February 17, 2016 – Epic Games today announced the second round of academic and educational recipients of Unreal Dev Grants, a $5 million program launched nearly a year ago to provide no-strings-attached funding to standout developers, programmers, artists and designers using Unreal Engine 4. Today, 10 contributors are being awarded a total of $100,000 for their outstanding learning resources for Unreal Engine.
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“A few months ago we awarded more than $75,000 in educational grants to individuals creating outstanding learning resources for Unreal Engine 4,” said Luis Cataldi, Education Evangelist at Epic Games. “We couldn’t be happier with the results, and so today we are issuing $100,000 to instructors, tutorial creators, book authors and formal educators whose noteworthy contributions are helping people achieve success with Unreal. Keep it coming, folks! We love and support these amazing efforts.”
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Today’s recipients include:
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Andrzej Koloska – $14,000 – Andrzej Koloska is the creator of ShooterTutorial, which teaches aspiring developers how to create a shooter game from scratch using Unreal Engine 4. Andrzej has been a professional gave developer for more than a decade, and is well-known in the industry for his continued work in creating learning resources for Unreal developers. Follow him on Twitter and like his page on Facebook.
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Ben Tristem – $13,000 – Ben Tristem is a game developer and popular educator, teaching courses in multiple technologies. Ben recently completed a success Kickstarter campaign to help people learn to code in C++ for Unreal Engine 4. He continues to inspire thousands of students and developers with his work. Follow him on Twitter.
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Leonard Gonzalez – $11,000 – Leonard Gonzalez is a talented environment and visual effects artist with nearly 10 years of experience in the field, and has shared some of his tutorials with the public. He is now focused on creating Unreal Engine 4 masterclass material, covering 3D art production 3D art production, environment art, level design, and FX.
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LayoutVR – $14,000 – LayoutVR is a growing online community that provides learning resources for students, and offers a platform for them to share new ideas and experiences. The founders piloted a ten week VR course at Stanford University, in which students explored the challenges and opportunities of immersive experience design, eventually rebuilding the course for a larger community of developers, which is now available to universities around the world.
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Kenichiro Igari – $11,000 – Kenichiro Igari is a seasoned game developer who has created an “Unreal Challenge” program to help students learn about game development by challenging them to make and present a commercial game using Unreal Engine 4.
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Greg Benicourt – $8,000 – Greg Benicourt is a developer and trainer who has written a series of Unreal Engine 4 books in French. Follow him on Twitter.
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Nick Marks – $14,000 – Nick Marks is an ex-AAA game developer, and the co-founder of UCode, a chain of development schools to educate both kids and adults to program apps, games, robots and websites. He has based his entire curriculum around Unreal Engine 4.
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The team at Epic is also re-awarding the following contributors for their sustained efforts:
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Tesla Dev – $5,000 – Tesla Dev is a long-standing Unreal Engine 4 tutorial provider and trainer for hire, who shares many free tutorials for the public on YouTube.
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Rama – $5,000 – Rama is one of the most well-known Unreal Engine 4 community members. He continually makes new content to help teach users about UE4 and has contributed to nearly every engine release. You can view some of his content on YouTube.
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James Butcher – $5,000 – James Butcher is a recognized leader in the Unreal Engine education realm, a Senior Games Development lecturer at Staffordshire University in the UK and a game developer. Follow him on Twitter.
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