions brought to you by top experts from leading studios like Double Negative, MPC, Milk and The Mill, as well as HP, Intel and Nvidia, it's going to be a must-attend event for anyone working in motion graphics, animation or 3D. Find out more here!