Recognising Outstanding Young Artists

In collaboration with Walt Disney’s Pixar, The Malaysia Top 10 Outstanding Young Artists Awards 2018 marks the 21st annual art competition organised by The One Academy. Also known simply as MT10, this art competition slash awards ceremony was introduced in 1998 with the release of Disney’s ‘A Bug’s Life’ and is still going strong after two decades, with the most recent being Pixar’s ‘Cars 3’ in 2017. This year, the theme will be ‘Incredibles 2’, the upcoming animated superhero film by Pixar Animation Studios.

The Malaysia Top 10 Outstanding Young Artists Awards 2018 prides itself as a grand-scale national event, offering RM600,000 worth of The One Academy scholarships and prizes. Winners of the Gold, Silver and Bronze awards will receive RM80,000, RM60,000, and RM40,000 worth of scholarships respectively, while the seven Young Artists Awards winners will receive RM25,000 worth each. On top of that, the Gold winner will also take home an additional RM20,000 cash prize while the Silver and Bronze will receive RM1,000.

Not only that, the art teachers of the three winners will also receive RM1,000 and be conferred the Distinguished Art Educator Award, applauding their passion and effort in nurturing the Top 10 winners. Other categories include 30 Encouragement Prizes worth RM5,000 each and 35 Jury’s Special Selection Prizes worth RM3,000 each. Meanwhile, the secondary school art club with the highest record of winners selected in the final will receive a grant of RM2,000 and the Top 5 art clubs with the highest number of excellent entries in the preliminaries are entitled to a RM500 grant.

This long-standing art competition aims to discover and recognise artistic young talents at secondary school level, to inspire Malaysian teens from all corners of the country to unleash their creativity and think outside the box, encouraging them to develop individually unique ideas while honing their visual storytelling skills. Youngsters are given the chance to express freely with any sort of manual drawing mediums which they can handle well and compliment their ideas.

One of MT10’s previous winners, Teo Rui-Rou is the epitome of success that the competition and The One Academy strive to bring out in young talents. Teo attended Da Vinci Creative Kids, the only children’s arts and crafts school founded by TOA since she was a child. Encouraged and guided by her art mentor to join MT10 at 14 years of age, she eventually won the Gold prize in 2011 with her artwork on the ‘Cars 2’ theme.

Her parents, who are both in the professional field, were against their daughter’s decision to pursue arts thinking it was not a good career choice. However, they changed their minds and relented when Teo expressed her love for it, and they also witnessed the continuous effort she put in during her school years where she was actively partaking in art-related activities.

Teo wanted to further prove her point by joining MT10 consecutively from 2011 to 2014, where she has won some of the main prizes. She shared that the competition is a good platform for students who are thinking to pursue an art career as it helps develop the fundamental skills. She recalled that it was a humbling experience where one can meet many people with different art styles who are pursuing the same dream.

With the aid of the scholarship that she had won, Teo, who turns 21 this year, has recently graduated from The One Academy in the Digital Animation course. Currently employed as a 3D modeller at Lemon Sky Animation, Malaysia’s leading CGI studio, she is focused on the game-making aspects. In the near future, she intends to further her studies in the US and continue her passion for 3D modelling, one of her goals being to make 3D-printed designer toys and to showcase them in galleries.

Her advice to aspiring students who wish to pursue arts is to do a lot of research beforehand to see which field they would like to enter rather than going in blindly. They should also be prepared and willing to dedicate themselves to the demanding industry. Even after experiencing this, nothing has dampened her enthusiasm as she is well prepared before taking on a project, and she had learned to enjoy the process instead of just the reward.

Visit www.top10.toa.edu.my/2018 to find out how you can participate in the competition or contact Top10 Committee at 03-5637 5510 for enquiries.