Exclusive: FRANK CHO's 50-GIRLS-50 Artist Search Winner

We announced a little over two months ago that Image and Frank Cho would be doing something very unique for his next project: holding an open Talent Search for the artist who would be drawing the interiors of the book. The designs, character descriptions, and sample tryout script were presented, tons of submissions were received, and now, exclusively on Newsarama, we have the winner along with his entire submission. Click through the images on the left to see the winning entry, and here's Frank Cho and Doug Murray with the announcement:

From Frank Cho & Doug Murray:

Okay!  The time has come to announce the winner of the 50-GIRLS-50 talent search.  I have to tell you that both the number and quality of the submissions really blew me away—I mean, I knew there were a lot of talented comic artists out there, but I hadn’t expected so many to try this out!  Thanks to all of you!  It was great fun seeing those six (and later seven) pages done in so many different ways and styles.

Judging was very difficult.  We had to grade the entries on multiple counts—the fidelity to the model sheets produced by Frank, the story-telling displayed, the quality of the layouts—all of these came into play.

The ten finalists were asked to do one more page—a page that would show us how they would lay things out on their own—and even with that information, it was tough making a decision!

We managed to pick the final four artists but picking a winner out of the four was extremely difficult since each artist had what we were looking for in terms of quality and clear storytelling skills. Frank and I went back and forth till the very last minute on who the winner should be. We constantly changed our winner list every day.

Still, it had to be done—so I want to announce that the winner of the contest, the individual who will be given the opportunity to draw 50-GIRLS-50 is: (drum roll)...

AXEL MEDELLIN!

In the event Axel cannot take over the chores on the book, we will award the prize to MILX, Allan Otero, or Tommaso Renieri!

Thank you all for the time and effort you put into this.  Also for the simple humanity and kindness you showed each other within the various threads of the 50-GIRLS-50 blog.  I was as impressed by that as I was by the artistry of your entries.