It’s time to announce the winners of the X-TAON Art Car Texturing Contest! With over 600 participants, we’ve been overwhelmed by both the quantity and quality of entries. Thanks to the jury, who had the tremendous task of selecting their favorite entries, to our sponsors, and of course, to all of you who participated. We’re super thrilled to see the reach and success of this contest! But, without further delay, here are the winners:

See the full list of prizes here.

PRO

1st: Ispais Sedano

Msida, Malta

“A journey between two hemispheres: rational and irrational, inspired by Dalí Surrealism and Geometric style. I really enjoyed the challenge using deep filters and new features in Substance Painter.” – Ispais Sedano.

“The monotone palette works nicely along with the contrasting organic and industrial design elements.” – Paul Braddock, jury.

2nd: Guilherme Marconi – Brazilian Folklore Dance

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

“My name is Guilherme Marconi and I work as an illustrator with a focus on pattern creation. In the X-TAON project, my references were inspired by African culture, and by some Brazilian cultural elements that usually manifest at ‘Carnaval,’ at ‘Bumba Meu Boi’, or ‘Boi-bumbá’ – these are popular folkloric Brazilian dances – and also by the ‘Folia de Reis’ ceremony. – Guilherme Marconi.

See Guilherme’s process on the Allegorithmic forum.

“Colorful and inspiring – this is definitely a great art car!” – Pierre Maheut, jury.

3rd: JianYou Dong – Pado

Hangzhou, China

“全部使用手绘制作 最后增加了只能遮罩的破损。All hand-painted, with only a weathering filter added at the end.” – JianYou Dong.

“Very nice Japanese tattoo theme.” – Paul Braddock

STUDENT

1st: Zacky Romiz Izzuddin – Barong and Rangda Art Car

Surakarta, Indonesia

“The concept is to put vintage and artistic ornaments on a futuristic car. I chose the Indonesian (Balinese) folk story about ‘Barong and Rangda’ because I love them a lot – it’s essentially a story about the balance of good and bad. Hand-painted with my mouse, I made all the patterns just in Substance Painter, except for the sponsors’ logos. Thank you for this awesome contest!” – Zacky Romiz Izzuddin.

“This proposal is crazy when it comes to details. Attention paid to every square millimeter of the car is mesmerizing. There is also a great link between the car and the graphics, especially the wings on the back.” – Pierre Maheut, jury.

2nd: Ilai Perez

Tel Aviv, Israel

“For my submission for the contest, I decided to texture the car like a kind of an inflatable pool toy, specifically a duck. I wanted to take the ‘sharp’-looking car model in an unexpected direction, and give it a playful spin that would change not only the outer texture of the car, but the whole feel and context of the object, from an edgy metallic sports car to a soft, cushy inflatable toy.” – Ilai Perez.

“This is lots of fun! Well executed and something different.” – Paul Braddock, jury.

“As unexpected as it is well realized, this entry is one my favorites as it completely changes the purpose of the car. It isn’t a car anymore, but an inflatable toy. AWESOME!” – Pierre Maheut, jury.

3rd: Isaac Zuren – X-TAON Mexican Art

Vancouver, Canada

“The X-TAON was painted and textured based on the very traditional and important Mexican art style ‘Huichol’, which consists of pasting tiny beads that form psychedelic patterns and colors to give a model life and uniqueness. Since this style is one of the most transcendental in Mexican culture, every little drawing elaborated for this project has its own meaning and the beads were placed based on the patterns and shapes with a highly specific study on Huichol roots.” – Isaac Zuren.

“Wow, is this for real? You can’t reach this level of detail in 3D without being one of the most perfectionist students on earth! Also, the graphics and colors are so well picked. Congrats!” – Pierre Maheut, jury.

SPECIAL PRIZES

Best Staging: Chamishka Gamage – Loose Nuts

Colombo, Sri Lanka

“Here is my entry for the X-TAON Art Car Contest, powered by Substance Painter. It is really a challenging project to have to complete everything within 3 weeks. My approach is a little bit different, I wanted to try an old steampunk rusted look. And I need to paint all the patterns, so they looked handpainted. So I had to spend quite some time to get the exact look right. I hope everything came out pretty nice, with the time I had. The final render was done using Maya and Redshift, and all the textures were done in Substance Painter. Hope you guys enjoy. Cheers.” – Chamishka Gamage.

“Great theme, well executed, lovely hand-painted textures. Lots of work here.” – Paul Braddock, jury.

Prize: Intuos Pro graphics tablet kindly provided by Wacom.

Best Storytelling: Ronan Mahon – Midnight

Nuremberg, Germany

Play

“Midnight is understated during the day and comes to life at night. The theme was based around the node graph in Substance Designer – how any one node can create an explosion of art. Under UV light the car comes to life in an explosion of color.” – Ronan Mahon.

“Breathtaking. Revealing graphics under UV lights is such a bright idea! The consistency of the whole project is unbeatable.” – Pierre Maheut, jury.

Prize: RTX 2080 graphics card kindly provided by NVIDIA.

THE JURY

“Helping judge entries for the X-TAON contest was a blast… It was very inspirational for me to see how the artists treated their car surface in so many fun and interesting ways. Some submissions were beautiful in their color and design, where others really played with fun surfaces and materials. All of the entries showed the power of technology and creativity coming together!”

– Jay Ward, Creative Director, Cars Franchise at Pixar Animation Studios

“As someone who lives and breathes cars in both my professional and personal life, I have been excited about the X-TAON contest. The creativity applied to these liveries even pushes the envelope of what we see in motorsport and the car tuning world!”

– Gabe Garcia, Forza Vehicle Art Director at Microsoft Studios

“Once again, I am impressed by the variety, quality and more importantly creativity of the entries. The results are truly inspiring and this is how vivid our community is.”

– Sébastien Deguy, Vice President 3D and Immersive at Adobe, Founder of Allegorithmic

“When we started with Nicolas Paulhac on the Substance Showcar project, we kept in a corner of our mind this crazy creativity challenge to use this car as a canvas for 3D artists to paint it. Now we have this awesome car designed by Takumi Yamamoto and modeled by Frederic Gasson. We wanted to share it with the Substance Artist community and see what comes out of it. Now we know and it’s AWESOME: A galaxy of awesome art cars! They look so great I want to build them!”

– Pierre Maheut, Strategy Director Architecture and Design at Allegorithmic

“I was totally amazed by the quantity and the quality of entries for the contest which made the selection of the winner very difficult for us! Seeing artists from such different backgrounds take ownership of the X-TAON and personalize it to this level of creativity and craftsmanship is simply mind-blowing as well as the greatest reward for the Substance team! A big thanks to all participants!”

– Nicolas Paulhac, Content Creation Director at Allegorithmic

CONTEST SPONSORS

A giant shootout to our sponsors, Wacom, NVIDIA, Car Design News, and Sketchfab, for supporting the contest and for providing the winners with awesome prizes!