At last night's Student Academy Award ceremony in Beverly Hills, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences honored Ringling College of Art and Design computer animation students Kal Athannassov, John McDonald and Echo Wu for their animated film The Wishgranter.

The Wishgranter from Ringling Computer Animation on Vimeo.

The Wishgranter was chosen from a record number of entries this year. Of the seven projects competing in the final round of voting, three were by  Ringling students.

"The whole experience has been incredible," RCAD student winner Echo Wu said in a release. "We didn't expect to come so far with the film. But it's moments like this [when] we are extremely glad we worked as hard as we did to make it the best we possibly could."

The Student Academy Awards, which were established in 1972, encourage excellence in filmmaking at the college level. Each year, students both within and outside the U.S. compete for awards and cash grants in animation, documentary, narrative and alternative categories. The win for The Wishgranter marks RCAD's computer animation program's 12th Student Academy Award.