-By Dan dos Santos

We are really excited to be able to offer one lucky reader a full scholarship to attend the sold out IMC this year. This scholarship is made entirely possible by our reader’s Patreon donations. So thank you to everyone who supports us month after month! We will keep offering scholarships like this one as long as you continue to support us.

Applicants were asked to submit 6 works that represent them as an artist, and write a short essay about why they want to win. We received exactly 200 submissions.

This was seriously one of the hardest events I’ve ever had to judge. There was just SO much good work. Myself, and five other Artists and Art Directors managed to narrow those 200 applicants down to a sigle individual only after a full week of discussion and LOTS of flip flopping.

The real challenge was that we weren’t necessarily looking for the best artist. Instead, we were looking for the best student. Someone who exhibits great ability, but even more potential. Someone who has shown repeated dedication to advancing in the field, and whom we thought would benefit the most from the week-long workshop.

So without further ado, I’m pleased to announce that the winner of a full tuition to the 2017 IMC is…

Winner:

Carmen Sinek

In the event that our winner can not attend for some reason, we have also selected a Runner-Up.

1st Runner Up:

Alex Dos Diaz

We originally had about a dozen nominees who we discussed at great length before deciding on a single winner. Any one of these people could just as easily (and just as deservingly) have won the scholarship. In fact, literally every one of them was considered as a potential winner at some point. Often times it came down to a single vote, and in many cases these people didn’t win because we felt their work was too good, and would likely succeed just fine on their own without our help. Regardless, all of the jurors were heartbroken that we only had one seat to give away as all of these artists are tremendous talents. We would like to make a special note of some of these artists…

Honorable Mentions:

Justin Hernandez

Corinne Reid

Cristi López

Eli Minaya

Cassandre Bolan

Sam Carr

Abigail Platter

Colin Boyer

Once again , thank you to everyone who submitted, and to everyone whose donations made this scholarship possible. We hope you will all continue to strive for excellence, and look forward to seeing everyone’s work again next year!