About the judges
Digital Artist Ambassador
Dave Gibbons
Dave is a British comic book legend, as an artist, writer and sometimes letterer. Most famous, of course, for the Watchmen series, he’s also worked on characters as varied and well known as Doctor Who, Superman, Rogue Trooper, Dan Dare and a host of characters for 2000 AD.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Gibbons
Graphic Design
David Carson
David Carson is one of the world’s most famous graphic designers, who made his name for his innovative magazine design and use of experimental typography. As art director of seminal music title Ray Gun, Carson redefined editorial design and defined the visual style of the "grunge" era.
Jeff Knowles
Jeff Knowles is an art director at Research Studios, which is also home to Neville Brody. Jeff's work spans many media and applications but always embraces the studio's founding concept: in-depth understanding leads to better design. The unerring clarity of his work is impressive as it is beautiful.
Dan Moore
Dan is a co-founder and studio head of the inimitable Studio Output - a graphic design agency with studios in Nottingham and London. The company was formed in 2002 by Dan, Rob Coke, and Ian Hambleton, with regular clients include BBC Radio 1, BBC Sport, Ministry of Sound and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe
Animation
Philip Hunt - Studio aka
Creative Director of qorld class animation pioneers Studio AKA, Philip has worked on award-winning projects for clients as diverse as Orange, Dyson, FIFA and BMW.
Rex Crowle - Animator & Illustrator
Rex is a freelance illustrator and animation director who, in his words, “draws things, sometimes makes them wibble about a bit, and often ends up putting them on the telly”. As well as creating a number of personal films, he has directed animated series for Disney, MTV and the BBC, and created illustrations for many clients including the PlayStation 3 game LittleBigPlanet for Sony.
Tom Baker - Flash-based animator
Tom Baker is a London based freelance character animator and illustrator whose clients include Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, Channel 4, Paramount Comedy, Sony and Green Thing. His work has appeared on TV, computer games, cinema and the internet.
Motion Broadcast
Adam Jenns - Mainframe
Adam is the studio founder and MD of Mainframe, a digital studio specialising in integrating blistering 3D animation with live action footage, that has produced exciting work for big-name clients including TMF, Virgin and Nickelodeon.
Rob Chui - The Ronin
Working under the alias of The Ronin, for the last eight years Rob has been an independent motion designer at the top of his game, with clients including Leica Camera, the BBC, Channel 4, Hybrid Studios and Digital Kitchen. His short narrative-based films have been featured at a number of festivals including OFFF.
Jason Arber - Wylld Stallyons
As a co-founder of Wyld Stallyons and Computer Arts magazine columnist, Jason produces motion graphics work for major broadcasters and international corporations including the likes of Channel 4 and Cartoon Network.
Web & Interactive Design
Shane Seminole Mielke - 2Advanced Studios LLC
www.2advanced.comCreative Director
I'm a Jack of all trades and master of none.
Personal site: www.shanemielke.com
Aral Balkan
Aral is founder and coordinator of OSFlash.org, author of ARP, the pattern-based ActionScript framework, and the creator of SWX, a new data exchange format for Flash. He is the author of the Adobe Flex 2 QuickStart Guides and blogs on aralbalkan.com
2D Illustration
Dave Gibbons
Dave is a British comic book legend, as an artist, writer and sometimes letterer. Most famous, of course, for the Watchmen series, he’s also worked on characters as varied and well known as Doctor Who, Superman, Rogue Trooper, Dan Dare and a host of characters for 2000 AD.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Gibbons
Jasper Goodall
Jasper Goodall’s stunning use of silhouettes and rainbow clashes of colour came to define an era of illustration, with work for the Face magazine among many others.
Lawrence Zeegen
As Head the School of Communication Design at Kingston University, Zeegen guides the next generation of illustration and design graduates to bold new heights.
3D Illustration
Paul White - Me Company
Paul White founded Me Company in 1985. Its manifesto marries modernity, technology, art and fashion to inspire work as diverse as a 17-year creative relationship with Bjork, a robot design project for a Japanese client and a series of exhibitions in Tokyo, Berlin and New York. Me Company’s synthesis of photography and 3D has created stunning imagery for clients such as Apple, Kenzo, Lanvin, L’Oreal, Coca Cola, Shu Uemura, Visionaire and Numero Magazine.
Chris Christodoulou - Saddington & Baynes
Chris is creative partner and director of CGI at Saddington & Baynes. He’s been instrumental in implementing the company’s introduction into CGI, a medium that has revolutionised the traditional image creation process. He joined the company in 1995 as head of retouching. With eighteen years’ experience as an award-winning digital retoucher, Chris has been key in establishing the quality standard that is the hallmark of Saddington & Baynes, applying his unerring eye for accuracy and attention to detail across the full range of advertising imagery.
Ben Davies - Neighbourhood
As MD of Manchester-based motion graphics and design studio The Neighbourhood, Ben’s the man responsible for, among other visual miracles, Sony’s incredible PSP 3000 motion ads.
Character Design
Sponsored by: 
Adi Granov
Adi is a Bosnian-born comic book artist and conceptual designer. Named in 2004 as ‘a future superstar penciller’ by Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada, he’s since gone on to work on She-Hulk, X-Men Unlimited, The Amazing Spider-Man and designed the Iron Man suit for the 2008 movie of the same name.
