One highest honour · Three creative achievements · Three forms of expression
Golden Unicorn Grand Prix
The sole highest overall honour, selected from all main competition nominees. It recognises a work’s expressive, emotional and intellectual achievement and the unity of form and content.
Jurors view or experience the complete submitted version with essential creative context. Fixed, interactive and generative works are eligible; commercial scalability or winning another award is not required.
Silver Unicorn · Creative Method
Recognises a method or organised practice that realises creative intent: problem definition, selection and control, revision, verifiability and continued use.
Provide the associated work, key decisions and input/output examples. Node count, tool cost and automation rates are not achievements in themselves. Open source is not required; central claims must be assessable under reasonable confidentiality.
Silver Unicorn · Digital Character
Recognises a distinctive identity, coherent behaviour, emotional range and continuity across situations. Live conversation and an established commercial IP business are not required.
Show continuity through different realised situations and identify contributions to design, performance, voice and generation control. Disclose the basis for using any real person’s likeness or voice.
Silver Unicorn · Worldbuilding
Recognises coherent rules, relationships, culture, space and causality, with the capacity to support further stories. Scale, the length of a world bible and game functionality are not entry conditions.
Use realised situations and consequences to demonstrate the world’s rules, relationships and scope for continuation. Attractive backgrounds or a large number of locations alone do not establish worldbuilding.
Unicorn · Narrative Innovation
Recognises the distinctive organisation of time, information, perspective, causality and meaning, in linear, nonlinear or dynamic narratives.
Identify relevant sequences or paths and their contributors. Dynamic works must sustain character, theme and emotional logic as content changes. Branch counts do not determine merit.
Unicorn · Audiovisual Innovation
Recognises a distinctive language of image, sound, movement, space and rhythm. Realism, abstraction, transformation, stillness and silence are understood in relation to the work’s intent.
Provide the complete work and key sequences, explaining creative choices and contributions. Resolution, model quality or technical difficulty alone is not sufficient reason for an award.
Unicorn · Experiential Innovation
Recognises meaningful design of viewing paths, participation, a work’s responses or shared experience. The focus is an actual change in the relationship between audience and work.
Explain the experience and how it can be assessed. Where applicable, provide a runnable version, suggested and independent paths, and reset instructions. Popularity, button counts, equipment cost or real-time generation alone is not the achievement.
Silver awards: shared work, specific evidence
The three Silver awards assess methods, digital characters and worlds, not film placements. The achievement must be demonstrated in an eligible work submitted to this edition; that film need not first be shortlisted for the main competition. Existing achievements must identify the submitted version and distinguish earlier from new contributions.
Reuse the film’s contributors, tools and sources; add the achievement’s name, scope, version, specific contributions and evidence. If several films demonstrate the same achievement, identify one principal associated work and consolidate evidence. Using a general-purpose model or tool does not by itself make that model or tool a candidate.
From complete review to reasoned decisions
Eligibility and material checks precede professional evaluation. A works panel evaluates the Grand Prix and three expression awards; a creative-achievements panel evaluates the three Silver awards. Jurors view or experience the complete object and examine the evidence needed for its claims.
Five descriptive levels organise observations, reasons and outstanding questions. They are not mechanically added or subjected to undisclosed weights. Deliberation and voting follow the rules. Each award has at most one recipient object and may remain vacant; joint contributors can share credit.
The Grand Prix requires at least five conflict-free jurors who have completed the review and support from at least two thirds. Other awards require at least three jurors and a majority. Qualified substitutes complete the review if recusals reduce the quorum. Public award announcements include publishable jury reasons.