Announcing 3 winners of the Transformation Challenge

Last month we shared with you news of a partnership between DeviantART, Vice, Motherboard, and Surface. We kicked off our partnership with the Transformation Challenge. A contest to find three artists seeking an internship with masters of their respective genres. Last week we finally narrowed our search to announce the 3 winners. A panel of judges at Vice and our two lead judges Habib Zargarpour, Creative Director at Xbox, and Thobey Campion, Editor in Chief at Motherboard, worked their way through 1500+ submissions.

I have been blown away by the quality of work submitted. Ranging from the comic to deeply emotional – it was difficult to pick just three winners. If you want to take a look at our 25 favorite submissions head on over to the DeviantART – Transformation Challenge website.

Without further ado, let me introduce you to our winner:

Hailing from Spain, Zeich had a busy weekend working on his transformation of a kid into a fly using Photoshop and his trusted Bamboo Tablet. The inspiration for his work came from a fly which was annoying him so “if you can’t beat them, join them”.

From Canada, I am excited to share the work of Raging-Akujiki. He hand drew on paper with 2H and 4B pencils, and then spent several hours coloring digitally in Photoshop CS4. I find the story and inspiration for this piece quite moving. “Razor” is the story of a man who wants that transform himself after a life of bad decisions and neglected opportunities. Finding an ordinary razor on a rainy night he transforms his life and in the final image connects with his mother. He holds a job application in his hand. The piece is about piecing yourself together, picking yourself up, and getting to work.

Finally, from the UK we have HughEbdy. Using Photoshop and a pen tablet he pokes gentle fun at the ‘fantasy armor’ enthusiast. The theory goes that underneath all that armor and macho play is a skinny dude who, in the heat of the summer, probably wants nothing more than a refreshing dip in the ocean. The transformation illustrates this shedding of the armor and the run for the water. Enjoy:

I am really looking forward to meeting each of these artists and telling you more about their work soon. I’ll be back with more from DeviantART & Surface Pro 3 later.