2025 Winter Best of Term Winners Announced

Gnomon is excited to announce the winners of the Winter 2025 Best of Term (BOT) competition!

This quarterly event honors outstanding projects from both full-time college programs and individual courses, spanning 3D disciplines such as character design, VFX, hardsurface modeling, animation, and more.

Grand Prize Winner: Manav Gala

This term's grand prize was awarded to Manav Gala, who is currently training in our Bachelor of Fine Arts program and is on track to graduate in Winter 2026. His winning project was created in our Dynamic Effects 4 course taught by Christian Olan-Geddes and was inspired by Star Wars series and Dune.

Manav shared that while he had worked on destruction pieces before using Houdini, the Dynamics course helped him build an efficient workflow using Maya, Nuke, Houdini, and Adobe Premiere Pro.

“I learned how to gain complete control over every aspect like getting fractures to look exactly how I want, manipulating the constraints that hold the building together and how to control the activation of the destruction,” Manav said. “The biggest challenge in this destruction shot was how to efficiently manage and render so much data. With over 20 million points of destruction geometry, a million primitives of constraint geometry and over 100 million voxels of volumetrics, Christian helped me understand how to keep things speedy and get the shot rendered out from Solaris and Karma.”

This term’s BOT competition saw a high volume of submissions, with students not only showcasing their work but also sharing the creative process behind it. The selected winners included both returning and first-time honorees—from those just starting their training to those nearing graduation.

Every Best of Term is a reminder of how far our students go with the right training and support. If you're ready to start your 3D art education, connect with an advisor to explore our programs, scholarship options, and career pathways—or register for our next Open House on July 26th. To explore this term’s winning projects, visit our Best of Term page.

Winter 2025 Best of Term Winners:

GRAND PRIZE — Manav Gala — Effects | Demolition
Original concept, inspired by Star Wars and Dune

Mustafa Abay — Character | Fantasy
Original concept

Ryan Donnahoe — Character | Games
Concept by Jian Li

Jae Cha — Character | Hardsurface
Concept by Ana Fedina.
Music "Sacrifice of Tradition" from the Ghost of Tsushima soundtrack by Ilan Eshkeri

Yanina Perez-Masud — Character | Realism
Original concept

Alice Chui — Character | Stylized
Concept by Marie Magny

Jeffrey Kressin — Effects | Clouds
Original concept

Pruthvi Prajapati — Effects | Liquids
Original concept

Theo Trombley — Effects | Pyro
Original concept
Jet model from SketchFab/ Plants from Megascans

Artur Artinian — Environment | Interior
Original concept

Loden Chapman — Environment | Natural
Original concept

Julie Becher — Environment | Stylized
Concept by Carla Cordelia

Quinn Humphreys — Hardsurface | Vehicle
Concept by P51-D Mustang (North American Aviation)

Jacob Cabrera — Lighting & Rendering
Original concept, inspired by Pirates of the Caribbean

Julian Deview — Props & Weapons
Rifle concept by Alex Jessup. Scene and rifle tweaks are original

Jack Carraher — Sculpture
Concept by Yang Qi from the video game Black Myth: Wukong
Costume and accessory variation by Jack

Jie Chen — Texturing & Shading
‘Mossy Forest Roots,’ ‘Mossy Rocks,’ ‘Rocks,’ and ‘Ribbon Grass,’ from Sketchfab
Campfire from Unreal Engine Starter Pack

Nat Bishop — Tool Development
Original concept

Nicholas Kapoulas & Jeffrey Kressin — Animation | Motion Capture
Original concept

Cici Zheng & Joshua Lewis — Animation | Scene
Original concept
Cici Zheng: liquid simulation, secondary effects, environments, grooming, compositing, lighting
Joshua Lewis: character animation, grooming, editing, compositing, lighting
Character rigs from Pro Rigs