LINE Webtoon Announces Winners of $50,000 Contest Celebrating the Launch of Challenge League

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 2, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- LINE Webtoon, the popular webcomic service available on smartphones, tablets and web browsers, announced the winners of its first contest to kick off the Challenge League platform, a new feature that allows for artists to submit their webcomics for a chance to become an official LINE Webtoon artist. In late November 2014, LINE Webtoon launched Challenge League with a $50,000 contest to discover the best new webtoon artists.

Following the launch of Challenge League, more than 1900 webtoons were submitted throughout the course of the contest, where four lucky winners were selected as the best of the best. Through a panel of judges from LINE Webtoon staff evaluating entries based on artistry, creativity, originality and the artist's ability to publish webcomics on a weekly basis, the following winners were chosen:

• Grand Prize $30,000 Winner
  • Space Boy, Stephen McCranie
• Second Place $10,000 Winner
  • ShootAround, Susanna Ada Alice Nousiainen
• Third Place $5,000 Winners
  • Roar Street Journal, Pang Hong Yi Bonnie
  • Catharsis, Cheryl Dawn Fontanilla

Challenge League is free for webcomic fans and aspiring artists looking to showcase their talents and gain recognition, while discovering the best comic content available via mobile and desktop. LINE Webtoon has dedicated the last 10 years to find and promote the most talented and impressive artists around the world and continues to provide new comics and services to its fans on a regular basis.

"With the launch of Challenge League, we have seen so many amazing submissions from webtoonists across the country and found it difficult to only pick four winners," said JunKoo Kim, creator and head of the LINE Webtoon Division. "Every submission continues to grow the webtoon industry here in North America and opens the door to aspiring artists to become discovered and ultimately published. We want to thank everyone who submitted during the Challenge League contest and look forward to more webtoon creators enjoying the service, as we will continue to have unique contests in the future."

"I am so excited to have been named the Grand Prize winner in the first Challenge League contest by LINE Webtoon," said Stephen McCranie. "My goal was to draw 100 pages of webtoons in two months for a chance to win $30,000 and my dream has come true! LINE Webtoon has been a perfect platform for me to share my comic creations with the world and I'm excited to continue telling the story of Space Boy for fans of the series and new readers."

LINE Webtoon will continue to support the Challenge League service in North America to discover up-and-coming artists looking to become professional artists and webtoonists. Each month, LINE Webtoon will select a Challenge League-submitted webtoon to be featured as a partnered series, with the artist promoted an official LINE Webtoon artist, eligible for monthly payments. LINE Webtoon is always searching for the best artists to join the service and Challenge League provides the best avenue to having webtoons discovered and promoted, reaching broader audiences than ever before.

In sharing their creations, Challenge League artists can meet their audience and communicate with them through the simple and easy to use interface. LINE Webtoon also offers opportunities to recreate the webcomic across diverse media such as movies, TV series and more to expand beyond just webcomics. LINE Webtoon is dedicated to helping artists launch a full time career, with some Webtoon artists earning up to $80,000 a month.

LINE Webtoon, launched in the U.S. and globally on July 2, 2014, currently offers approximately 69 webcomics, including multiple globally heralded series among the 520 original NAVER webtoons. Popular titles include "Noblesse", "Tower of God", "The God of High School" and more. LINE Webtoon users can enjoy multiple genres of webcomics, easy access to download content on-the-go and can receive update notifications when newly-released webtoons are available. Featuring advanced social sharing and comment functions, LINE Webtoon also includes a rating system to drive more exposure for popular artists.

Fans can access Challenge League by visiting http://www.webtoons.com. To download LINE Webtoon, visit the Apple App Store (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/line-webtoon/id894546091?mt=8) and Google Play (http://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.naver.linewebtoon). Fans can read Challenge League content through these mobile applications and submit their own comics via www.webtoons.com.

ABOUT NAVER: (http://www.navercorp.com/en)

NAVER Corporation is Korea's premier Internet company, operating the nation's top search portal 'NAVER'. NAVER was launched in June 1999 and has since stood at the forefront of the growth of Korea's search service. NAVER has introduced many innovative search services over the years, such as 'Comprehensive Search', 'Knowledge iN' and 'Real-time Rising Keyword'. In addition, since releasing the 'NAVER' application, NAVER has launched applications for a wide variety of services. NAVER offers innovative mobile services for the global market, including the mobile messenger LINE through LINE Corporation, NAVER's subsidiary. NAVER launched the Webtoon service in June 2004 in Korea and has pioneered distribution and consumption of webtoons, also known as internet cartoons. The service receives a daily average of 6.2 million hits from unique visitors and has accumulated a total of 29.2 billion total visits as of June 1, 2014. NAVER launched the LINE Webtoon service worldwide on July 2, 2014.

SOURCE LINE Webtoon

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