This past week we ran week 17 of our digital art contest series. We had 8 entrants and gave out $600 to the top 3 students. 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, these contests will likely get bigger starting in April 2022.

The winners this week:

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

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

3rd place: Zachary, 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

Feb 23: Games of any type

Mar 2: Sports - Indoors or Outdoors

Mar 9: Roads, paths, trails & mazes

Mar 16: Plants, trees and flowers

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March 23: Abstract Generative Art (2X prize money guaranteed)

Games of any type: There are board games, video games, outdoor games, indoor games. Take your favorite game in your favorite genre and think about how you can create generative art out of it. Can you do an abstract representation of the game? Can you make up your own game? Anything goes, but it must be generative art.

Sports - Indoors or Outdoors: What kind of generative art can you make around one of your favorite sport. It can be individual, like tennis or running. It can be in the water like swimming or water polo. It can be on a field or on the ice. Take your favorite sport as inspiration and think about how you can create generative art out of it.

Roads, paths, trails & mazes: You can have single roads that all look different, winding paths that explore new territory, a set of trails that branch apart and come together or a really awesome maze that looks cool and different with every refresh. This theme has lots of territory to cover... and lots of possibilities for generative art.

Plants, trees and flowers: What cool algorithms can you make that mimic nature and things that are green - or colourful? Can you make algorithmically generated flowers, with varying petals and colours? What about trees that go in different directions? The whole plant kingdom is at your disposal - what generative art can you make?

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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

For 7+ years, all students have started with a project called "Hold A Ball." This project is now moving to be project #3. Before students take on Hold A Ball, we are going to start their journey with a 7 multiple choice question project called "Genesis Art", which will result in two lines of code. After that, they will learn a project called "Sunny Skies" which is 3 lines of code. They will do that project one line at a time.

In education there is a concept called "Gradual Release of Responsibility", where at first you give students a ton of support and over time you release so they become more and more independent. Hatch Coding is hoping that we will do a better job at the first part of that path, which is giving new students a ton of support.

This new user journey will be live around March 7.

We're just getting started!

Peter, CEO, Hatch Coding