Christmas Sci-fi Creative challenge
Hey there, toads! Welcome to 2024… hope you’ve all caught a break somewhere in the last couple of weeks, and gotten in some time on your creative projects.
Our own final project for 2023 was the “Sci Fi-Christmas” creative challenge, which was open to submissions in any creative medium right up to December 20th. We’re glad our entrants took us up on the the range of mediums possible,, because we received one of the widest ranges yet for this one.
Original artwork by Dave Thomas, created as a promo visual for this challenge! Find more of Dave’s work on insta at @captaincdt
We’ll start off by announcing our top winner… and that credit goes to Vagabond Grove, one of Joplin’s favorite bands helmed by indie folk singer-songwriter Caleb Miller! Caleb over at VG sent us this little music video w/ their original song, “Alien Xmas”, on theme for the challenge and delightfully catchy. Caleb won a $20 gift card to a local establishment of his choosing, as well as a Toad goodies bundle… congrats, Caleb!!
Next up in 2nd place- longtime Toad contributor Rebecca Haines, concocted a delightful little honey-I-shrunk-the-holiday sort of tale through her poem, “A Small Christmas Adventure.”
And coming in at 3rd place, Nathaniel Toines Thomas with his unconventionally buff Santa illustration, “Time Travel Santa.” This wouldn’t be Nathaniel’s first Toad-Christmas illustration, however- he gets the honor of December’s page in our brand new 2024 Toad Calendar, too!
As always, it was tough to narrow down our winners, but we thoroughly enjoyed all the entries. Here’s 3 more that were sent in and we still think are worth a peek!
Watercolor & Ink Pen by Maria Fanoele
Podracer Santa- original video by Julia Miller
poem by Alshaad Kara
Thanks for checking out the entries. If you’re interested in submitting work yourself, stay tuned. We’re taking a break from creative challenges and magazine submissions for a bit, but we’ll certainly be back later in the year and will be announcing details on social media when that happens.
Follow us at @joplintoad on Insta & Facebook!
Happy new year!