Pause carousel
Play carousel
Students from Abertay’s School of Arts, Media and Computer Games are celebrating success in three major competitions.
Abertay teams reached the finals of Grads in Games’s Sumo Digital Rising Star competition, Microsoft’s 2017 Imagine Cup UK and TARGETjobs Undergraduate of the Year.
Third year Computer Arts student, Dorota Sekula scooped the Sumo Digital Rising Star Overall and Character Art prize, which guarantees her an internship interview with top games studio Sumo Digital.
The Sumo Digital Rising Star competition is the biggest competition in Europe for students who are not yet in their final year.
Dorota and her fellow candidates were evaluated on a portfolio assessment and an art specialisation project that gave them an art brief to create a publishable product.
The 22 finalists then went onto an industry-style interview where they received advice from games studios as well as industry speakers.
Dayna Galloway, Head of the Division of Games and Arts said: “We’re delighted by Dorota’s success. The competition is a great opportunity for students to showcase their artwork and get industry feedback.”
Dorota is currently taking advantage of Abertay’s partnership with NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences by spending a year studying in their games department in the Netherlands.
Meanwhile, student team, Pocket Sized Hands also had success at Microsoft’s 2017 Imagine Cup UK competition by coming joint third alongside a student from the University of Oxford.
Students Gary McCartan, Alan Yeats and Rory Thomson, who make up Pocket Sized Hands, reached the final with their online VR multiplayer game, Honeypot Espionage.
The Imagine Cup empowers the next generation of computer science students to team up and find the next big thing.
From the 400 who signed up, only ten teams made the final and two of those were from Abertay.
Also at the competition were students Jack Gullen, Cameron McPherson and Michael Brown from Obviously Games who made a co-operative virtual reality and HoloLens game.
Along with the competition winners, there was also a special John Brengman Award given out to entrants that showed Imagination, Inspiration and Innovation in their projects.
John Brengman was an Abertay graduate who reached the final of the UKs Imagine Cup in 2015, but sadly died of cancer last year.
His family set up the prize to celebrate a project that matched the same goals as John’s.
Third year Computing student, Callum Dickson also enjoyed success, making it to the final of the TARGETjobs Undergraduate of the Year.
Callum was nominated for the Computer Science, IT and Physics award partnered by with tech company, FDM.
This year’s competition was entered by more than 3,500 students from over 130 universities and Callum managed to get down to the final ten, which was an amazing achievement.