Otago Polytechnic Design learner David Macdonald has won the Student Comic Category at the Chroma Art Awards 2019, a national competition for graphic artists held in conjunction with independent arts festival Chromacon.

David, who in his second year of study for a Bachelor of Design (Communication), won the category for the quality of his graphic novel, Copper Lens.

He’d heard about the Chroma Art Awards “inadvertently” and submitted his book without thinking much about it at the time.

“The night before the awards event (held on 1 June) I got an email letting me know that I’d won – and whether I could be in Auckland within 24 hours. I actually didn’t believe it at first,” David says.

“It wasn’t until the next day, when I watched the live-stream and a presenter read out a short speech I had passed on, that it became real.”

David, who grew up in Christchurch but now calls Nelson home, chose to enrol in a Bachelor of Design (Communication) at Otago Polytech because he wanted to develop his illustration skills and learn about all the “unknown unknowns”.

“Looking back now, I realise I knew very little about what ‘design’ actually meant. Now I know how much there is yet to learn.

“The Design department – and Otago Polytech as a whole – has always felt like a good space. The lecturers care about what they’re teaching and what we’re creating.

“Being able to incorporate some of my own projects – such as using Copper Lens for a photography project – has been helpful for me.”

David has already started a second graphic novel, refining “all the areas I thought needed brushing up on from Copper Lens”.

Read the Otago Daily Times article

Read more about Chromacon

Read more about our Design programmes

 


Published on 13 Jun 2019

Orderdate: 13 Jun 2019
Expiry: 31 Oct 2019