Two students of Department of Architecture, Huang Po-yu and Hsieh Tzu-hui won the first prize with their work, The Gift, at the college-level category of a national student picture book competition. “This is my first time to join such competition,” said Huang, adding that she joined the event to see how far she could go and the first price gave her a major boost in confidence. “I will try different style in the future,” said Huang.

The competition stipulates that competitors should write a story that is meant for children between the age of 3 to 12. And the story should be presented in the picture book form.

The Gift tells the story of a bunny that lives in a snow country, who one day picked up a magical gift box that can turn everything you put inside it into colorful objects. As more and more people put their original colorless things inside the box, the box ultimately broke. But with the joint effort of all, the bunny and its friend decorated the white colored snow country into a colorful and beautiful world. The basic color of the picture book is white and by using paints and Acrylic painting and the Pointillism techniques, Huang and Hsieh create a world that have both white and different colors. Hsieh said the most time-consuming part of creating this picture book is to do the pointillist technique. “We used 0.28 pens to dip one point after another to create the shadows in the pictures.” Huang said she loves painting. The reason she took part in the contest was that she wanted to leave a good memory in her college life. She therefore asked her friend Hsieh to join the contest. She said the story reveals the message that everything can be solved with the joint effortsl.

Wan Huai-tsu, a sophomore in Department of Mass Communications, said he can understand the meaning of the picture book because he now serves the post as the head of the Student Association of his department. “The story tells us that there is nothing to be afraid when facing the adversity as long as we are willing to work together,” he said.

(Translated by Yeh Yun-kai)