The anticipation was building up as our judges prepare to score the top 10 finalist of the 1^st ever Poddcorp Digital Art Contest.

The Top 10 Finalist

 Budoy with DigitalFilipino's Janette Toral

National Commission of Culture and Arts' Ms. Palmy Pe-Tudtud

The Pigs On Parade guest judges with Poddcorp's Art Director Leo Guevara

Grand Prize Winner of Poddcorp’s 1^st Digital Art Contest - Luke Tornilla's entry

First Runner-up Tristan Emperado's entry

Second Runner-up Yanya Cortes' entry

(L-R) Poddcorp Marketing Lead Raquel Montecillo; Creative Services Director Andreas Montano; 2nd Runner-up Yanya Cortes; Grand Prize winner Luke Tornilla; 1st Runner-up Tristan Emperado; Poddcorp's President Christine Rom and Project Manager Ericson Gonzales

PODD Corp’s first-ever Digital Contest ended with a bang.  With three winners announced on February 2, the judges picked out the best ten finalists from a pool of 72 digital artists who submitted their work based on the chosen theme “Pigs on Parade”.  The artists represented various schools such as the University of the Philippines and University of San Carlos-TC.

The competition held at the Parklane Hotel was in accordance with the Philippine Offshore Design and Development Corporation’s (PODD Corp.) second year in operation.

Present that night were the judges for the Digital Art Contest who are none other than Janette Toral (of DigitalFilipino.com), Errol “Budoy” Maribiles (of Pinoy Big Brother fame), and renowned artist Palmy Pe-Tudtud.  Isagani Ybarra also graced the party with his presence and performed a song.  He is a composer well known for his songs that have been played by Philippine bands like Tropical Depression, Bayang Barrios and Asin.

The ten finalists who vied for the top prize of Php10, 000 joined in the celebration as well.  Also up for the taking was a Second prize of Php6, 000, and third prize of Php4, 000.  The winners each received a trophy.  A PODD Corp goody bag was distributed to all the finalists who were considered winners as well for the works they submitted.

The winners are as follows:
1^st Prize: Luke Tornilla (UP) for his entry “Cebuano Sun God”; 2^nd Prize: Osamu Tristan “Uzi” Emperado (UP) for his entry “Fire Pig: Leading the Parade”; 3^rd Prize: Yanya Cortes (USC-TC) for her entry “Pigs and Humans are sometimes the same”.

About a couple of weeks ago, PODD celebrated its 2nd birthday in business.  Well actually, if not for the Pigs On Parade digital art contest, its official date would've been on the 18th of January (but to save you from the "messy" details, the date was finally agreed to be on February 2).  To me, being one of the PODD peeps, the event is still work and not to mention I was the head of the production setup.  But to a handful of talents like Luke Tornilla, the kid who brought home the grand bacon, that moment is clearly another step closer to a dream coming true - whatever that may be.

Anyhow, Luke (full name Jon Michael Christian van Luke Tornilla) is a smart Filipino kid who just turned 18 last Feb 7.  He came from a family line of doctors - his grandfather, aunt, and his parents are doctors, and finally sandwiched by his 2 sisters also taking up courses in the field of science.

He won 1st prize worth P10,000 and a trophy with his entry "Cebuano Sun God".  His entry depicted the Sto. Niño piloting a flying "kalesa" - a localized coupe or chariot - being pulled by 2 huge wild boars.  Just last Friday, Feb. 9, he came by the office to claim his cash... and so we at ArtCebu (Michelle and I) thought it would be the perfect time to decode and outfox him... hmmm.

ArtCebu: Can you tell us how you got the idea of the Cebuano Sun God?
Luke: It was first based on the PODD contest theme "Pigs On Parade: The Year of the Fiery Pig"... then everything else has something to do with Cebu.  There's the Sto. Niño driving the kalesa, and the orange and crispy pigs inspired from the lechon (roasted pig).  It's very Cebuano.

AC: You used some of the names from Greek mythology.  Is there a relation behind the Cebuano Sun God?
L: Well when I learned that Palmy Tudtud is one of the judges, I thought I should make an impressive work (laughs).  So I tried to make up a little story about it (pointing on the description scribbled at the back of his artwork).

AC: I think your entry seems to tell more and that's probably why you won the grand prize.  If you are to make a story out of it, can you tell us what happened before the action in the picture took place and what happens after?
L: Hmmm... that's a little hard but I'd like to believe that it happened during the Sinulog when everyone in Cebu is celebrating the fiesta and Sto. Niño is just as glad and so He hovered above the heavens.  If you can see, there's the Philippines below Him on the picture.

AC: And what happened after?
L: He just flew right back into the heavens.

