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The Rookies Announces World School Rankings 2019 Winners

Based on almost 3,500 entries from artists in 89 countries, 120 industry experts used a variety of criteria to award schools on how well they prepare students for careers in creative media and entertainment.

Image by Alexandre Mougenot

The Rookies has just announced their Rookies World School Rankings 2019 winner, one of the world’s most respected evaluations of educational facilities that prepare artists for careers in creative media and entertainment industries.

Put together with the help of 120 influential industry experts from around the world, the Rookies World School Rankings 2019 are broken down into six categories: Best Architectural Visualization Schools, Best 3D Motion Graphics Schools, Best Concept Art & Illustration Schools, Best Game Design Schools, Best Animation Schools and Best Visual Effects Schools. This year marked the first time a Production Excellence award has been given for Game Design & Development Schools and Visual Effects & Animation Schools.

The Rookies World School Rankings 2019 are based on the quality and performance of student work submitted to the Rookie Awards 2019. The awards received 3,458 entries from digital media and entertainment artists in 89 countries. Over 500 academic facilities encouraged their students to submit work and compete for the hotly contested School of the Year titles.

“We feel that traditional school rankings that include peer and employer reviews, faculty-to-student ratio, citations and other data are not adequate when ranking the best creative schools,” Andrew McDonald, co-founder of The Rookies, explains. “This might work in an industry that follows a more-traditional career path, however, when it comes to technical and creative roles like visual effects, animation, games and design, it’s a lot more complicated,” he adds.

According to Alwyn Hunt, co-founder of The Rookies, at a time when studios report a lack of skilled students applying for entry-level roles, “We have students from all over the world ask The Rookies about the best schools. It’s crucial for reports like these that provide an independent and unbiased review of where the best students are consistently graduating from.”

Judges were asked to score entries based on criteria including creative skills, technical skills, presentation, variety of skills, complexity, raw talent, and employment potential. These results were used to determine the Rookies World School Rankings 2019 based on how well each school prepared their students for careers in their respective fields.

Full details about category winners can be found by following the links below:

Best Architectural Visualisation Schools
Best 3D Motion Graphics Schools
Best Concept Art & Illustration Schools
Best Game Design Schools
Best Animation Schools
Best Visual Effects Schools
Game Design & Development Schools
Visual Effects & Animation Schools

The Rookie Awards is supported by some of the world’s leading creative media and entertainment companies, including Autodesk, Shutterstock, Unity, Epic Games, Substance by Adobe, Foundry, Blackmagic Design, Chaos Group, Yellowdog, Pixologic and Wacom. The following production studios are offering a range of fully paid internships and training programs to category winners: Weta Digital, Animal Logic, Polygon Pictures, Axis Animation, Electric Theatre Collective, CVD Studios, RodeoFX, NetherRealm, Monolith, Ninja Theory, BVN, Sarofsky throughout Asian, Canada, Europe, Oceania, and the USA.

Source: The Rookies