New Rookies rankings reveal the world’s best CG schools in 2023

International student awards scheme The Rookies has announced the Rookies Global School Rankings for 2023, its latest annual list of the world’s best CG schools.

France’s New3dge was named overall best creative school, and also topped the individual categories for 3D animation and for concept art and illustration.

French game art school Artside led the game design and development category, while Korea’s SF Film School was named world’s best VFX school for the third year running.

One of the world’s most comprehensive ranking schemes for CG schools
Since its foundation in 2009, The Rookies – formerly known as the CG Student Awards – has grown to become one of the world’s largest awards schemes for young CG artists.

The 2023 awards attracted entries from 5,517 students worldwide, up 25% on last year, spanning 507 institutions in 107 countries.

Students’ portfolios were rated by a panel of over 150 judges, including senior professional VFX, games and concept artists.

Individual entries were scored on a range of creative and technical criteria, with the heaviest weighting assigned to employment potential, and a median score calculated for each school.

Further points were awarded for each of a school’s students reaching the finalists in a category.

As with any subjective rankings, individual results are open to debate, and a school’s scores could obviously be affected by which of its students it encourages to enter for the awards.

However, the Rookies’ scoring system is relatively transparent and based on a large pool of data, making its rankings the best guide we’re aware of to the quality of schools worldwide.

An asterisk indicates that the school also placed first in 2022.

Individual categories reveal world’s best VFX, animation and game design schools
European schools did particularly well this year, topping five of the eight individual categories.

France’s New3dge took two of those top spots, for 3D animation and concept art and illustration, and was named overall best CG school for the second year running.

French schools École Pivaut and Artside joined the list of category winners for the first time, for 2D animation and game design and development, respectively.

The top places in the other categories were unchanged, with one of the few non-European schools on the list, Korea’s SF Film School, being named best VFX school for the third year.

Further categories for team projects
In addition, the awards feature categories for ‘production excellence’, based on the performance of the group projects created at a school rather than its individual students.

Fewer schools are listed than in the corresponding invidual categories, but you can see the results in the 3D animation and visual effects categories on the Rookies website.

Read full listings of the world’s best CG schools in 2023 on The Rookies website

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