This past week we ran week 8 of our digital art contest series. We had 14 entrants and gave out $600 to the top 3 students and $720 overall. 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: Peggie, Art Link, ($300)

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

3rd place: Eli, 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 $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 have decided to follow a strategy of slowly increasing the prize pool based on the # and quality of contest entries. We are still in the 10-20 range of entries. 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 22: Characters, Cute & Whimsical

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

Jan 5: Real Life / Figurative

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?

Real Life / Figurative: What can you draw that imitates real life and also has variety built into the algorithm? How can generative art depict things like money, plants, animals, food, stores, roads, cities, etc? What kind of interesting patterns can you include in your art?

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.

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 launching a marketplace at Hatch.Art 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. We are going to be starting with contest winners but after that, we will be opening up the ability for any student to take their generative art, put a shingle up and see if they can earn a small financial return.

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

Every week I see better and more different art. We're starting to get a solid cadence together for what happens every week. I'm really excited to put up the art store and see what young people do in order to get their artwork into the hands of their community and network. It's also a lot of fun to talk to some of the parents and students to see and hear about the impact that gaining technical and creative skills is having on a student's development. This journey is a long once. I think the one of the next big pieces is going to be to help the artists market their work. There are certainly specifics details that particularly relevant for the age and talent range we are working with. More details, announcements and changes are coming soon but I know one thing for sure:

We're just getting started!

Peter, CEO, Hatch Coding

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