The 2013 VYBZING Animated Video Challenge has been unanimously described as "an exciting learning experience" by the challenge winners; Marlan Edward, Darnell Lacan, Tevin Loctor and Dannal Casimar. Edward captured the first prize of USD1500 with his entry, "A Road Safety Advertisement," while Lacan was awarded the second prize of USD1000 and the People's Choice Award of USD250 for his submission titled, "Exercise Road Safety - Save a Life." The third prize of USD650 went to the team of Loctor and Casimar for "Tommy Crossing." Although a Graphic Designer by profession, 24-year-old Edward revealed that animation is not an area in which he is well versed. "I had tried animation before in secondary school but that was the extent of my experience. My idea was to create an animated music video. I wrote the song first and then created animations to illustrate the lyrics. Creating the animations required research at each stage. The most difficult part was getting the mouth movements correct. Overall it took me a month to complete the entire video. I worked on it on evenings when I returned from work," he said. He added, "I am very thankful to have been successful. The prize money will assist with the purchase of equipment for my church's drama group." For Lacan, an opportunity to win money to add to his savings for his tertiary education was what prompted him to enter the VYBZING Animated Video Challenge. "I want to focus on animation as a career. I have a lot of ideas that I wish to put on screen but I require training to properly do that, so I am saving to study graphic design and computer animation," he said. He revealed that he previously dabbled in animation, "I do very short animated videos from time to time and post them on my YouTube page but that's it. I still had to do a lot of research to complete my submission. Coming up with the initial concept for the challenge was easy and I simply added to it as I went along. It took me a month to finish working off and on." The 19-year-old also thanked all those who voted for him in the People's Choice Awards. The team of 17-year-old Loctor and 19-year-old Casimar viewed the VYBZING Animated Video Challenge as an opportunity to test their animation skills and improve their teamwork. Loctor said, "We are students at the Malfinis Film & Animation Studio and Dannal and I usually work together. When we heard about the VYBZING Challenge, we decided to enter primarily as a learning experience, especially since animation is our chosen career. For our video, we decided to focus on road safety rules which are not usually followed in St. Lucia and created our story board around that. It took us about a month to complete the video." The team said they look forward to participating in other animated competitions as they work towards their goal of owing their own full service animation studio and school. The VYBZING Animated Video Challenge which was open to youths in St. Lucia ages 16 -29, invited submissions on the theme, "Road Safety: Save a Life, Save a Future." The competition ran from March 8 to May 3, 2013. PIX CAPTION: The 2013 VYBZING Animated Video Challenge Winners. (L-R) Second prize winner and People's Choice Award recipient, Darnell Lacan; third prize winners, Tevin Loctor and Dannal Casimar and first prize winner, Marlan Edward.