Kirkland resident Paul Otteni has been officially announced as a winner in the 27th annual Illustrators of the Future Contest for his science fiction artwork.
As part of the award, Otteni will be flown to Los Angles to attend the 32nd Annual L. Ron Hubbard Achievement Awards Event in April, along with a week-long workshop. His art will also be published in the bestselling science fiction anthology series, L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume XXXII.
Otteni received the award for several pieces of impressionistic background art he submitted.
A Lake Washington High School graduate, Otteni said he started drawing as a kid while attending school, but at first wasn’t something he did as a hobby while at home. He stopped drawing for a brief period in high school but got back into illustrating while attending a film school in Vancouver, B.C. studying video production. His main interest, he said, was in drawing landscapes and digital paintings of environments that would work well for fantasy or sci-fi films and games, with an emphasis on mountainous landscapes and distinct geographical terrain.
“Just doing it on my computer, I could make these environments, these worlds no one has ever seen before,” he said. “I would just be able to create something that’s new and original. That’s what really drew me to these more fantastical environmental designs. Mostly what I make is I suppose organic worlds and designs, although I have been working more with man-built landscapes and cities.”
Ironically, Otteni said he initially learned about the contest while he and his brother were submitting scripts and short stories to numerous contests. During the process he got interested in other work he could submit to contest. Learning about the Illustrators of the Future Contest, which had no submission fee, he took several background pieces he had drawn and sent them in. One of the entries was a panoramic image of a shallow ocean with jagged rocks sticking out and an abandoned broken up ship with giant stone men in the background. One of the others depicted a blizzard in a mountainous landscape with a crashed UFO in the distance.
“There wasn’t really a lot of preconception put into the work,” he said. “I just kind of make it up as I go and sort of come up with strange ideas. Some things work, some things don’t.”
However, he said while he was proud of his art, he did not expect to win anything.
“With my work I thought it was good enough to submit, but I know so many people close to me that are so talented with illustrations,” he said. “I guess every once and a while your work just strikes a chord with them.”
When he was informed that he was one of the contest’s winners, he said he wasn’t surprised or excited, but skeptical that it was actually the contest officials. Since then, he said, the excitement has been slowly building.
“I don’t know if I’ve been able to grasp just the scale of this contest because it’s a pretty big thing,” he said. “Really I probably won’t fully realize the excitement until they finally fly me out there for the ceremony.”
Despite the recognition his artwork has received, he said he isn’t sure of what to do from here.
The writing contest was first started by L. Ron Hubbard in 1983. An accompanying illustration contest was instituted in 1988 and to date has launched the careers of hundreds of illustrators.
For more information about the contest, go to www.WritersOfTheFuture.com.
