This past week we ran week 7 of our digital art contest series. We had 18 entrants and gave out $600 to the top 3 students. Below we list the contest themes for the next 3 weeks and talk about our plans for 2022 to create a marketplace for all students to code, create, publish and sell their own digital art. The winners this week:

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

2nd place: Maddon, 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. Starting next week, we'll offer $720 in weekly prize money: $300 for first place, $200 for 2nd place and $100 for 3rd place plus 2 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 have decided to follow a strategy of slowly increasing the prize pool based on the # and quality of contest entries. This week we got our largest ever # of contest entries: 18. So as our community grows, and as more digital artists are entering the contests, the prize money will go up.

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 3 weeks

Dec 15: Shapes and Patterns (Abstract)

Dec 22: Characters, Cute & Whimsical

Dec 29: Outer Space & The Universe (Abstract / Imaginative)

Shapes and Patterns: How can you generatively use squares, triangles, circles and other shapes in geometric patterns to create variety in a generative piece of algorithmic art? Can you create a grid and put different shapes and colours inside the grid? Can you create blocks and stack them together in interesting ways? Can you take a single dominant shape and play with it and play with patterns to create an interesting visual effect?

Characters, Cute & Whimsical: How can you create a set of characters like Robots, Dinosaurs, Wizards, Dragons, Dogs, Cats, or any other creature or human that are created through generative art and form a collection of generative art?

Outer Space & The Universe: What can you build that is connected to Planets, Space, Space Stations, Asteroids, Space Ships, Stars, Galaxies or anything else. Could you build something every day like a clock, desk or chair but make it Alien or "From another planet"? How can you best make a collection of generative art with this theme?

Note: In the Contest Info, at the back of the PDF there are tons of examples to be inspired by for all 3 of these categories.

Plans for Hatch Coding and Hatch.Art

We have been doing a lot of thinking about how to best create an environment where students can code, create and earn. Here is our current plan, and this changes weekly, so make sure to check back here every week to see how this evolves:

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

2) We are going to start rewarding strong efforts beyond the top 3 projects will a lot of smaller prizes, e.g. top 3 + X "Strong Effort" prize starting next week with X = 2 and hopefully increasing to over 10 by the end of January, 2022. We want to build a broad base of students who are coming in, learning, and walking away with some cash for their efforts to get better at code.

3) We are going to build a marketplace where every student can sell their art to their community and network. So the more you work at your art, and the better it is, the more people might decide to buy it.

The way this is going to work is that every piece of art in the marketplace is going to be generative, which means that the code can create multiple versions of the same art, but with variety across each piece. You can see the art above, and press the refresh button to see how this works. Hatch.Art will create unique items from each piece of code, e.g. "Blue Unicorn, #1 of 10", "Blue Unicorn, #2 of 10" etc. Buyers will then be able to log in and, with a credit card, buy a unique print.

As an artist, you will be able to Level Up by selling more art. You will have an artist profile which shows which contests you have placed in and earned money in. It will also show how prolific you are in getting your art out into the world.

The long term goal is 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

The art is better! I'm really excited about the improvement that is happening both for individual students and also for the Hatch Coding userbase as a whole. The art is definitely getting better week to week. I can also look at specific students and see that their work is getting better over time.

To me, this is very exciting, as it shows we have a learning platform that works. It means that as we can get more students going down this road of coding & creating with Hatch Coding, they will improve their programming ability and set themselves up to learn more... and earn more.

So, bit by bit, as a community we are getting stronger and more skillful, which is deeply rewarding.

More details, announcements and changes are coming soon but I know one thing for sure:

We're just getting started!

Peter, CEO, Hatch Coding