This past week we ran week 6 of our digital art competition. We had 11 entrants and gave out $480 to the top 3 students. Our core software platform, Studio by Hatch Coding, is now free, forever. There are now "Art Lessons" and "Contest Info" links available to all students. Note that the story given for the winning piece of art this week is hilarious - you should definitely check it out:

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1st place: Danylo, Art Link ($240)

2nd place, Zachary: Art Link ($160)

3rd place, Anvay, Art Link ($80)

To find out what's so special about these projects, click the:

button multiple times from the explore link and see how the project changes.

We are going to offer these weekly contest prizes every week. And - the prize money is going to go up. Starting next week, we'll offer $600 in weekly prize money: $300 for first place, $200 for 2nd place and $100 for 3rd place.

The new (and latest) information for our contests is at:

hatchcoding.com/contests

This is an exciting time in Hatch Coding's history because a lot of big changes are afoot. As of Friday, December 3rd, for the first time in our company's history, our core software product, Studio by Hatch Coding, will be free to all students. We believe that we can help students code, create and earn. This means the company's primary focus is going to be to maximize the earning potential of students. How are we going to do this? First, we are going to run these generative art coding contests to give students a strong incentive to level up their coding skills.

The initial winners of these contests will have generative art that the best that teenagers can produce. As a company, we will then act as a de facto artist agent to see how the winners can take this art and sell it as digital art.

In order to make the generative art the best that it can be, we are going to take some very successful generative art, and create lessons on how to build it. Our first such piece was inspired by Armin Hoffman's fluid matrix published in 1965 in the Graphic Design Manual:

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Bonus points if you can guess which successful NFT collection we are going to teach!

This whole thing is a giant experiment, but I think it could really generate some interesting results: What would happen if we create strong incentives today to have teens and pre-teens start building tech skills early, and to build them in a way that empowers them as builders and creators?

More details are coming soon but I know one thing for sure:

We're just getting started!

Peter, CEO, Hatch Coding