Submissions Open for Atomhawk’s Annual Art Competition
Thomas Stoop, Atomhawk Concept Artist
For the past two years, Atomhawk has hosted an art competition to inspire and motivate artists from all around the world to impress them with their work. Hundreds of unique pieces have been created and a talented few have walked away with some incredible prizes.
This year, Atomhawk’s theme is the open-ended and thought-provoking ‘Solarpunk’. The brief challenges artists to create their vision not only of how the future is fuelled, but also what a sustainable future society may look like.
Atomhawk Principal Artist, Drew Whitmore, on why he set the theme:
“Solarpunk is an interesting and relevant topic. From the Paris Agreement to Greta Thunberg, climate change is something everyone is thinking about in 2019. We’re putting the challenge out to artists to continue to explore that realm of thought in our art competition for this year.
It’s a great theme to explore as an artist with real light and shade. You could celebrate combining technology with nature as an opportunity to solve real challenges, or demonstrate the darker side of the future through how today’s environmental decisions could impact the world of tomorrow.
Atomhawk Lead Artist Charlie Bowater shared her tips on what makes a successful entry:
“As this theme is so future forward and technology focused, showing us your design thinking will go a long way. Solarpunk is interesting because it’s not a completely unknown concept, but I’d say it hasn’t been as explored as other ‘punk’ counterparts, so there’s a lot of room for uniqueness and creativity. We want to see how Solarpunk can be explored beyond its Art Nouveau roots. And if you’re really keen on winning, make sure you include your early sketches as well as a highly polished final result.”
“Our art competitions are a chance to do something interactive with the concept art community,” said Tim Wilson, Atomhawk’s Managing Director. “We’re growing our teams in both the UK and Canada, so this is a fantastic opportunity for emerging and existing talent to get their work in front of our creative team with a brief we have set. This year we have the best line up of prizes yet, with a Wacom Cintiq 16”, Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000, Nintendo Switch, credit for stock resources and subscriptions to ArtStation and ImagineFX.”
Entering Atomhawk’s art competition can mean winning big. Morten Solgaard Pederson’s winning entry to the 2018 ‘Into the Void’ competition won him a full-time position as a concept artist at the Atomhawk UK studio.
“I joined the art competition last year because it was a good opportunity to create a new high quality portfolio piece while also having the chance to win some great rewards and get my work seen by the studio. The theme was so broad that it didn’t feel like I was doing a piece for a competition as much as it felt like just doing a personal piece for practice. As it turns out, it was all worth it because they noticed my work and offered me a job. I got a Cintiq on top of that. I would definitely recommend artists of all levels get involved and create something for the art competition this year.”
Deadline for submissions is Wednesday 7th August 2019. To learn more about how to enter Atomhawk’s Solarpunk Art Competition and for full terms and conditions, visit atomhawk.com/solarpunk.
