First Avatar Challenge Winner Announced

kristielCompetitions & Contests

Share this Post

Avatar Challenge Winner PudgieSay hello to Pudgie the Budgie! Pudgie is the first winning entry in the Avatar Challenge Scholarship Program. This challenge  – sponsored by Smith Micro, and co-sponsored by Wacom and Studica  – is designed to cultivate the next generation of digital artists. The winning entries will be showcased  by providing student-created content for the Avatar feature of Sprint’s Visual Voicemail service.

The program was introduced in 2014 to educators and students in secondary schools and higher education. Pudgie and the artist, Darbi Dugan, are the first to be selected as the “Student of the Month” character for Avatar messaging. Upon winning, Dugan received a free Intuos Pen tablet from Wacom, $2,500 in scholarship and over $1,000 worth of professional animation software from Smith Micro.

Avatar Challenge Winner: Meet the Artist

Artist Darbi DuganDarbi Dugan is a high school senior in Abingdon, IL. She plans on attending Missouri State University in the fall where she will major in Electronic Arts. In order to pass the time in her small town, Dugan immersed herself in anime and sought outlets to nurture her love of sketching, digital art and animation. Inspired by her pet parakeet, she entered the Avatar Challenge and created the winning avatar – Pudgie the Budgie.

The Avatar Challenge was the first time Darbi designed a character for mobile messaging.  With specific requirements on size, five distinct animated sequences and several design criteria, Dugan worked hard to perfect Pudgie the Budgie with vibrant colors and a cheerful personality. That hard work definitely paid off when she became the first official winner of the Avatar Challenge. Her avatar will be featured on the Sprint Visual Voicemail application viewed by millions of Sprint users nationwide. Not to mention the pretty great prizes she won!

“Winning the Avatar Challenge was a major shock and it made my year! It showed me that doing what you love really does pay off eventually. Contests like this can be nerve racking, but I’m glad I didn’t pass it up.” – Darbi Dugan

Take the Avatar Challenge

“Darbi’s design demonstrated all of the qualities that make for popular avatars, including personality, vibrant aesthetics, liveliness, and fluid animation,” noted Carla Fitzgerald, Chief Marketing Officer at Smith Micro. The Avatar Challenge is for full-time students in the United States, grades 9 and up. See the full contest rules to see if you can create your own successful avatar like Darbi Dugan did. Your work could be viewed by millions of Sprint subscribers and shared via mobile messaging, email and even Facebook.
Register today for the Avatar Challenge.

Educators can also register their classes in the Avatar Challenge to help promote visual communication, creative design and engineering skills.

Share this Post