At the recent Graduation and Exhibition Day, held on April 1 by the Enterprise Incubator Foundation (EIF) and the Gyumri Technology Center (GTC) within the framework of the USAID-funded Armenia Workforce Development Activity, art and emotions were on full display as the participants of the “Character Design” course presented their final projects.

The event, part of EIF’s mission to provide technological and tech-related education to young people in Armenia, had two major components – the presentation of the course participants’ final projects and the certificate awarding ceremony. The presentation was enhanced with audio and visual effects and included the sketches, that the course participants drew during the lessons.

Another important element of the event was the discussion with Agata Badalyan, the co-founder of the creative startup 3dzook. Agata told the course participants about her career path, spoke about the importance of characters in a story and shared recommendations for the young people’s first steps in their career paths.

In addition to learning skills, the course participants had two projects to test their skills and compete. The project suggested by NeoGraph Games, was to create a character for a game. The assignment by EIF and Coca-Cola Hellenic Armenia for the participants was creating a character for the “Basics of game technologies” course.

As a result, participants of the course Gohar Sargsyan and Osanna Grigoryan received drawing tablets from NeoGraph Games as a prize, and Sofi Movsisyan was awarded AMD 50,000 by the EIF.

Several participants of the “Character Design” course have shared their impressions and opinions about the event and the course itself.  Greta Grigoryan said: “I discovered new interests and liked character design as a profession. Now I dedicate most of my day to it, and after the course, I’ve also started working on my own comic book.”

According to Anushik Hovsepyan, conveying mood and emotions through characters is easier.

“You create people you’ve always wanted to understand. Each personal quality is expressed, and the character becomes a living person, a friend, a part of your life. This is why I fell in love with character design,” she noted. 

For Sofi Movsisyan, the course was a chance to express herself and grow her creative spirit by communicating with people of art.

“I am also very excited that my character was recognized as the best for the course “Basics of game technologies”, I’m very grateful for the prize,” she added.

Ovsanna Grigoryan said:

“The knowledge and skills I gained during the course helped me do best in the project, provided by NeoGraph Games. The award tablet be very useful in improving my design skills.”

According to Gohar Sargsyan, during the course, they created characters not only for the course but for other projects and competitions.

“One of those was the character design project for NeoGraph Games. I won a graphic tablet for it, and I will use it to keep improving my skills and create new characters,” she noted.