This past week we ran week 13 of our digital art contest series. We had 16 entrants and gave out $600 to the top 3 students. We also gave out another $240 for honourable mentions - amazing projects that came in this week. Below we list the contest themes for the next few weeks and talk about updates in our ecosystem. In 2022 we will be creating a marketplace for all students to code, create, publish and sell their own digital art.

Also, the Wednesday, March 23rd contests may be a bigger one - just an FYI.

The winners this week:

1st place: Mihika, Art Link, ($300)

2nd place: Danya, Art Link, ($200)

3rd place: Samantha, Art Link, ($100)

To find out what's so special about these projects, click the:

button multiple times below the art and see how the project changes.

Contest Info

We are going to be running these weekly contest prizes every week. And: the prize money is going to go up. But we have to get more people entering to offer higher rewards. Next week we will remain at $840 in weekly prize money: $300 for first place, $200 for 2nd place and $100 for 3rd place plus up to 4 prizes of $60 for Strong Efforts outside the top 3.

The new (and latest) information for our contests is at:

hatchcoding.com/contests.

A note: We have big plans for 2022 including $10,000 contests—those are coming. We are still only getting 10-20 entries per week. As our community grows, we will have more resources for prizes. When we get to 21 or more entries for the contest, the prize money will go up.

Please invite your friends to start learning at hatchcoding.com. Everything is free, other than getting 1:1 lessons with a Hatch certified coding coach to improve your coding skills.

Upcoming Contest Categories, the next few weeks

Jan 26: Maps, Cities & Navigation

Feb 2: Wizards, Towers, Spells and Magic

Feb 9: Valentine's Day and Love

Feb 16: Winter Wonderland - anything related to Winter

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March 23: Abstract Generative Art

Maps, Cities & Navigation: What kind of maps can you make with generative art? How could you represent a city, multiple cities or the navigation or travel between them? What symbols would you use to represent roads, intersections, water? How could you play with distance and start and end destinations?

Wizards, Towers, Spells and Magic: If you love things like Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Dungeons and Dragons, Magic the Gathering - and love the tales, fun, and friendships that come with them, then start getting creative with your imagination. What kind of generative art can you build that fits inside this theme?

Valentine's Day and Love: Red Hearts, Cards, Chocolate, Teddy Bears, Love. How can you express the spirit of Valentine's Day and Love in generative art? Can you make generative Valentine's Day cards? Gifts? Abstract expression of the spirit of love? Where does your imagination take you when you think about this theme?

Winter Wonderland: It's Winter and that means snow, blizzards, ice skating, hot chocolate and rosy cheeks. What kind of generative art can you make related to the season? Can you represent Winter using abstract generative art? Will there be ice involved? What do you think of when you think of generative Winter Art?

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Note: In the Contest Info, at the back of the PDF there are tons of examples to be inspired by for all categories.

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Updated Plans for Hatch Coding and Hatch.Art

Helping students to Code, Create and Earn is to core to our mission. Our current plan to deliver on this:

1) We are going to continue to run weekly coding contests and gradually increase the prize money.

2) We are going to invite communities to run generative art courses for the youth in their communities to learn skills to shape the future.

3) The Hatch.Art store is now open. This is where our contest winners can sell their art to their community and network.

3) Once we have a healthy flow of artists creating generative art, whether they are contest winners or not, the next phase is to allow anyone to put up art and have their own page in the store. Most of these will not be linked to the main discovery part of the store. We want to feature contest winners. However, we also want anyone to be able to generate art and sell it to the people they know.

4) We also want our artists to be able to trade with other artists. We think it would be neat for kids & teens to be able to collect the art of their peers.

5) We also want to build a game where the in-game assets are made by the students. As a user, you could then build the game or play the game, earning money for helping to create the game or having fun playing the game like any other game.

The long term goal is still to have a larger Hatch.Art community that will be looking for young, undiscovered talent. This larger community will hopefully enable strangers to buy digital art from the best students, which would be very cool.

Final Thoughts

We have a really big idea of inviting ALL the communities who support girls in STEM to a 10 week digital art course and then having a massive girls only generative art contest at the end of it. We're talking to lots of partners around this, but I think it could be something really fun and amazing in the Spring.

We keep brainstorming a lot of ideas about how to make the process of learning skills to shape the future easier and more fun.

We're just getting started!

Peter, CEO, Hatch Coding

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