Drawing on teenagers to save the Earth

Massey University’s College of Creative Arts and Weta Workshop from New Zealand are calling on talented Thai high school students to get creative and join the “Earth Guardians Character Design Competition”.

This is an opportunity for Thai students aged 15-19 years (as of July 6 this year) to showcase their creative ideas with others around the world in the “International Student Concept Artist Award” category.

Massey is one of New Zealand’s eight universities which came in the top 100 QS rankings by subject area for art and design. Their College of Creative Arts has partnered with Weta Workshop and other industry sponsors to launch a new concept design competition called “Earth Guardians”, to celebrate the launch of the university’s new Concept Design Major.

The online competition encourages students to spend their free time during the Covid-19 lockdown creating a character to defend the Earth, using nature and the elements to inspire their designs.

Characters can be submitted as digital images, scanned drawings, paintings or high-quality photographs of 3D models. Each entry must include the name of the character, a 300-word description of the inspiration behind the character, its living environment and any special powers or tools it uses.

Each contestant can submit no more than two entries of different characters. The winner from high schools in Thailand will get a Wacom Cintiq Pro 16 pen display, a nice piece of hardware for an aspiring digital artist. The submission deadline is July 1 and the finalists will be announced on Aug 14.

Visit creative.massey.ac.nz/earthguardians.