Alias SketchBook Pro Users Battle for Exposure

Alias Announces Joshua Maruska as the grand prize winner of Expose Yourself 2 online contest

Game Developers Conference, San Francisco, CA - Booth #230 - March 9, 2005 - Today on the main stage of the Alias booth at the GDC tradeshow, Alias announced Joshua Maruska as the grand prize winner of Expose Yourself 2, the highly anticipated online digital creative contest now in its second consecutive year. Maruska was victorious; his image of hip hop dancer "Girl" standing out from the hundreds of unique sketches and interpretations submitted by illustrators, designers and artists worldwide using Alias SketchBook Pro software

Joshua Maruska is an industrial designer from Seattle, Washington. Prior to Maruska's contest submission, he had never worked with Alias SketchBook Pro or any other digital sketch application. As an avid Alias StudioTools user in his profession, Maruska stumbled across Alias SketchBook Pro and the Expose Yourself 2 contest, believing this was a great opportunity to learn new software and explore a new medium. With his Wacom� Tablet, Maruska created his composition in approximately eight hours, his talent easily expressed through Alias SketchBook Pro's simple user interface and natural pen response.

Maruska, grand prize winner has been awarded a Motion Computing� Tablet PC and US $5,000. In addition, his character creation will be added to a cast of animated 'hip hop dancers' for Artificial Mind and Movement's (A2M's) soon to be released urban flavored dance title. Montreal-based game developer A2M specializes in the creation of interactive action and adventure video games.

Expose Yourself 2

The Expose Yourself 2 contest provides a channel for the best and brightest digital artists to showcase their creative talent using the award-winning Alias SketchBook Pro software. In total, more than 625 images were submitted by Expose Yourself 2 contest participants, competing for a chance to win valuable prizes, widespread exposure and community recognition. This year's contest was sponsored by A2M, Motion Computing, Microsoft� and Wacom.

"The quality of the contest submissions this year was amazing - visually realistic and complex sketches representative of what SketchBook Pro is capable of," comments Steve Maric, sales and marketing manager, Alias. "Sketchbook Pro is a tool that was designed for the casual user on up to the expert. It once again proves that SketchBook Pro is easy to learn, easy to use and thanks to Maruska, evident that it's easy to master."

Judging Not So Easy

Members of the Alias SketchBook Pro community judged qualified submissions featured on the contest site from February 1 to February 14, 2005. Ten finalists were selected, and went on to be judged by A2M carefully critiquing each image, critically examining the quality and validity of each submission, concluding that Maruska's image stood out among the entries for its detail and imagination.

"In our field of work, it is quite rare to work with such diverse and original material such as what we got through the Expose yourself 2 contest. As far as we're concerned, the call was extended, it was heard and talent was manifest," comments Jonathan Gingras, A2M's art director on this project. "Everyone's interpretation and perception of the culture is different. Therefore, the call for the winner was a mix of technical criteria as well as its conformity to existing game art. We envisioned that we would see realistic, unique entries, but could never have imagined the quality and level of character detail that we were presented with."

To see the winning images and those of runners up in the contest, visit www.sketchbookpro.com/contest

Alias SketchBook Pro

Alias SketchBook Pro software features paint, image organization, annotation and presentation tools to replace the traditional paper sketchbook, empowering users to develop digital pen-driven illustrations and designs and e-mail them directly from the application. Alias SketchBook Pro uses a fast, simple and natural interface that feels like drawing with a pen and paper, enabling everyone from industrial, interior and fashion designers to game developers, illustrators and architects to draw wherever and whenever inspiration strikes. 

www.alias.com/sketchbookpro

About Alias

As the world's leading innovator of 3D graphics technology, Alias develops software for the film and video, games, web, interactive media, industrial design, automotive, architecture and visualization markets. Alias has headquarters in Toronto and a custom development center in Santa Barbara with offices worldwide.

www.alias.com