Visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic recently hosted a contest that gives artists a chance to become official concept artists in the Star Wars universe, and as you might expect, there were thousands of entrants who applied. Now the results have been tallied and the winners have been unveiled, and their work is pretty damn spectacular.

Nearly 4,000 people competed, answering the following prompts from the company (via /Film):

• “The Moment”: artists were tasked with creating two emotive still images that tell a cinematic story – within the world of Star Wars Episodes IV – VI, using only existing Star Wars worlds, vehicles, creatures and characters to create a new story moment.
• “The Ride”: artists had to design two new Star Wars vehicles within the aesthetic of Episodes IV – VI, placed within the context of a story and an environment.
• “The Job”: artists were put through a simulation of working as a concept artist in a production environment for four weeks, working through 6 different phases of a project. Only 224 artists made it to this final phase. They were tasked with a “difficult series of challenges [which] tested artists with short deadlines, changing briefs, and surprise Director changes to simulate the experience of a dynamic production environment.”

Three winners made it through that impressive gauntlet: Mario Alberti, Morgan Yon, and Fred Palacio. Fan Gao, John Grello, Jesus Conde, Mack Sztaba, Igor Bulygin, Romain D’escienne, Justin Dring, and Krzysztof Bielenin each earned honorable mentions. You can see a handful of their work below, but be sure to head over to the official contest site to see all much, much more. It’s really stunning stuff.