AC: How many hours per day did you spend on making this art?
L: 1 week. An hour or two after classes and after watching TV.

AC: How did you get interested in digital art?
L: I got interested with computer games since 4th grade and got my inspiration from there.

AC: What's your favorite PC game?
L: Prince of Persia

AC: How would you spend your money?
L: I got some money saved from Christmas, then some from my birthday, and then the money from the contest.  I'm gonna buy a PSP (Portable Playstation) with it.

AC: Aside from digital art, what else do you do?
L: Photography.  I love the last hiking trip me and my dad had (showing a couple of images from his deviant art profile).

AC: You said you're currently taking up management in UPV and it's a bit offbeat from what you usually do or at least what we know of you, why management?
L: Originally, my direction was to take up either advertising in UPV or economics in UP Dilliman.  The latter being my first choice but it turns out that UPV is actually in Ilo-ilo and not in Cebu.  I thought it was in Cebu.  But I was still excited and I said 'Yes! I'm gonna be in Ilo-ilo!'  But my parents was horrified of the thought that I'd be there so I took up a course that has something to do with economics instead.  Back in elementary, things just doesn't make sense - you wanna be an astronaut and then when you start dreaming towards it, you realize that hey wait, there's easier money over there - so I thought of business.

AC: What's keeping you busy these days?
L: I was enrolled in 2004 and 2005 at the International Academy of Film and Television (IAFT) taking up computer graphics and video editing.  After that I got an OJT in the same school for 2 and a half months.  Now I'm busy with school - it's the finals so I'm studying for my exams.

AC: What would you think of your future be like?
L: It will be cool if all things could just come conglomerated.  I don't think I've changed that much since high school.

AC: Dream job?
L: That's a hard one (laughs).  You've been asking me hard questions (laughs again).
AC: That's because we know you're smart (more laughs).

AC: Have you heard of PODD before the contest?
L: No, I haven't.

AC: How did you learn about PODD's digital art contest then?
L: My dad buys and reads the newspaper.  My mom read your ad and showed it to me and said that I should join.

AC: So what do you know about PODD?

L: I know that you do graphic designs, search engine optimization, and web designs.  I think PODD is a small, fast, and cool company who can do anything.  It's almost like  hey-c'mon-give-it-to-us kinda thing.

MySpace has announced that they are joining forces with software company Audible Magic Corp., after succumbing to pressure from media conglomerates and copyright holders to stop posting copyrighted material on the popular site.

With the help of a new signature-identifying software that “scans video clips and looks for signature vectors - such as a unique digital fingerprint - to compare with vectors stored in a database. Once a signature is found, the video can be blocked.”

Chris DeWolfe, MySpace's co-founder and chief executive, said in a statement. "For MySpace, video filtering is about protecting artists and the work they create."

Source

Working for a company that specializes in graphics design, I’ve been told time and again to "always look at the details". So when one of our copywriters pointed Google’s big logo oops, I was flabbergasted. You’d think they’d have a team specifically put together to approve this sort of thing. I guess the moral of this story is no one is prone to Valentine sweet induced brain drain. Or it could be an early April Fool's joke which, would be bloody brilliant. 

UPDATE

Turns out the "Googe" was in fact intentional after all. According to Google Doodler, Dennis Hwang "those with true romance and poetry in their soul will see the subtlety immediately." And I being the most unromantic human being on the planet, was totally oblivious to the subtle reference.

The Googe he's probably referring to is none other than Barnabe Googe, a 16th century English poet whose works can be summarized in this line:

"I did but see her passing by, and yet I love her till I die."

Or they could be referring to this type of Googe. We just hope they really are talking about the poet and not a certain Amazonian practice.

Special thanks for Norman Nimer for the update.

If you googled the keyword “miserable failure” chances are you’d see a bio of President Bush on the first result. This was after a 'Google bombing/linkbombing' effort has tied that particular phrase to President Bush's biography in the Google search engine.

So how exactly did they do this, especially since the phrase "miserable failure" appears nowhere in the President's biography?
According to snopes.com, the "Google bombing" project was organized by George Johnston back at the end of October 2003, in which he used his blog to urge others to include links connecting the phrase "miserable failure" with the President's biography in their own web sites and blogs. At first, Google initially didn't take umbrage at the prank, nor did they take steps to counteract it:

At first Google neither took offense nor countered the prank. However, in early 2007 Google changed their indexing algorithm so that "Google-bombing" efforts would no longer point to intended targets, but to "commentary, discussions, and articles" about the Google-bombing phenomenon itself. Thus the first result returned by a Google search on "miserable failure" now links to a BBC article about efforts to tie President Bush's name to the phrase.

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