Monday, September 14th, 2026 Posted by Jim Thacker

See making-ofs for Gnomon’s Best of Term Award-winning projects


Abandoned Power Station, Gnomon student Chelsea Yiyang Liu’s Grand Prize-winning project from Gnomon’s latest Best of Term Awards. You can see a technical breakdown on ArtStation.


Leading international CG art school Gnomon has announced the results of its latest Best of Term Awards, showcasing the best student art work created during the Spring 2026 term.

The Grand Prize was won by BFA student Chelsea Yiyang Liu, for Abandoned Power Station, created as part of the Environment Creation for Games and Game Creation 2 courses.

Liu describes it as a “real-time environment focused on designing spatial experience through force and energy” using “direction, density, and shape to establish spatial force, and color, roughness, and lighting to control visual energy”.

You can see a technical breakdown of the project, which was created using Unreal Engine, ZBrush, Maya, Substance 3D Designer, Substance 3D Painter and SpeedTree, on ArtStation.

Liu has also just won a second major award for the work, having placed as Runner Up in the Game Development Category at the Rookies, the international CG student awards.


An excerpt from Christophe Santosa’s technical breakdown of his winning project in the Best of Term Effects | Demolition category. You can see the full video on Instagram.


Other amazing technical breakdowns of other award-winners
There are also some excellent technical breakdowns in the Effects categories, notably Christophe Santosa’s winning Demolition simulation.

Followers of CG Channel on social media may remember Santosa from his viral recreation of a shot from Neon Genesis Evangelion, which we shared earlier this year.

His latest project, also simulated in Houdini, nods to Alien: Romulus, with a space vehicle straying into the ring system of an alien planet, shredding part of the wing.

“I wanted this project to explore something different from the usual simulations,” says Santosa. “Focusing on more SOP-level elements like UV-based modeling, procedural animation, and unsimmed fires/glows [was] unconventional but helped me gain so much [creative] control.”

Other Best of Term Award-winning projects cover character design, environment art, hard surface modeling, game art, matchmoving, previs and tool development.

See more amazing student art work from Gnomon’s Best of Term Awards


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