For years now Google has been conducting its annual “Doodle 4 Google” competitions. In this competition Google opens the floor to public entries of doodles with the prospect of appearing on the mega-corporation’s site. This year, young artists entered their designs which were centered around the prompt of, “If I could invent one thing to make the world a better place.”
Last month, 50 state finalists were flown to Mountain View, California for a ceremony at Google headquarters. Winner, 11-year old Audrey Zhang of Levittown, NY stayed an extra day to work with google’s artists. She was featured on the search engine’s homepage on Mon., Jun. 9. According the The Washington Post, she had entered the competition two times prior. This will be Google’s first time animating a student’s doodle.
Zhang’s impressive, environmental doodle features a machine that cleans polluted water. She calls the machine a “transformative water purifier.” The title of Zhang’s work is called, “Back to Mother Nature”. The leader of the Team Google Doodle artists, Ryan Germick, says that the artwork is, “so lush and so rich and so full and so complete. Every leaf seemed to have life in it.” Germick also spoke about the complexities of animating this doodle, “we never imagined it would have 150 moving parts.” The doodle was made with colored markers, including lightning bugs, dragon flies, and other fantastical characters.
Winning the competition has granted Zhang a $30 thousand scholarship for college, a $50 thousand tech grant for her current school, Island Trees Middle School, as well as a $20 thousand donation in her name to help improve sanitation in Bangladesh schools.
Germick explained his faith in Zhang’s future as an artist, “That is just pure talent. She was born with something incredible.”
Photo: Google
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