Holiday win

So you've got almost two and a half months of holiday, which means plenty of time for improving your skills. Here are a handful of great competitions that are going on at the moment that are worth entering:

• Dominance War V Preliminary


• Warrior Mudbox sculpt/paint


• Eat3D - Head sculpt


• Eat3D - Next-gen small scene

For the Eat3D competitions, first prize is ZBrush4, second prize is a medium Intuos4, third prize is a year's Eat3D subscription, an honourable mention gets you a 1-month subscription... and just by entering the competition and finishing your piece, you get a 1-month stream of one of the Eat3D DVDs! Damn cool deal.

For the Mudbox competition, you get a 3-month trial version of Mudbox to use for the competition (although as students you qualify to get Mudbox for free anyway). Prizes include money, a Cintiq, and other cool stuff.

The Dominance War V Preliminary doesn't have any prizes (it's just a preliminary after all, just for fun), but given how much recognition Dominance War has internationally, getting placed in any of the competitions is very prestigious, and earns you a lot of respect as a game artist. The proper Dominance War only starts in January next year, and its prizes are yet to be announced.

Lastly, if ever you've made something cool and just want to show some other South Africans, post it on Pixofile. It's pretty quiet around there, but there are a bunch of members from all over, including TOW, GDC, TUT, CPUT, FOD and some other SA design schools. They're all nice people too. ;)

Happy holidays!