submitted.
The union's apprehension, however, was proven wrong. Many of the works were considered by the CCU-resident and the 10-man judging panel to be of exceptional quality. Possessing both a colorful array of styles and, more importantly for the judges, a clear editorial cartoon-styled message.
"It was a cartoon competition and the point about editorial-styled cartoons is, of course, the message. In many of the works we looked at the anti-drugs message was very clear," said CCU member Lin Shi-jun (
Divided into four categories -- junior high, senior high, young adult/college and animation -- the union received a total of 857 entries by the contest's cut-off period in late June. The top 77 of these will appear in a joint CCU/NBCD publication sometime in the coming months and adorn the walls of the Taipei City Central Library in early August.
While cash prizes were awarded to the top three contestants in all four categories, the top prize of NT$50,000 went to Lai Yi-chang's (
Unwelcoming it maybe, but Lai's work is one which Yang feels gets the message across in a straightforward, unglamorous and highly editorialized manner.
"The winning work was fantastic. It had all the qualities we were looking for. It was blunt and to the point, with a clear message, as well as maintaining its cartoon style features," said Yang.
"I'm sure it will work as well, as the piece is very eye-catching. Its hideousness draws the viewer in and it makes no bones about what it is saying."
The standard of many of the works submitted to the competition might have surpassed expectations, but the contest did attract the attention of several oddball entrants. Some contestants, however, didn't seem able to focus on the competition's fine print.
"We got a couple of competitors who missed the point entirely," said Yang with a slight smirk. "They thought the idea was to draw a cartoon of what it's like to be on drugs. Go figure!"
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