Jon Burgerman - Illustrator
The one and only Jon Burgerman is a man who describes himself as someone who "draws, paints, clicks and sleeps". His work has appeared on hoodies for Kidrobot, Ikea prints, surfboards for Ripcurl and even on a My Little Pony.
Concept Art
Gregory Staples
Greg cut his commercial teeth drawing Judge Dredd for 2000 AD at the tender age of 20. Since then he has worked as an artist and illustrator on projects like Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds and Magic: The Gathering and is the co-founder of visual effects company Ark VFX.
Product Visualisation
Mark Pritchard - Drive Inc
Mark has been using CG tools since 1994, helping to shape the exteriors of numerous cars and products for some of the world's best-known brands. Now leading a team of talented modellers and visual artists on advanced design concepts at leading UK visualisation studio Drive, he continues to have work published in magazines and featured in exhibitions.
Richard Wright - Burrows
Richard spent 10 years in automotive product and brand marketing prior to joining Burrows, so is well positioned to have a view on product visualisation. In his 12 years at Burrows, Richard grew the CGI studio from 6 to 28 artists, and is always looking out for talent. In 2003 he opened Burrows' US studio. He also oversaw investment in the studio of over a million dollars of hardware. By his own admission, Richard will be seeking the views of his senior artists when it comes to the judging.
Lee Irvine - Senior Design Visualisation Specialist, Nokia Design
As the Senior Visualisation Specialist at Nokia Design, Lee combines his industrial design and 3D visualisation experience to ensure that Nokia designers are working at the cutting edge of product visualisation techniques, tools and technologies.
Games Design
Christian Bravery
BAFTA nominated Christian is the man behind Leading Light Design; an art and design agency that provides both character and environment designs for the video game and entertainment industries. Recent projects have included Killzone 2 for Sony, Facebreaker for EA Sports and Fable 2 for Microsoft Games.
Daniel Dociu
Daniel is the chief art director at NCsoft North America and art director for ArenaNet, too. Prior to this he’s worked for companies like EA and Zipper Interactive on games as diverse as Guild Wars, SSX Tricky, Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, SOCOM: US Navy Seals and FIFA Soccer.
Henning Ludvigsen
After ten years working for Norwegian ad agencies, Henning had an epiphany, discovered the joys of game art and moved to Greece to become the art director at the game development company Aventurine. His most recent project was the Darkfall MMORPG, but he’s also a regular workshop contributor to ImagineFX magazine.
Architectural Visualisation
Sponsored by: 
Alex Morris - Hayes Davidson
Alex Morris studied at Cambridge and Liverpool universities, qualifying as an architect in 1990. In 1996, he joined leading international visualisation studio Hayes Davidson, becoming a partner in 2001. He was responsible for many of HD’s landmark images, including London’s Millennium Dome and the Tate Modern. He is a judge for the CGarchitect 3D Awards and is on the boards of numerous key industry bodies. In 2009, he left Hayes Davidson to found his own agency.
Gustavo Capote - Neoscape
Gustavo Capote is art director and studio manager for Neoscape’s UK studio, with over 10 years of 3D visualisation experience. A sought-after speaker at industry conferences, he has received numerous professional accolades, including the American Society of Architectural Illustrators’ Award of Excellence and CGarchitect’s Best Still Image Award. His work has featured in Ballistic Publishing’s popular Exposé and Elemental books.
Ximo Peris
Ximo Peris trained as an architect before moving into architectural visualisation in 1997. He taught at Delft University of Technology and worked at DPI Animation House before moving to London, joining first Hayes Davidson and then Smoothe, where he worked on many large-scale animation projects, co-ordinating the visualisation team for the London 2012 Olympics bid. Ximo recently joined Crystal CG as a Creative Director where he is currently busy building the London architecture department.
Visual Effects (short form)
Jordi Bares - The Mill
Jordi Bares worked in the games and film industries in his native Spain for eight years before moving to London in 2000, where he freelanced at Jim Henson’s Creature Shop and Passion Pictures. The winner of numerous awards, he was nominated for an Emmy in 2004 for his work on the BBC documentary Pyramid. Since 2003, he has been joint head of 3D and VFX supervisor at Oscar-winning London VFX studio The Mill.
Jonathan Davies - MPC
Jonathan Davies has worked in the commercials VFX industry since he started as a runner at MPC in 1997. After working in Soho as a VFX producer, he returned after 10 years to MPC as Head Of 3D Production. As well as running the production side of this large department, he often manages individual VFX projects such as the latest Sony Bravia ad.
Paul Franklin - Double Negative
Paul Franklin studied Fine Art at Oxford University before going on to work for pioneering UK game developer Psygnosis as a computer artist. In 1994, he joined the Moving Picture Company as a CG animator working in television commercials, film and broadcast, leaving in 1998 to co-found Double Negative. He is currently a senior in-house VFX supervisor at the studio and was recently Oscar-nominated for his work on The Dark Knight
Stars of Tomorrow
Sponsored by: 
Yann Mathias – Creative Director of the Design Laboratory
Yann Mathias is a creative director with 12 years' experience working with the best in up-and-coming and established talent through Central Saint Martins Design Laboratory. In that time Yann has worked with Alexander McQueen, LVMH, Adidas, Nokia, The Fat Duck and more, and has made the Design Laboratory one of the most respected and recognised design agencies in the UK. Yann is also Creative Director and original founder of Jotta.
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