Winners Announced in the 4th Quarter of the International Illustrators of the Future Contest

The 4th quarter winners of the 2016 year of the L. Ron Hubbard Illustrators of the Future Contest were announced today by contest organizers.

Fourth Quarter Winners

Asher Alpay of Dumaguete City, Philippines
Rachel Quinlan of Michigan
Ryan Richmond of Indiana

As winners, they are awarded a week long intensive workshop where they will study art basics by L. Ron Hubbard, while having contest judges, top industry professionals show their hard-won experience to help provide a leg up toward a successful career in the arts. There will also be an awards ceremony in their honor on the 2nd of April in Los Angeles.

This quarter's winners will now compete against the winners from the other 3 quarters. Each artist is assigned a short story that they must illustrate from the winners of the sister contest, Writers of the Future. The winning illustrators and writers are published in the annual L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future.

Asher, Rachel and Ryan each receive a cash prize for their win this quarter and will now complete with the remaining winners for the Grand Prize.

The Grand Prize winner is announced at the annual awards ceremony and is awarded an additional $5,000.00.

Well-known illustrator contest judges include award winning artists:

Laura Freas Beraha, Echo Chernik, Lazarus Chernik, Vincent DiFate, Diane Dillon, Dave Dorman, Bob Eggleton, Larry Elmore, Val Lakey Lindahn, Stephan Martiniere, Gary Meyer, Cliff Nielsen, Mike Perkins, Sergey Poyarkov, Rob Prior, Shaun Tan and Stephen Youll.

Many of these judges will attend the workshop and the awards ceremony gala and will impart their wisdom to the winners. In addition to the judges and their mentoring for the week, winners also study art basics and advice from contest founder L. Ron Hubbard. The Art Book is a collection of essays by L. Ron Hubbard in the field of the arts and is read annually by the winners.

Following the 1982 release of his internationally acclaimed bestselling science fiction novel, Battlefield Earth, written in celebration of 50 years as a professional writer, L. Ron Hubbard created The Writers of the Future writing contest (http://www.writersofthefuture.com) in 1983 to provide a means for aspiring writers of speculative fiction to get that much-needed break. Due to the success of the Writing Contest, the companion Illustrators of the Future Contest was created in 1988.

The intensive mentoring process has proven very successful. The 380 past winners of the Writing Contest have published 838 novels and nearly 4,000 short stories. They have produced 27 New York Times bestsellers and their works have sold over 50 million copies.

The 310 past winners of the Illustrating Contest have produced over 4,500 illustrations, 356 comic books, graced 594 books and albums with their art and visually contributed to 36 TV shows and 46 major movies.

The Writers of the Future Award is the genre's most prestigious award of its kind and has now become the largest, most successful and demonstrably most influential vehicle for budding creative talent in the world of contemporary fiction. Since inception, the Writers and Illustrators of the Future contests have produced 32 anthology volumes and awarded nearly $1 Million cumulatively in cash prizes and royalties.

For more information go to http://www.writersofthefuture.com